What High Performing Real Estate Agents Do That You Don't!

Welcome to Real Estate Business Builders. I'm your host, Lars Hedinborg, the founder of Real Estate B School. Bottom line, the real estate industry has failed to create a clear path to financial freedom. Traditional brokerages and coaching are designed to keep you running on the transaction treadmill with no exit strategy. While I didn't have any sales, marketing or business building experience when I got into real estate, I was willing to bet on myself and figure it out because my family was dep on me. Having served over 5,000 families with their real estate needs, I've made every mistake you can possibly make in this business and I've helped hundreds of agents and team leaders realize their goal of true time and money, freedom and living a life without regrets. If you know there's another level of growth inside of you and you want to learn how to build a highly lucrative lifestyle business, then you're in the right place. You won't find any smoke and mirrors or hype here on this show. Just real world tools, systems and strategies that work. Let's grow together.

Welcome back. Real Estate Business Builders. Do you struggle to create momentum in your real estate business? Or maybe you're constantly grinding out deals and just using brute force to literally, well, maybe not literally, maybe figuratively drag yourself through each day. And most importantly, are you working more hours than you should or even want to? In today's episode, I'm going to go through the key differentiators that distinguish high performing agents and team leaders from those who constantly struggle. And I'm not talking hyperbole or big picture strategy today. Just the stuff that works, the stuff I've experienced in my business growth journey, the things I've seen in members and coaching clients that I've worked with and the things that you can actually start doing today. My name is Lars Hedenberg. I'm the founder of Real Estate B School. I also wrote a book called Scale or Die, a best seller. I help real estate agents and team leaders grow and scale their businesses so they can systematically increase their net worth and time away from the office. And most importantly, live a life without regrets. Before I get into it, I want to make sure you grab a free copy of what I call the Real Estate Business Growth Navigator. These are the six stages required to grow a sustainable and profitable real estate business. Just go to realestatebusinessgrowth.com that's realestate business growth.com. in this free guide, I detail my journey. But the journey that I've proven out has six stages to go from real estate agent to business Owner and how you can make the journey yourself. So grab a copy right now. Actually, not right now, after this podcast. So let's dig into the topic and why this topic? You know, talk about high performing agents and team leaders. Here's the thing. I have failed forward, you know, consistently for 15 plus years now. And most of my business building career has not been pretty. I've learned a lot about myself and why I tend to struggle in certain areas of my life and business. I've also coached, you know, a hundred plus, actually hundreds of top agents and team leaders in their business growth journeys. And they've seen massive breakthroughs along the way. And so I feel like I know a thing or two about what has to be done on a daily basis to succeed in the long term. I think that's where we struggle most of the time, is that we can't connect. Like, it's easy to say, you know, I want a certain life or I want a certain business in the future, but how do we break that down into the daily habits and rituals and cadence that we have to follow? And I am definitely not preaching here. I've experienced the good, bad, ugly of business growth, but this is the stuff that has worked and it's the best stuff. So it's not necessarily my journey. Exactly. I wouldn't do that to you to tell you to go through the pain, suffering, trial and error that I went through. But this is the stuff that works. And also what hasn't worked when it comes to personal and business growth. All right, so let's dig into it. And there are pretty much four things and I'll kind of throw in a bonus at the end that I want to go into today that if you implement these things or pay attention, and a lot of them are common sense, these will change everything for you. None of these are easy, but they're actually quite simple. And there are four of them. If you're able, I would love for you to be in a position where you can jot some notes down and challenge yourself. You know, maybe you've heard of it, but you're really not doing it. So number one is to do your MIT first. This is your most important task. And this was not something I did in my journey journey. This was man. I would spend a few nights every week from 10pm to 2am working on the business, working on projects and the things that really mattered to build the future version of the company that I wanted. Right. But I read a book recently by Craig Ballantyne. It was the Perfect Day Formula And I think he wrote one more updated, which was the perfect week formula. And like I said, I didn't do this in my heavy lift years, but I certainly wish that I had. And this is essentially, and I do this now. And I've gotten more done, you know, using this method than, you know, probably in the last two years. I've gotten more done in the last two months. It's that powerful. This tactic allows you to work on your business every day. And this isn't getting through to do's or opening up email and just starting work early, but it's working on the most important tasks you have first thing in the morning. So this is what it looks like. I sleep in a bed that has a little sort of alarm clock that vibrates me gently to wake me up without waking my wife Julie up. That's 5am and I go out, I get a cup of coffee going. I do the Abide meditation app. And this is not a podcast about morning routine, but that's what I do first thing. I just want to spend a little bit of