The TRUTH about being a PART TIME Realtor
6 Mar 2025 · 20 min
Lars Hedenborg breaks down how part-time agents can build a profitable real estate business. He lays out five key activities: prospecting, follow-up, appointments, negotiation, and systems. His math: 18 deals a year nets $150k take-home after expenses.
Questions this episode answers
March 5, 2007
May or June 2006
90 days
Almost 3,000 paid agents
Two to three deals per month (goal); a conservative failure case: 1.5 deals/month = 18 deals/year
This is your situation right now. You're trying to make the switch from nine to five or a cozy corporate job. I'm going to give you some tactical, super helpful advice here that you could use to get after it and get out of whatever you're trying to get out of. The opportunity in real estate is ridiculous when you think of our million dollar agent method. For example, the goal in 90 days is to get agents to two to three deals per month. Let's say that that fails and we only get agents to one and a half deals per month at a run rate which is 18 deals per year in most markets there's at least a $10,000 commission check available. So 18 deals per year if we fail in our program is $180,000 of income, maybe $30,000 of expenses. On 180, you're taking home 150,000 per year or $12,500 per month. And that's if you don't even get to the two to three run rates.
The real estate industry has failed to create a clear path to time and money freedom. Having helped over 5,000 families in my real estate career and coached thousands of agents to scale their businesses, I know.
What works and what doesn't.
And my goal on this podcast is to share all with you the good, bad and ugly of building a highly lucrative lifestyle business so you can focus on what truly matters in life. You won't find any hype or fluff on this show, just real world tactics and strategies that get results.
You just got to do the work. The first thing I want to cover here is that real estate is, is really hard. Just know that going into it, the chances that you'll and, and this is a negative way to start, I'm going to start low and then I'm going to bring it up high. 80 plus percent fail rate within two years. So if you get your license, the chances that you're still in real estate two years later with the fees and you know, making enough income to cover like the baseline sort of fees involved 80% failure. And NAR, the National association of Realtors put out an income study and they do it every year. And I think the last one I looked at was that the average agent their gross commission income, so before expenses it was not even $60,000 and take out expenses, you know you're probably at 45, at 60, you're probably at 40 to 45,000 take home and the average two year agent was less than 10,000. So the average two year agent was not even selling one home. So it's massive opportunity. But there's only like 1% of agents sell 25 homes or more. Last year was less than 1% of agents. And that's where the game gets fun. And so the downside, you know, when, when you're in a corporate environment and you have a boss, typically that boss, part of their job is to make sure you're doing the things that you need to do as many hours as you're there, right? You can definitely like slide by in some corporate environments, but you've got someone that's going to make sure you're doing what you need to do to move that business forward. The challenge when you're a real estate agent and definitely a part time agent is that you are, you have the worst boss ever. Meaning like you're your own boss. And most real estate agents, and this transcends, you know, part time or full time. Most real estate agents would not keep their job even for a single day. The job of a real estate agent, especially if you're part time, is that you need to carve out as many hours in a day as you possibly can to generate new business. And especially if you have like massive motivation to get out of a part time gig, you have to be able to sit down and there's only five things that make massive money in real estate. But you've got to be able to have the discipline to do the work that most agents aren't willing to do. And if you're part time, you don't have the luxury to, to goof off, you know, for hours in a day, right? So any hour you give to real estate, you better make sure it is generating new business. And that kind of brings me to the, to the next point here is that we call them KPAs, key performance activities. A little different than KPIs. KPIs are metrics and numbers that we track in our business. But KPAs are key performance activities. And there's only five things that make a ridiculous amount of money in real estate. And this was the thing that I really cracked the code on this early in my journey was to identify what made me a lot of money and what didn't make me a lot of money in real estate. And even though I was working a lot of hours in the first couple, three years or so before I really figured out leverage and you know, automations and delegations and whatnot, I figured that there was only five things that made a lot of money. And it's a, it's a simple acronym to remember plans, P, L, A N S. So prospecting, lead follow up, appointments, negotiating deals and building systems. Now this training is outside the scope of going into all those things, but the P and the L, I lump those together in what I call new business development. Prospecting is first time conversations with potential buyers and sellers. And the L lead follow up is that most of them aren't ready to transact, right? They're not ready to move when you have that first conversation. So you just need to organize that, nurture those leads and so they're ready to work with you when the time is right for them. And then you just follow up on a regular basis. So that's lead follow up. Those are the two leadingest indicators of success of a real estate agent. How many conversations do you did you have in a day with a decision making adult about real estate? And those are the key performance activities that are going to lead you to success. Now if you are challenged and you're constrained with your time because you're working a full time job, you