Top 3 Things Stalling Your Business Growth

When I think about my journey in business and the successes I've had and the failures that I've had, the question that I'm asked the most is, you know, what has stalled your business growth? And when you look at the successes of your members and even honestly the failures in some of our members business growth journeys, you know, where have they stumbled? What has kind of gotten them off track? That's what I want to go deep with you today. The things that you can avoid in your business growth journey. You know, stick around to the end of this video. I want to share with you a roadmap, a blueprint I put together. It's called the Real estate Business Growth Navigator where I go through the six stages of growth that you will, you know, have to go through if you're going to go from agent to owner. There's six stages where I go through the psychology, the questions, the tools, the compensation you'll make the team structure along the way. So make sure you stick around for that free report. And if you like these videos, give me the thumbs up. You know, it helps me to keep standing up here and doing this work and serving you at a high level just knowing that you're encouraged by my failures and my wins along the way. And if you subscribe to the channel and turn notifications on, you'll be the first to know about videos when they hit. Let's talk about the three things that are stalling your growth as a real estate agent. Maybe that wants to turn into a business owner. Number one is distraction. It is chasing squirrels. We are marketed so heavily to as real estate agents. Like here's the next best CRM. Here's this bolt on technology for your, you know, search engine platform that you need to have. Here's you know, a new dialer or here's a seller lead gen platform. Just give us 10 grand up front and 5k a month plus a 35% referral fee and all your problems around listing lead gen will be solved. That is complete bs. It's not going to lead you to a business, a healthy business from a profitability standpoint and a sustainability standpoint. And when I say sustainability, I mean hey, can I run this business for the next 10 years and not burn myself out, not get a divorce, not miss, you know, sporting events with my kids, not miss time on vacation. Right? I want sustainability for you and your business. We call it in real estate B school chasing squirrels. Right? We're focused on one thing in our business and all of a sudden somebody tells us about this Other thing, it's like squirrel. We're over there like squirrel. I think there's a cartoon where it's like, you know, the squirrel. And then all of a sudden we're over at that squirrel and then it's like another squirrel. And we're always kind of distracted by just these different squirrels. And it's also called Shiny Object Syndrome. I used a CRM in my business that I hated for so many years. And the only reason I didn't change is that there was not a compelling reason to change and by changing the momentum would be hurt in my business. And there was a dozen sort of better platforms that were out there, yet it wasn't compelling enough for me to move my business forward. So I stayed on a mostly boring platform that was for honestly created for single agents. It was top producer. Nothing wrong with top producer. I think it serves a purpose. But there were way better options as I was growing my business where I could have leveraged technology and honestly just kind of fed the dopamine release that we get when we implement a new technology. It was only three years ago. Yeah, 10 years into my business growth journey where I changed platforms. And so I have this itch inside me to chase squirrels and get distracted by shiny objects. I resist the urge. A successful real estate business typically is a boring real estate business. And so getting distracted is the number one thing you need to watch out for if you want to skip your business. The second tip I want to share with you is to focus on dollar productive activities. At each stage of your journey, there are different things you must focus on to put yourself in a situation to make the most amount of money in the least amount of time. As a new agent, you need to make sure you can figure out how to generate high quality leads, call those leads, get face to face with them and sign them up as clients. There's nothing more important you can do in terms of dollar productive activities than those activities. As you're growing your team, maybe you're hiring an administrator, training your administrator well, building the systems first that they're going to run and then training your administrator to take all administrative tasks off of your plate. That's extremely dollar productive. Marketing coordination, listing coordination and closing coordination. All, all of that stuff comes off your plate when you hire even a part time administrator and it frees you up to do higher and better use and higher dollar productive activities in your business. As you're bringing on agents, you know to create a new agent onboard program and an agent achievement system when they're on your team to retain them and help them achieve their goals. And love your culture and be part of your structure and the cadence that you've created. That's a high dollar productive activity, right? Every agent you bring onto your team is worth $150,000. Bottom line, they can make 100 and you can make 150. That's our minimum standard for a new agent joining our team. You will have a clear path to make $100,000. Which by the way, NAR our National association of Realtors tells us that a 16 year veteran agent makes $72,000 gross. On my team, I can show you in 12 months post training how to get to six figures with no expenses. So 100,000 net versus 16 years and 72,000 gross. So that's a different level of focus in the business in terms of, you know, what you're going to look at and what you're focusing on and what you're paying attention to in the business. And so as you're progressing these different stages, think about, you know, what are the highest and best use of my time, what are the things that I should be doing at this stage versus this stage versus this stage. And of course, this free report I'm going to share with you just in a minute here is going to take you through some of those questions and the tools and systems and just the pitfalls that you'll see along the way. That's number two. The third thing that's stalling your business growth, and I see this all the time, is your lack of vision. You know, in scripture they say in proverbs, I think it's 2717, 2713 or 1317. Don't quote me on the scripture. It says where there is no vision, the people perish. And I believe that to be true about your vision for your business. And if you bring team members on, their ability to sort of come into your world and be part of your mission and want to help you build your business and this lack of vision or will stall you and just stop you in your tracks. For me, my first business plan was in 2009 before I hired my first buyer agent. I did 58 transactions that year with an administrator. It was hard. It was seven days a week. It was a lot of broken commitments with my wife Julie. I missed out on some time with my son anders, who turned 1 in 2008. That next year I decided to look at the business differently. I came up with, well, in 2009 I came up with this three year vision for hey, what would it need to look like for me to triple my business in three years. But I'm only working with sellers and I'm only working 40 hours a week and I have this amount of money in the bank and my wife isn't working in the hospital anymore and this and this and I take eight to ten weeks of vacation and you know, I just stacked on what I wanted the end of 2012 to look like. Here's the thing. Not only did we sell more than 180 homes, we did 248 in 2012. I only sold one of those homes. So for me it was a goal of mine to get out of production. I just wasn't. I don't really have a heart to spend a whole lot of time with buyers and sellers. And it may sound harsh and I don't mean it in any harsh kind of way. I just knew that others around me had more of a caring spirit. I was typically very short and to the point and sometimes my personality can be a bit much. For clients that really need to be handheld and most buyers and most sellers you need to hold their hands and I just don't have the patience for it. So I built my business out of necessity. So as you look at where you are in your growth journey and what stage you are at, right. If you're just getting started in the business, there's a set of things you need to focus on to be successful, to allow yourself the opportunity to graduate to that next stage. That next stage is 100,000 to 500,000. Where you going to set yourself up to hire an administrator and a showing agent and then you can go into like just building the business out from 500 to a million and a million to a million five. And the income you make per hour can go from 25 to 50 to 100 to 250 to 500 to $1,000 or more an hour. If you do thing. If you do this thing the right way, I should say when you do this thing the right way. I mentioned this report, this blueprint, this roadmap that I put together. It's called the Real Estate Business Growth Navigator. It's going to take you through those six stages. Just go to realestate business growth.com or click on the link below. If you like this video, the thumbs up, it just allows me to keep doing these and serving you at the highest level. Make sure you subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications. Much love and respect. Until next time. Sam.