time in reflection in the word of God and kind of ground myself there. So that's about 5:20 or so. It's a 15 minute meditation. I'm up in my office from about 5:20 to 7:20. I'm working on the most important task that has to happen or be completed for me to move the business forward. And this is working on the business. So I'm building the business every morning a little bit at a time. And even if you can only do 60 or 90 minutes, maybe it's not 120 minutes every day, but this, what Craig calls magic time is truly that it will blow your mind how much you can get done in one week or two weeks that you've been putting off forever. Perfect example. When I first started doing this, I had a project, man, it was like I knew it was a big project and I kind of kept pushing off. I probably pushed it off for six months, like two quarters. I was the only one that could do it on my team. It was building out a platform, a training and funnels and websites and workflow. It's a massive project. And I started this magic time and in, I'm not kidding, I was like 80% complete with this massive boulder. It wasn't even a rock. Have you ever heard the expression of pebbles, rocks and sand and the whole analogy? This thing was gnarly. And I kept pushing it off in like two or three weeks of this 90 to 120 minutes every morning I was mostly done with it. Right? So these just stack on top of each other. And it's like I said, you're not just catching up on email or working on deals. It's exactly the opposite. You're working on projects that are moving the business forward. So you could be working on building out your database platform or working on virtual buyer and seller consultations, or working on installing a lead generation lever or lead follow up systems. Or it's that type of work that is going to firm up your business. Could be a recruiting system or an agent onboarding system. If you're a team leader, right? It's the systems in the business that are going to allow you to grow and scale without you putting a bunch more hours into the business. So that's number one, do your MIT first. Number two is to time block new business development. And I'm not going to go through the whole day in between your MIT and your new business development family time. Maybe you get a workout in, you know, that sort of thing. The next thing that has to happen is a solid three hour block of new business development. Non negotiable, no exceptions, period. New business development's a time block where you're working to generate new buyers or new sellers. Or if you're a team leader, maybe you're calling recruits or you're calling your database. You're generating opportunity for your business. This is front stage activity as front stage. You know, front stage is sales and marketing, backstage is more operations. Right? This is as front stage as you can get because you're literally having conversations with would be buyers, sellers or potential recruits for your team. No matter what, this has to get done. Right? Most real estate agents and even team leaders struggle because they don't make this a priority in their business for them personally or for agents on their team. There really isn't anyone that is in real estate that can get a pass on new business development. So this is your MIT, right? The magic time is 90 to 120 minutes. You're taking a break, you're getting to the office, then it's three hours every morning, five days a week, non negotiable. Where you're generating opportunity for the company. There's no way around it. You can't skip it, you can't move it. Just put a message on your phone that you are in new business development time and you'll get back to anyone that calls or have an admin pick up those calls or whatever. Working a deal in the morning is a surefire way to not have business that Perpetuates the roller coaster of income coming in. Right? Because you get busy on a deal, you work that deal until it closes and then you forget to do new business development. And then, you know, you kind of start the whole process over again. Okay. So if you do that, you're working on the business first thing, then you're generating new business, right? And then you're going to be busy the rest of the afternoon on appointments, either recruiting appointments or appointment with a buyer or seller, those sorts of things before you go home for the day. And I would pick a time that you have to be home before you go home for the day is you're planning out the next day. This is critical because how are you going to know what to work on on tomorrow's magic time if you don't plan out the day in advance? So this is where you're picking your most important tasks for the next day. You're picking your top three things that have to happen next day. You're cleaning up your calendar. Maybe you are canceling an appointment that you committed to. That like seemed like a good idea. This is me talking to you know where, man. It's just not the most important thing that has to happen. It's not in the top three. You committed to a 90 minute whatever or webinar that you signed up for. Just it's not the most important thing that has to happen. Especially with the chaos right now with the shift storm that we're going through. One other really important thing that you do in this sort of, it's like a 30 minute time block. It's recurring in your calendar, by the way. Each of these things are recurring, right? Your magic time is recurring. And put it in a color. I put mine in. I think it's either yellow or green. New business development is for sure green. And this plan out tomorrow is another color. And this is like maybe 5 to 5:30, then you're in the car and you're going home, right? The other thing that happens in this time block is that you're going to write in your journal or your planner or wherever you organize your day three amazing things that happened in the day, during the day. So you're constantly looking for all the awesome things that happen. You get three every day. @ the end of the week, you have 15amazing things that happen during the week. Do