better make sure that you're getting to, you know, five, seven, ten meaningful conversations every day and then you're organizing. You know, if you get a lead, somebody that you're going to put into your database to nurture as a lead follow up, make sure you're sending out items, items of value and whatnot. So next thing I want to cover is getting your systems set up, specifically lead generation, lead follow up. So I actually got my license. I had a full time job until March 5th, 2007. I was licensed in either May or June 2006. So I gave myself, what is that, like six, seven, like nine months where I was working on systems in my business. I was setting up, you know, like my CRM which is basically where you house your database. I was setting up, you know, lead nurture sequences. I was putting together buyer packets and listing presentations and I was kind of building out the business before I took that leap of faith and left that really cozy multiple six figure corporate job with bonuses and stock options. It was a multiple six figure opportunity. And everyone thought I was crazy when I got into real estate. Right? Real estate agents are. Here's a not so positive thought also, real estate agents are a dime a dozen. Everyone knows a real estate agent. So you have to work really hard to differentiate yourself. Particularly when I talk about systems around lead generation. I'm not talking about buying leads. The whole industry will have you believe that you need to buy leads. And that is the kiss of death getting into that habit of Letting others be a better marketing than you. And if you go down the path of paid leads or pay at closing and pay a referral fee at closing, you're ultimately going to pay anywhere from 20, 25% to upwards of 40% of that closing. So if you take a $10,000 commission and let's say that strategy works and you're, and you're paying even just 30%, you know, all in either via paid leads or referral at closing, it's $3,000 per closing. So if you get to two deals per month, you're going to have the luxury of paying someone else $6,000 a month, two times 3,000 to do those transactions. So the systems that you'll set up are a database touch system. So building a database, feeding it regularly, expanding your network and adding so much value to the database that the only logical agent you know conclusion of anyone that's in your database is that they will scream your name from the rooftop if anyone mentions real estate, right? And then what we call the agent brand authority builder. So part two of a baseline system lead gen system is the agent brand authority builder which is essentially establishing your digital footprint and expanding it over time so that you're building authority. If anyone goes online and searches for best real estate agent in your, in your area, setting up a Google business profile, you can have all of that built out before you make the leap of faith. And so if you ever get to the point where you're like man, I do have this stable thing over here, but I do want to make the shift Million dollar agent method. That's a program that I created. It's a 90 day program. I've been doing this for 12 years. Almost 3,000 agents have been through our paid programs. Tens of thousands have consumed our free stuff. And this is a 90 day program where we work together to build out all of the lead gen systems, all the lead conversion systems, anything you will need around consultation frameworks or you know, how you run a listing appointment at a high level, how you price a home, how you run a buyer consultation, how you work with buyers, everything you will need from the ground up, we help you build it out. And if you're watching this and you're an experienced agent, we've taken, we've taken agents from one home per month to 10 homes per month to 50 homes per month. So we've done everything in the journey. In particular the million dollar agent method has four stages to it getting you to 100k GCI which every new agent, that's their first target and then getting you to, which is almost one home per month, then getting you to two homes per month which is that 250k GCI on your way to 500 and then ultimately a million. So if that's you and you have those aspirations, it doesn't matter where you start, just go to million dollar agent method dot com, watch that seven minute video and if it resonates and you want to build an actual business that makes you an unreasonable amount of money in a reasonable amount of time, then you definitely want to book in a business growth strategy session. All right, so let me continue here. Got a little cheat sheet that I'm going through. Yeah. So traditional lead generation, we had a conversation, a strategy session with an agent, brand new agent and this was just the other day we were listening to this call and we do these call reviews and how could we have approached this differently? And it's just a new agent that is working a full time position wanting to make the switch and she's getting advice from agents in her office who are telling her to do the exact opposite of what we would tell her to do. She's cold calling and door knocking and God bless her for, for being willing to do those things because those are not easy things to do. But she doesn't love it and she's not getting results from it. So those traditional lead generation methods, specifically you know, paid leads and she's doing paid leads also, she's getting paid leads from her brokerage and I think she's paying out 50% and she's at a $12,000 commission check. So she's going to pay 6,000, $6,000 for a closing for marketing on a single closing. Right. So she's just headed into this paid leads, cold calling and door knocking, those are the three things that she's doing right now. And it's not sustainable, it doesn't bring her joy and she really hates it. But she's willing to grin and bear it because she thinks that's the path to success. If I could do this long enough and, and I'll, I'll figure it out. Right. Our approach is, and this is what I recommend you focus on from day one as a new agent, attraction based marketing. So when I mentioned the lead generation systems, specifically the database touch blueprint as we call it, and the agent brand authority builder, you're setting up essentially your, your goal is to, to get as many people that don't know you to know you either online or in your actual database and, and just add massive value and position yourself as an authority in the real estate space and 10% of your database. So if you can get together a database of a hundred people, 10% will transact with you, which is 10 transactions which gets you to 100,000 GCI. If all you did, if you started with zero and all you did Monday through Friday was find one person to add to your database in what is that? In a year you'll have what is that? 250. 