The Truth On Frogs & How To Get Results In Your Real Estate Business

What up business freedom podcast listeners. Another edition of the podcast. This is where we go through the good, bad, ugly of building a real estate team. And we're going to kick off just a long conversation about productivity. If you missed the last podcast, it was basically answer the question, are you really thinking about productivity the right way? Are you really being productive? And I'm going to unpack a bunch of different strategies, conversations, thoughts. I'm going to share the things I've messed up with or messed up on the things I've done really well as I look back on my journey as a business owner. And this started back in 2007 was a part year in real estate for me. 2008 is when I hired from my first assistant. 2009 is when I started my team. We went to, you know, 400 plus sides in five or six years. And the year we did about the fourth year, I did one transaction that year. So my goal was to build a business that. And it's not the end goal of everything I teach, it's just to build the business so it's way more graceful than it is today. That's what real estate B school stands for. And to have net worth and profit and, you know, more time and less stress and all that good stuff to show for it. So today I want to talk about the truth about frogs. And it's a conversation on the fact that we have to do the work and all of these strategies. I'm going to use them in the we or our or because I'm not preaching at you, I am in the fight with you. And so we must do the work. And let's talk about the truth about frogs. If you haven't read the book Eat that Frog by Brian Tracy, I think it is, it's a must read. It's a short read. You should read it as a team if you're a real estate team leader and really kind of go through examples of how you procrastinate. I think that's the subtitle of the book, something about procrastination. And so there's a quote here I want to go through Brian Tracy. The ability to discipline yourself, to delay gratification in the short term in order to enjoy greater rewards in the long term is the indispensable prerequisite for success. So discipline yourself to delay gratification in the short term in order to enjoy rewards in the long term. So the easy analogy here is physical fitness, your physical body. And I'll use an example for me, this was April 15th of 2019. So I have no idea when you're listening to this. So as I'm recording it though, it's August 19th. And so for a little over four months ago, 120 days ago, I weighed 224 pounds, 224.2. And as I look at my tracker from this morning, it was about 90 days, I took 30 pounds off. Then I've kind of stabilized. I'm 193.6 this morning. And this is all it was, is this quote. It was delaying gratification in the short term in order to enjoy greater rewards in the long term. So as I sit only 120 days from that intention around delaying gratification, I sit here way more energized, way more ready to take on the world from a business perspective and in my family, as a spouse, the way I serve my children, the way I show up at men's group, in every aspect I could think of, I am showing up as a way higher version of myself because I made this commitment to delay gratification. And yeah, I do miss, I'm not a big drinker. And on date night Saturday nights, I'd have a couple of drinks, we'd go to a movie, and I'd probably have a box of candy, occasionally some popcorn. And as I clean up dinner, the kids eat. And if my daughter had Mac and cheese, which is her favorite food, I would finish anything remaining in that Mac and cheese bowl. And so just making the commitment to show up, set myself up for the last half of my life. Here I am 46 years old now, and my hope is to be on this Earth 90, 100 years potentially. In order to do that, I have to delay, consistently delay short term gratification. So that's just a helpful quote as we dig into this conversation about eating frogs and doing the work. And so no matter where you are in your business journey, I don't care if you're a solo agent, if you're just starting a team, if you've got a small team, a medium team, a large team, if you're doing 1, 2, 3 million GCI, 6 million GCI, there are things you need to do that are frog like. And if you don't know what a frog is, it's the hairiest, biggest, most important, critically, mission critical sort of thing that you need to do on a daily basis to move that area of your business or to move your business or your life forward. So maybe for your personal life, it's, you know, studying the Bible for 30 minutes every morning or you know, moving your body physically for 45 minutes or you know, it's some activity that maybe it's not the thing you're super excited to do and you've just got to do it because it's more important that you get the long term results than suffer any short term pain in business. It is. I'm going to give you an example that you wouldn't think. The example you're thinking of is new business development. Your team has to eat the frog of new business development every morning. No matter what we do. Three hours in the morning, 50, 10:50 on, 10 off. So roughly two and a half hours. If you do that as a sales professional, you will have an awesome book of business. And that's just new business development. We do lead follow up separately. So that's one frog. The other frog that holds team leaders back is the frog of building systems. Or