What Does True Business Success Look Like?

Welcome back. This is part three in our series. You know, if you missed part one, we dug real deep into how hard traditional success is in our industry and I really went into detail about what my journey looked like and the things I did to obtain traditional success. Selling 27 homes in my first post part year in the business, 44 homes my first full year, then went on to 58 to 118 to 178 to 248 and the whole crazy journey the year we did 400 units, I did one day a week that year and I sold no homes personally on the right economic model and all that good stuff. So if you missed that, I want you to go and listen to or watch part one. Part two we talked about, you know, how do you begin to think about your business differently? How do you take inventory of the things you're doing to sort of do the job of real estate agent? How do you need to think about your business differently to make that shift even if it's just mentally from real estate agent to business owner. And you know, we talked about a 14 day time study, we talked about low level activities, high level activities, high passion, high pay, low passion, low pay. We talked about that grid. And how do you sort of start to just be honest with yourself about where you're spending your time and how you may be the obstacle to growth in your real estate business. Today I want to go into the nuts and bolts of it, like what are the things you need to start doing to start to get on this path being a business owner? You know, there's this wow, this spectrum of real estate agent working seven days a week, doing every single job in the business to business owner where you know, today, in the last seven years or so, seven, eight years, I've been working one day a week in the business doing only the high level things that I could really impact that only I could do in that business. And how do you make that journey? And then I want to going to a handful of case studies, you know, actual members that have been in our community for three to five plus years that have built their entire business in our community and to let you know what they did to break the cycle, the insanity that is traditional success in real estate. So when I think about, you know, the journey I went on. So if you don't know my journey, it was 2008 was my first full year. I did 44 transactions with a part time administrator that next year all I added late, late, late in the year was my first buyer agent so technically 2009 was the first year I started my team. I did 54, 55 sides myself personally. My agent did a few three, four sides and we ended the year 58 transactions. We went on from 58 to 118. All I did different in that 2010 was to bring on a few agents. I think they had combined experience of like 20 years or something. I had the systems, I had the cadence, the infrastructure. They had some experience. We went from 58 to 118. We hired one more administrator that year. 2010, we went to 178 in 2011. Still pretty simple business. That's the year I think I shifted over all to listings. So I gave up buyers 100% and and then 2012 we did 248 units and I sold a single home that year. And so how do you begin to unpack this thing on your own so that you can become a business owner? That is my intention with real estate B school. And I do want to let you know that I am going to tell you about something that we built that will help you along the way. First, before I get into that, I want to talk about how to look at your business. You know, you will absolutely need to install tools and systems in your business so that the things you're doing a bunch of hours in the week happen on their own or they happen with a little bit of leverage from a person running that system. But you can set up the system and have a lower dollar person run the system. You know, we talk about attract convert delivery and we talk about database marketing, listing marketing, buyer marketing, lead management, your appointment process, your consultation framework. We talk about client servicing, your transaction coordination, and your critical technology tools. All of those drivers, attract, convert, deliver and those nine accelerators, those each have tools and systems underneath them that form the backbone of your business. And without the tools and systems to be able to swipe and deploy in your business, it's going to be really hard for you to replicate this thing on your own. So that's the first thing I need you to start thinking about. The second piece is that in order to scale your business, there's three things I want you to think about. It's create your future, which is planning, know your numbers, which is tracking, and then grow your team. That's adding leverage in the form of an administrator, a showing agent or a buyer agent. So there's our three elements I need you to think about as well. And there's a lot of tools and systems, a lot of stuff to implement in the right order to be able to do that. So then you have to ask yourself, you know, who is going to coach me to do these things? Right. I have been coached by some of the best coaches in the world, most of them out of the real estate industry. That's not saying that there aren't good coaches in the real estate industry. There are. I spent probably at this point I stopped counting at $750,000 that I've spent on personal development and business coaching, wealth coaching, physiology coaching, health coaching. Like all the different types of stuff I've done is. I think it's well over a million dollars at this point. And I wouldn't have traded any of it at all. Like all of it was beneficial and some were more impactful than others. It's going to be really hard for you to do this thing, to go from where you are today to a multiple of your production without giving up your life, working less hours with less stress. Right. There is a level of coaching involved and it is coaching from someone that has done it ahead of you. That is the thing that you really need to consider. If you want to build a business that's a multimillion dollar business, you have to get advice from someone. In my opinion, that's done it before you. Not all coaching companies agree with me on that. A lot of coaching companies have folks that have not done the thing that they're coaching. I just don't believe that to be a really effective way at