What to Do Next to Scale Your Business

Welcome back to the Business Freedom Podcast. Today I'm going to dig into probably the question I'm asked the most by our members or, you know, anyone in the real estate business that's looking to build a legitimate business. And when I say legitimate business, I mean a business that does not rely on you doing everything in it to grow and scale. And this is the question, you know, what do you I do next to scale my real estate business? That's the title of today's podcast. And you know, for me, I have the benefit of looking back over, you know, since 2007, over probably over 4,000 families served at this point in the real estate business. And I've got the benefit since 2013 of building the systems for others to swipe and deploy. It was one thing to build them into my own real estate business. It was an entirely different animal to teach others how to do the same in their real estate businesses. And it's a pretty simple formula. We are actually restructuring our sales process for real estate B school. So the psychology by which we help folks, not in a weird kind of way to get you to do something that you're not ready to do, but the psychology to help someone come to the realization that real estate B school is the next right step for them because they do want to build a business that has a life without them. So the framework that we're using is to help folks self discover that what they're building is not sustainable. And so it's a pretty simple formula. If you can pull over, if you can grab your journal, it's worth taking some notes on. Most real estate businesses cannot run without their owner. And obviously that's true of a solo real estate agent or someone who has an administrator and a couple agents. And the philosophy, though, if you're looking to build a legitimate business is going to be the same no matter where you are in your real estate business growth journey. And it's this. Attract, convert, deliver. So that's the triangle. If you're able to write a triangle on a piece of paper, I want you to write inside the triangle. So a big triangle on a single piece of paper, attract on the left side, convert on the right side and deliver on the bottom on the inner parts of the triangle and on the outside. There's three areas within each of those drivers, we call them, that have to function independent of the business owner. And so for attract, we consider, and these are worth writing down, database marketing, listing marketing, and buyer marketing. So when I look back on my early, the early parts of my Growth journey. The thing that I got up and running first was my marketing systems. I didn't have to spend a whole lot of time generating opportunity because I worked really, really hard to set up systems for my database for listing marketing and for buyer marketing. So I had high quality buyer and seller leads coming to me without having to pay ungodly amounts of money for those leads. So there's a whole bunch of tools and systems and tactics within each of those accelerators we call them. So the driver is attract and then database marketing, listing marketing and buyer marketing. And so the question you want to ask yourself is, with respect to the attract driver is how well does this run without me? And if you're not generating any opportunity without you sort of beating the phones or, you know, without your effort in it, then it's not looking good for you. So the first focus is to get your database running to get your listing marketing and your buyer marketing running. And I'm not talking about going and paying Zillow or realtor.com a whole lot of money. I'm talking about getting systems up and running so that you're marketing to your database, you're marketing for listings, and you're marketing for buyers in a high ROI type way. ROI is return on investment. So again, Zillow, realtor.com, those paid lead sources, even mass media, the paid lead sources are increasingly becoming challenging to make a really good roi. So that's the first driver. And be honest with yourself, you know, how close are you to having that driver run autonomous or independent of your efforts? So once you're able to generate leads, and if you're struggling to generate leads, and leads aren't coming in consistently, that's the only thing you need to focus on right now. I really don't care about your ability to convert or your ability to deliver if you have a trickle effect with your lead generating activities and your marketing and your ability to attract buyers and sellers to the business. So that's the first part. The second part is convert. And there's three accelerators with respect to the convert driver. These are lead management, I forget how we term them in the blueprint that we use. Lead management, appointment setting and consultation process. So your ability to, you know, when you generate a lead, not every lead is ready to transact. You need to be able to lead to manage all those leads. The follow up, the nurture sequences, the texts, the calls, the emails, and all of that optimized for the biggest chances of getting into a conversation with somebody looking to buy or sell A home. And then those conversations lead to appointments being set. And what's your process for setting appointments? Your process, not just you setting appointments, but what is, how does the business set appointments? And then when you or someone on your team sits down with a buyer or seller, how do you run that consultation? How do you increase the chances of success on that consultation? And we have members doing 75 to 100 transactions with a small team coming in. And they have no lead management in place, they have no appointment process in place to increase the chances of someone showing up for a consultation. And they have no consultation process in place. They're the ones that sit down with buyers and sellers. And because they've been doing it so long, they, they're good enough at it where they don't need to have any sales collateral whatsoever, any buyer packets or listing packets or pre list packets, anything like that. So let's say you have your truck driver up and running, you're feeling really good about that. Your ability to convert without you being in every part of it. If you were to step away from