50 times 5. 250. You'll have 250 people in your database. And if you put a touch system in place and of course we have that, that's our main sort of baseline system that will help you install in the first 30 days of million Dollar Agent method. If you do that, there's 25 transactions there, right. So yeah, it's the slower way to do it potentially, but it's a surefire way to do it. We even have a process that we'll take you through where we'll help you come up with a hundred names as quickly as possible. And there's 10 transactions there with a touch system. All the sequences are built out and you're ready to go. So make sure you just focus on attraction based marketing. The cold calling and the door knocking. I will say they work but that is the reason why I think there are not many agents that stick stick with the business long enough because they are soul sucking. They were suck your soul right out of your body and we don't want that to happen. Next. Next thought here is to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. Every part of my growth as a real estate salesperson because I didn't have a sales background at all. I'm actually super introverted. Every part of it made me uncomfortable. Right. You know, working with buyers for the first time and I didn't even know how to. I remember I didn't even know how to use my super key. Or if I would go into a new area and I would show homes in somewhere far away from where I lived, I would be like man, I would go out the day before. I remember one time I took my mom out to a totally new area and we drove around the homes that I was going to show the next day because I was very just insecure. So just be ready to be uncomfortable all the time if you want to get after it. There's this expression and I think it was in some sort of like war in the 1200s or something where the leader. I'm not even explaining it the right way but basically they Stormed the beaches and the general in charge ordered all the boats to be burned. So all of the army got onto the beach. There was no turning back because it was burned the boats. So my advice to you, at some point you have to make the decision that you're going to burn the boats on your full time job. You know, if you could work for 3, 6 months to build out the systems to get some business going, you've got to make that decision to burn the boats and go all in on real estate. Right. I will say there's probably 75% of licensed agents are part time agents. I think it does a massive disservice to the industry. You are helping someone with their most important asset. Most people's net worth are tied up in their home. And you know, you're kind of willy nilly. Not you specifically, but most of the industry is, is willy nilly, not really taking a pro level approach to real estate. So burn the boats. We had an agent who had a full time job when he started working with us and he was able to get out of that full time job. He worked on those high tension power cables. He was like a service person for high tension. He had actually a really big injury that happened. It wasn't, obviously it didn't take his life, but it could have. And so he was highly motivated to, to pivot full time out of that full time position and pivot into real estate. In 90 days he listed $2.7 million worth of real estate. With just one of our legion levers, our expired system. We've got a for sale by owner system, an expire withdrawal system. But those systems are direct response where we send stuff out and, and people call us wildly different conversation. So 2.7 million, you know, that's roughly about $60,000 of income he was able to generate within 90 days of working with us. So burn the boats. And then the last thing I will say is that there are folks that have been there ahead of you and they built a business. You know, we kind of talk about building a business the blood and guts way, which is cold calling and door knocking and open houses that nobody shows up to or even paid leads or referral fees at closing. That's the blood and guts way. Not sustainable. Never going to have any freedom that I've seen in general in those methods versus the attraction based marketing. And so just find someone. Of course we are ready to help you if you're at the point where, you know you need help implementing all these systems. But I would say stand on the shoulders of giants. And as I'm recording this, I have, I just hired another coach today. I hired my fourth coach today. This, this was a sort of a spiritual coach to help me in my faith journey, which is really important to me. But I, I have done a really good job. I've made all the mistakes you can make. I'll say that I'm not going to go through all them today, but I've done a really good job of paying others that have been on the road that I want to go down. I just pay them to skip to the front of the road, right, so I can pay someone else that has been there ahead of me. Just give them money and cut my, you know, my whole journey down by a fraction like 10% of the time it takes to do whatever I can. Just contract it with just finding the right mentor. So if you are, have been in our world for a while and you want to explore what that looks like, like I said, go to milliondollaragentmethod.com that's million dollaragentmethod.com and we'll see you over there. This seven minute video to watch. If it resonates with you. If you know you need help and you want to jumpstart this process, we'll see you over there. Be good. Much love.
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