getting success for someone. So that's. The second element is coaching. First element is the actual tools and systems. The second element is coaching. The third element is that there are things we just don't know if we want to go to a different level in any area of our life and for business especially, there is a level of training that is required to be able to do it. And so you need to just be honest with yourself. Are you getting the training necessary for you to be able to move closer to the thing you want in your life and in your business? Right. So if you're attracted to what I've been talking about and going from agent to owner, you know, delinking time and money and having your stress coming down and stop working evenings and weekends and putting systems in place that do heavy lifting and then having empowered people run those systems at pay grades much lower than you deserve and you want, you've got to get the training, just someone speaking into you and training you tactically on what to do, what the next move looks like and those sorts of things. And then the last thing Is you need a cadence and a planning system to put all of it together right for you and your specific situation. What's the next right thing to move your business to your next level. I'll bring in the analogy here as I say that, I'll bring in the analogy of a horse with its blinders like a racehorse, you know the reason they have those blinders on. If you're watching the video, you see me with my hands over my eyeballs. It's so that they don't get spooked by the horse to the right or to the left of them so that they run their own race. And I think it is such an awesome analogy for life. If we just ran our own race and we just worried about taking the next right step for our journey, I think we'd all be way better off. And so having a planning system that allows you to, you know, consider what you want your business, your life to look like in the future, let's say three years out, come up with a one year plan and then work 90 days at a time of planning system. And then I'll say the last part of this is what I call like foundational principles. In real estate B school we call them foundational tools. It's the things that you have to do in your business in order to be consistently successful. And so to give you an example, in all of our memberships we have a module in our training that is called foundational tools. And there are eight foundational tools that we get our members up and running. Like a time study exercise I talked about on the last, the second part of this series. Calculating your net worth, your key performance indicators, your leading indicators, your financial performance which is your lagging indicators, strategic business assessment, personal wellness assessment, your 3190 which is your strategic game plan, the three year vision, one year playing, 90 Day World. What you're going to work on this quarter then your organizational strategy. There's only three organizational strategies you'll need to get to a multimillion dollar real estate team that's well run with a world class client experience. So those are the eight foundational tools. That's probably the. So I mentioned tools and systems, you know all of the attract, convert, deliver, scale systems. I mentioned the coaching, right? Getting guidance from someone that's been there, the training, learning things that you don't know, the planning system which we call the business freedom planner and then just foundational tools. These are tools that you run every month or every quarter in arcadece. And I lay it out that way as this Is, you know, since 2013, this is all I've been obsessing over. How do we get success for our members to make their journey easier. And I want to talk about a few of our case studies. And if you haven't spent time in our case studies and you're interested in learning, you know, what impact doing these things that I just described have had on folks businesses. If you go to realestatebschool.com you hover over real results and you click on case studies. I want to go through just a few of these. The first one I want to go through is an agent by the name of Cody Riddle. She's in Phoenix, Arizona. When I first met Cody, she was doing roughly 250,000 GCI. So top agent, you know, 250,000 GCI is probably 20 deals in her market, maybe 25. She hated her life. She was working seven days a week, had no systems in place, no predictability whatsoever. And it just wasn't this thing that was going to sustain her and fulfill her ultimately. And we've been working together probably for three or four years I would think. Last year she did 1.2 million of gross commission. She's still in production, only in the listing side. She has a small team, a couple administrators, I think three or four agents doing 1.2 million worth of GCI, taking home well over half of that. And her financial situation has shifted 100%. Where they didn't have a clear path to financial freedom or substantial net worth, they now have a very clear path. She went down from working 70 hours a week. She's probably working around 50 hours a week now. And she loves, loves, loves the business again. And her stress level is a fraction of what it was when we first met. That's one I want you to spend a little bit time with or just contemplate. The next one is Dave Friedman. And so talk about a guy who had time and money mixed up. When I met him, he was newly married, maybe a few years into his marriage, his marriage was strained. He did 35 deals. The year before I met him, he was on track to do about 65 deals with a part time administrator. The year I met him, that year 2014, he came to an intensive workshop for real estate B school and he, yeah, the takeaway from the workshop was that he needed to hire a buyer agent. That was his takeaway and he actually shared that with me four years later when we held our intensive workshop in his city where in his market, he sent me a box the night before and he Found that workbook from that event in 2014 where he wrote that down. He did 3.5 million, 3.5 million GCI last year. He's been out of production for three years. He works one to two days a week in his real estate business and he's launched, I think two or three other businesses. He went from no weeks of vacation in a strained marriage to consistently 12 to 15 weeks of vacation. A 10x increase