you think you'll ever feel down about your growth or your business or your life? If you're looking for three amazing things that happened every day, I doubt it. I doubt it. I doubt It So in real estate B school we have what we call the Business Freedom Planner. It's a complete planning system that attaches the three year vision to the daily. It goes three year vision, one year plan 90 day world, which is the Business Freedom planning system. Then weekly and daily and even time blocking down to the hour. So that's number three is to plan out tomorrow. You have to plan out your next day before you leave the office. Number four is critical. Shut it down. Shut it down when you get home, no matter what, stop working when you get home. There is more to life than real estate. You have to establish boundaries between grinding transactions and worrying about the business and enjoying your life and being with your spouse and being with your kids or if you're single and you have none of that, there are friends you can hang out with or you can go work out. There's more to life than real estate. And if you can't get it all done during the day, you need leverage, right? It means that you're working on things during the day, but that probably aren't dollar productive. Most real estate agents run a bunch of errands and they're really not that dollar productive. You know, they're out and about and they're sort of doing stuff, but it's not ultimately leading to them, leading them to build a better business. So you need leverage. And leverage is either systems or people or most likely both. So if you're showing homes, you know, in evenings and weekends, you need a showing agent system, right? You shouldn't be showing homes. If you want to make 25 bucks an hour, you should show homes. If you want to make 10 times that, 250 bucks an hour, you should build a system for someone else to show homes. And you pay them 25 bucks an hour, right? You can't work more hours than you have capacity to work. And if you have other areas of your life that are important to you, then you've got to scale back on the hours you put into your business. And that means stop doing the things that aren't making you a whole lot of money. And here's the thing, your family, if you have one, doesn't care about you selling more homes. I promise, like on your tombstone at the end of your earthly days, there's not going to be like the number of homes that you've sold, right? So focus on the things that matter. Shut it down when you get home. This is a non negotiable and here's a bonus. So you're shutting it down. You're spending time with the kids, then your spouse. The bonus is get to bed early. Magic time comes very quickly. I'm saying this from experience. You get to bed at 11:15 and you're waking up at 5:00am you are dragging butt all day long. You get in the bed at 9:15, 9:30, you are refreshed in the morning. You do that for a couple weeks. You are on fire during the day, right? Your whole sort of whatever circadian rhythm adjusts and you're just going to be on fire. And you're saying, I can't do that. I've got older kids. And so do I. I have older kids. We're going to bed around the same time or even a little bit earlier than our kids are now, right? We just, we get their electronics, we bring them in our room and then we lock up, we turn the alarm on and we're going to bed. And you know, we're generally on the same cadence in our home. And I have a 12 and a 14 year old, so there's only excuses for these, these four things to not get them done. All right, so that's it. There you have it. I'm sure there's nothing new in what I just shared, but I promise you, based on my journey, what I know now, what's working currently, what I wish I would have done differently. And most of these things I did do, I always time block for new business development. But I was like evenings and weekends I would do that. I always worked on my business, but it wasn't first thing in the morning. I was a pretty good planner, but not consistently all the time. And I didn't shut it down all the time, but I really could have. So this is learning from experience or sharing from experience. And I would do this. I would commit to this daily cadence Monday through Friday for the next 60 days and you will see everything in your life and business change. Everything in your life and business will change if you commit to this cadence for 60 days. The question is, will you do it? I hope you do. And that does it for today's episode. You know, I come to this podcast with a hope to challenge you. Not from a preachy kind of way, but from a as humble as I possibly can share the mostly the bad and ugly of my journey of real estate. And to give you a little bit of perspective about how my business growth journey went and how yours could be different and easier and how to move forward during what is an increasingly chaotic and challenging time. And just a quick reminder to grab a free copy of the Real Estate Business Growth Navigator, just go to realestatebusinessgrowth.com that's realestate business growth.com and here is a simple favor. If you enjoyed the episode or you know someone that would benefit from like they can't seem to get it together. They want to grow their business, but they're just lacking something. Share this episode with them. These are the kinds of things that will help you make more money, you know, achieve more freedom so that you can have more impact in the areas of life that truly matter to you. We'll see on the next episode.

Thanks so much for listening. Would you please take a minute to share the show with other agents who may be struggling? And if you love the podcast, please.

Leave us a five star review on.

Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. And make sure you visit scaleordivebook.com to get a free copy of my book. That's scaleordiebook.com it's a nuts and bolts guide to building a real estate business that gives you true time and money freedom so that you can live a life without regrets. Thanks again and see you on the next episode.