your business for 30 days, then let's say you had a couple buyer consultations and a couple listing consultations every day for 30 days and you couldn't do them. How is your system handling those consultations? And is the system which is the business setting consultations, is the business managing those leads that are coming in and the text sequences and the email sequences and the call cadence and what is being said on the phone. So that is convert and then deliver is the business's ability to deliver at the highest level possible, you know, a world class experience to buyers and sellers. And there's, there's three aspects here. Number one is buyer and seller client servicing. So once you get them to commit to be a client of you or your team, how's that servicing with listings, getting them on the market, getting them showings with buyers, you know, getting them out in the car and having them that be an enjoyable experience. Have you even thought about that experience? The goal on my real estate team is to deliver an experience that they couldn't possibly imagine being any better. To be the world class provider of buyer and seller residential real estate services. Is that the way you're looking at that accelerator? Then you have your transaction coordination, right? Once you get a buyer under contract, once you get a listing under contract, that's where all of the goodwill falls apart. Have you systemized that process to the point where you're able to measure by the end, how many referrals did you receive before that person, that buyer, seller left the closing table, right? So that is transaction coordination. And then the third accelerator in the deliver driver is your critical tech tools. So as part of delivery we put in there's a handful of technology tools. Generally real estate B school is technology agnostic. So you need to have a CRM, you need to have a call routing, a call handling system, you need to have a way that you handle your transactions, you know, a productivity sort of team workflow. You need to have an email calendar system, those sorts of things. And I am the guy that doesn't change technologies all that often at all. I don't get excited about any of the bolt on crap that's coming out because I know it's not going to have a step change in the business. So when you look at your business from a track, convert, deliver and those nine accelerators that I went through, grade yourself red, yellow, green on each of those accelerators. And if you're all green in attract, then you can work on convert. If you're all green and all green, all green in attract, all green in convert, then you can work on deliver. You want to create the problem as early in the process as possible. So you want to generate a bunch of leads, then you create a part with Attract, then you create the problem for convert, and then you'll figure that part out and you'll have to hire buyer agents and you'll have to figure their consultation process out and lead management and appointment setting and increasing chances of show rates and sign rates and all of that. And then delivery. How do you get leverage for the whole team in delivery, whether it's a listing client care for you, if you're taking listings or for your buyer agents, or if you're doing buyers, a showing agent to increase that client care experience. So those are the three main drivers that if your business doesn't run without you being in the middle of all of that, you do not have a business, my friend. You do not have a business. It's only then can we talk about how to scale your business. And that's when we talk about creating your future, knowing your numbers and growing your team. You have to have those core systems in place before you do anything else. A lot of folks like to, I don't know, they spend a lot of time on stuff that doesn't really matter. It's the sexier stuff, the squirrel chasing the shiny object syndrome that we suffer from as entrepreneurs in the real estate space. And we're just preyed on by Zillow's and by all the different technology companies that are coming out with the latest, greatest thing that really isn't going to move your business forward because you haven't spent time working on the fundamentals, attract, convert, deliver the three accelerators associated with each. The goal is to get at least yellow, yellows and green all around that triangle before we really, really move on and scale, put some, put some gasoline on this fire and start to heat things up. And so if you're at the point in your journey where you need help with that process, you know, real estate B school is not for everyone. I'll be the first to say that. It's for folks that want to build a business based on sound business principles and they're willing to put in the effort and do the things that most aren't willing to do. And we launched a program called Business Foundations that helps folks that haven't yet achieved that 500,000 GCI. We have a program that helps you do just that that includes daily coaching with our top coaches. We've got six business coaches that are selling anywhere from two to 400 plus homes per year that have been in our world for three or more years that are going to coach you live Monday through Thursday, every day and I'm going to give you live training on Wednesdays. So Business Foundations is something that we're launching because the industry desperately needs it. The industry doesn't have really good business coaching. Real estate B school B stands for business. So this is business training for agents and team leaders that want to make that shift from real estate agent to business owner. So go to getbusinessfoundations.com that's get businessfoundations.com It's a month to month. It's at a price that we will never offer again. We're looking to get 100 members in that group before we change the price from where it is now. So get in there, be one of our. I think we're at about 25, 26 members in there right now. We're only about a few weeks in as of this recording. So get into getbusinessfoundations.com and we'll see you over there. Much love and respect. 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. 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 get business foundations.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 ra.