in his business, probably more of an increase in his personal income. No stress and like a fraction. He's working 20% of the hours that he used to in his real estate business. So just an amazing, amazing testimony to, you know, doing the work, you know, leaning into the coaching, honoring the training, installing these tools and systems and running this planning system. He runs the Business Freedom Planner system. Him personally and everyone on his team. And then there's one more element which I didn't mention is community. I mentioned the intensive workshop. Twice a year we get together and he's able to talk with folks that are maybe ahead of him in one area of their business or in multiple areas of the business. And he's also able to mentor and speak into folks that are maybe not where he is in certain areas of his business. That's Dave Friedman. One, actually two other. There's like 27 of them on here, so if you go, you can check them out. One more I want to talk about because it really kind of shines a light on time and money and the disconnection of the two. Two more I'm going to do. Dan Jones is the next one. He was a real estate agent on my real estate team. He got a license to join my team. He actually moved back to my market to be with his mom as she passed away. And it was like an 18 months, pretty brutal process. Super sad. And I knew he had more in him than being an agent on my team. And he did decide out. He did decide to go out on his own. And he did it for a couple years before Real Estate B School launched. He did it for a couple years on his own and with an assistant. He did 60 to 65 sides. That's about the ceiling that we see folks hit where unless they're working on systems and they're using leverage in the form of marketing and technology in their business, they really can't break through. So I'm like, dan, come, come on. I launched Real Estate B School. Let me help you. He resisted at first because we were in the same market. And once he finally gave in, I made him cut out three of his four paid lead sources and he went from 65 to 105. I let him add back one, he went from 105 to 175. We went deeper on those two. He went to 225, then 265 and last year he did 300 transactions in my market. And now he's one of our business coaches, which is super, super cool. And yeah, where he was doing all of it like full on seven days a week, evenings, weekends, back when he was doing 65 deals, even going into 105 deals. And he's been out of production since his first daughter Charlotte was born going on two years ago. So he got out of production before she was born and he was able to take a full eight weeks, step out of his business altogether. The last case study I want to drive home, and they're all amazing and they're all awesome, is Stacy Peterson. And she's the nearest and dearest to my heart in terms of a case study and someone that I was able to really understand where she was in her journey. We have kids that are the same exact age. So when I met Stacy, this was back in 2013 and you know why it was 2013. And I remembered exactly. She was the first client of Real Estate B School ever, like the first client that I coached ever in the history of Real Estate B School was Stacy Peterson. So I think at the time we met her kids were 5 and 7 and she was, she had just started a team. She was working with buyers and sellers, running the backstage front stage, like doing it all, leading, managing, holding her team accountable and it wasn't sustainable. And her stress was through the roof. The money wasn't that great and the hours were out of control. And in about a three year process we were able to, well within six months we got her out of production fully where she just focused on the business side of things. We were able to in three years almost triple the size of her business. And she was able to exit that business through a sale with a more than seven figure valuation in a small market where a brokerage or a team had never sold before. So when they were looking for comparables, when she hired someone to help her value and sell this business, there were no comparables in her market. And so she is now running the entire show at Real Estate B School, which is, that's the sweetest part of the story that her journey back then there wasn't this sort of clear path forward, this clear roadmap to freedom as we like to say our tagline is now she was the one that came in and helped help me build out the systems. She was my first coach ever, you know, our first client. And I said, hey listen, you have, you seem to have a pretty good grasp on this stuff. I'm not great at the nitty gritty. Like you seem to do it really well. You've taken everything that I've built and you've even made it more detailed and more process driven. Could you help help us do that? And little known fact, on her real estate team, her and one administrator, I think maybe two. Her and one, I don't know, they did one year, they did 222 transactions with just a couple administrators, which that ratio is usually it's about 50 transactions a year. You need one administrator in different capacities. And she did it. She did like 100 per administrator. And the reason why she's able to do that is because it's so systems driven now. She is the one building systems that our clients are able to use. And she came into our world as a coach in 2014 and then director of coaching, then director of operations, COO. And it's not her formal title. I'd call her CEO all day long as she leads the charge and keeps me out of her way. And she's just serving and growing real estate B school. And so there's just a good example of getting into what she really loves to do, which is help others in more of a capacity than she thought she could do in her local real estate business. So that's just a few case studies for you. The reason I bring up the case studies is to motivate you to take action. We have just launched a program called Business Foundations and it's for folks that haven't hit their that 500,000 GCI mark. So this is the first time we've had a program that caters to anyone that wants to build a business, but they haven't quite hit their stride in terms of being able to put the pieces together to build momentum to get over the hump where you can hire an administrator and get a couple buyer agents working for you and then you graduate to our graduate