there's two frogs tracking your numbers and knowing your numbers, becoming the CFO of your business. So you need to look at your business like how could this business exist without me in it? It's the E myth question. How would I think of my business differently if I had to replicate it 10,000 times? That's something to write down. How would I think about my business differently if I had to replicate it 10,000 times? So obviously you couldn't be in 10,000 markets at once. So you have to think about your business even if you don't plan to exit it, exit production, or even if you plan on never having more than a single location, you have to think about your business that way. When you start to think about your business that way, the frog becomes what system am I working on right now? Or two or three systems am I working on right now that will allow that to become a reality. So to get out of the technical work and to do more manager and leader, entrepreneurial type work and you've got to continually ask yourself that question and eat the frog every day of what system can I move forward today and have an actual time block? We'll get into time blocking, have an actual time block for building that system so you don't have to constantly do that thing yourself over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Real estate, B school, we roughly have, we talked about four drivers. Attract, convert, deliver, scale. There's three accelerators under each driver, so that's what, three times four, so 12 accelerators and then within each accelerator there's two to five systems. So let's say three on average. So there's about 36 core systems that you'll need to build out to have a fully leveraged business. And every one of those systems for a stereotypical team leader is a fraud because it's something they're not naturally going to be attracted to doing the work. And so that's just an example. If you don't have systems, I call them rock blocks. If you don't have rock blocks built into your calendar where you're working on a system that's going to move you more toward a systems driven business, you're not doing the work. You are not doing the work of a business owner. You're doing the work of a real estate agent. If you're going on listing appointments and you're doing buyer consultations and you're writing contracts and you're negotiating repairs and you're attending closings and all of that stuff, you're doing the job of real estate agent. If you're not eating the frog of systems building, you're not doing the job of business owner. Even if you never plan to get out of production, you're not doing the job of business owner. So do the work. Eat the frog of building systems. Also here's the other thing though. Don't forget to eat the frog of new business development. Even if your new business development is just so I, because you've gotten away from Internet leads or you know, you're, you have someone else maybe working expireds or you don't work expired, you have a referral driven business and maybe, maybe you even have someone like, I don't call our database. I have someone else doing that. Maybe for you, it's, it's recruiting. Maybe that's the frog. It's, you're growing your team and you have to set Aside, you know, 8 to 11 every morning to, you know, nurture your virtual bench of future agents that are going to join your team. And so maybe that's the frog that you consistently need to eat on a daily basis. Whatever it is, be clear about what your frog is and chomp away at it every day. And if you have two frogs, eat the biggest, most hairy one first. Which means eat the one, do the one that's going to move your business forward the fastest. Even if you hate doing the thing, doesn't mean you have to do it forever. You know, you have to do it for a period of time till you can replace yourself in that activity. So that is what I've got for you. If you're at a point in your business where you just need help scaling the business in a way where you're left with more time, more money and less stress. That is what we do at Real Estate B School. It's Business Coaching for Real Estate Team Leaders All I've got to offer you is a conversation. It's a business growth strategy session. Just go to realestatebschool.com if it's a fit, we'll talk about our pilot program. It's 30 days of free coaching to set up some foundational systems in the area of tracking and productivity and the things that really matter. We'll talk about economic model. We'll go through the key drivers, all of the accelerators, and really get a good idea of where your business is right now and how we can help you get to the next level. Go to realestatebschool.com there's an obnoxious orange bar on the top of the website that you can click on to schedule a business growth strategy session. As of the recording of this podcast, I am doing these strategy sessions and it is a passion of mine to get on the phone with real estate team leaders that just don't quite have it figured out. And I know we can sort of fill in the missing pieces. Even if you've got an amazing business, we can fill in those missing pieces. Whether it's tracking or your financial model or systems. Or maybe you're too heavy in production. You're your time is not your own. You don't have money or net worth to show for all that you're doing. You're stressed all the time. We can help. So go to realestatebschool.com we'll see you over there. And much love and respect.