program. So it's called Business Foundations. And the way I broke it down with the coaching, the training, the tools and systems, that planning process, the community, that is exactly what you get in Business Foundations. So I kind of tricked you there. I opened up this part with a description of the things you will need to be able to do this in your journey as a business. Foundations member. And before I forget, the price we are offering at it now is going away as soon as we hit about 100 members in that group. So that is a price that you can grandfather yourself into forever and it will never be offered again. Once we increase the price, it's only going to go up from what is being offered at right now. So that's just motivation. That's not a scarcity. Well, I guess it is a scarcity. It's true scarcity. It's not a tactic, it's for real. So I just want to, I just want to let you know that the program was set up in a way where you could get some of the benefits of our higher level programs. And, and this is business training, business coaching, business tools and systems, a business planning system, a community of like minded business people. This is a focus on business and no matter where you are in your business growth journey, we have the tools for you to be able to get to the next level in your journey. This is a month to month program so there is no obligation to remain in the program if it is not a good fit for you. And I'd be surprised once you get in and see what all is involved and what you have access to. The level of expertise of our coaches and the training. I do the training personally every week and we have coaches that are 200 to 400 transactions that have been in our world for three to five plus years that offer coaching on a daily basis to business Foundations members. And this is a bonus. So this Business Freedom Planner, this is probably the sixth iteration of a planner. We will physically mail you a Business Freedom Planner. Look how thick that bad boy is. It's a quarterly planning system that it is. Every secret about disconnecting time and money and bringing freedom with regards to time and money into your world and decreasing stress. These are mailed to you once a quarter by, you know, just by becoming a Business Foundations member. You get one physically mailed to you and we help you set it up every quarter as well. I go through that process or one of our coaches will take you through that process and that's a bonus. So you get that, you get access to your training. The member portal you'll get access to includes all of the modules that I talked about. Attract, convert, delivery, create your future, know your numbers, grow your team. You'll get six modules with every tool system. There's like 50 to 75 page workbook with detailed things that you'll need to do all deep dive trainings that I've done or our coaches have done to help you implement that tool system. If it's, if it's the right time to implement it. You'll get all of those foundational tools that I talked about, those eight foundational tools. You get access to all of those. You get access to a deep dive training on all the principles of the Business Freedom Planner. You get access to every training I've done. So those weekly trainings that I do are all recorded and you get. One of the modules in your member portal is a searchable inventory of trainings that I've done on all different aspects of your business. And the biggest difference in what we do is that every time we do a training or every time you jump into the member portal, there is a tool, there's a document, there's something you can swipe and deploy into your business that is really something we're super passionate about, making it easier for you to do the thing that I did in the early days and our members have done after me and continue to do so. That is all I've got for you. The pricing will not be around for long and it's to make the shift from overworked real estate agent to a business owner that has freedoms. That freedom of time. They have freedom of money. They know how to move money around in their business so that they're systematically increasing their net worth and they're increasing their time away from the office. And so there's information below this video where you can go to getbusinessfoundations.com that's G E T businessfoundations.com to take action right now. If you want to geek out on those case studies that I went through, go to Real Estate B school. Click. Hover over real results. Click on case studies. There's like 25, 26, 27 or so. We keep adding to them as more and more members are just crushing it in our system. So much love and respect. Take action right now. As I said, the pricing that exists right now will not exist forever. It's only going up as the value that we're providing in business foundations. In my opinion, it's ridiculous and it's for you if you want to take your business to the next level and have it looking more like a business every month, every quarter, every year. A business that allows you to have freedoms that traditional success is in our industry does not allow you to have so much love and respect. We'll see you over@getbusinessfoundations.com or there'll be a link below this video. To take action. Be well and we'll talk soon. Thanks for listening to the Business Freedom Podcast. If you're getting value from the podcast, would you please leave us a five star review and share it with others who might benefit from the content I'm sharing? Sharing and if you're ready to scale your real estate business sustainably and profitably, there are a couple options for you. If you're doing under 500,000 in annual GCI, our business foundations Program is for you. Head over to get businessfoundations.com that's getbusinessfoundations.com and learn how you can make the shift from overwhelmed real estate agent to true business owner. If you're doing more than 500,000 in annual Team GCI, there's our graduate program designed for top producers and team leaders who want to grow their team and scale their business. If that's you, go to realestatebschool.com and apply for a free Business Growth Strategy session. No matter where you are in your business growth journey, we have the tools, systems, strategies, training and coaching to get you where you want to be. Remember, only you can create your future, so take action now.