What You Can Learn From My 2009 Business Plan - Part 2

What's up Business Freedom Podcast listeners. Lars Hedinburg here, founder of Real Estate B School co founder of High Performance Real Estate Advisors in Charlotte, North Carolina. If you missed part one of this, it's only a two part series. If this is part two. So this is your first podcast you've listened to. Go back and listen to part one. I'm going through a business planning and life planning process that I implemented in 2009 before I ever started my business growth journey, before I hired my first buyer agent. I only had an assistant at the time and I determined this was not going to work. If I wanted to be a good husband and a good dad, I was not going to be able to be a real estate agent. I just made that determination early on and I committed to doing it differently than what I was seeing in my market and with those around me. Even in a lot of the coaching programs. I belong to the folks that I was around at the time. I did Proctor to start, I did Kinder Reese, I did Corcoran. Those were probably my three biggest influences back in the early days and the folks I was around. And it still remains this, like this today. They built a business quote, unquote. But they have so much responsibility and they have to produce at a high level. Their personal production. Working with buyers and sellers still is a big chunk of the business. And they do it not because they love real estate. Some folks actually love real estate. I wasn't really in love with real estate working with buyers and sellers. I love business. Yet some of these team leaders, some of the folks that were scaling their businesses back in those days and still today, they set it up the wrong way. And that's not what I want for you. If you want to build an amazing business, there is a way to do it. And so go consume part one if you missed it and then pick up on part two. Part two is the other side of this 2010 business plan that I built in 2009 before I hired my first buyer agent. So the first side was all about business and the different growth areas and the things in the business I had to focus on and how I broke down my numbers into quarterly, into listing, set, met, signed and all of that good stuff and the intention I set for the year in terms of what we were going to do me, my personal production and the team total. So on the back is what I call the daily mental workout. So I'm putting myself back in these early days when I built this plan. I obsessed over this plan and, and making it look Beautiful. And once I was finished with it, which was probably like October, November, I probably worked on it for a couple months. I laminated it 20 times. I had a small version, like probably eight and a half, like five and a half by eight and a half and then an eight and a half by 11, 10 copies of each. And I put them everywhere, everywhere. And. And I read this plan all the time. And so the backside is my daily mental workout and I am going to go through it. I am going to slow down here. My wake up thought was God has given me another awesome day in which I will use to move toward achieving all of my goals and realizing all of my dreams. I will positively impact the lives of everyone I touch today. And that was just my wake up thought. Like just put intention, I still have intention around the day I start my day. What is my intention for today? I'm looking at my daily planner. What is my intention for today for me, my relationships and my business. And that was my wake up thought. Then I answered the question, why am I doing this? God gave me the tools and presented me with the opportunity to make a huge difference in this world. I have the ability to be the best at what I do because I understand it. I have a major passion for it. I'm a student of it. And I have absolute and utter belief in myself and my team. I want to positively impact the lives of everyone I touch, especially those whom I love the most. I want my children, my wife and all my family to have total freedom of choice to do what they want to do. I want to give back to those who love me, support me and believe in me so that they may have a life they never thought possible. I want to create positive change as much as I can and make the world a better place. I will always strive to be the very best I can be. I want my family to be proud of who I am. I want to set us free. I want to set us financially free so that we may lead an incredible, fulfilled and happy life. That is the second thing I read every day. So I didn't leave my days to chance in terms of my mental health. You know how my brain was going to sort of set itself up to sort of crush it every day. And keep in mind that the year I was reading this Every day was 2010. This was the depending on what market you were in. It was the definitely the second full year, but mostly the third kind of 2008 was a crappy year because most market shifts. Our market in Charlotte, North Carolina shifted in 2007. So 2008, 2009, this was 2010. Our roster was probably 15,000. It probably went down to 12. Nine, you know, 8,000 reports everywhere of why you shouldn't be in real estate. So my mental workout every day was really important. And then I had areas of balance. That was the third part. My mind. My mind, my body, my spirit, family and fun, wealth and profession. So six areas of balance. We still focus as a company, real estate, b school on the six areas holistically of a human being and your profession. Your business is only one of those areas. So your mind, it is your emotions, learning, reading, focus and vision. Your body is your energy, your health, exercise, fitness and wellness. Your spirit is the relationship you have with God. Being present, meditation, family and fun. Your family, friends, traveling, celebrating wealth is money, savings, belongings, etc. And your profession is your work. That is the work you do every day. All right, so I had daily affirmations and key actions. And I said take action to reach lifelong goals. So in each of those areas I had a daily affirmation. And now I am reading this again and I have gotten out of a little bit of this habit. This makes me want to resurrect this document and this process. I do it a little differently today. It is 80% the same sort of stuff in terms of how I live my life. The mind I said I live each day with passion and purpose. I am powerful and fearless and successful in all that I do. I easily achieve all my goals and dreams. My life is filled with happiness, prosperity and abundance. I am supremely confident in myself. Time is my most precious resource and I use it wisely. And then I had key actions and goals for each of these areas. I'm not going to go through those, but I'll give you an example for mind. I read one book and at least listen to two to three books courses each month. I'm aggressively learning and applying the best real estate business principles available. I attend two to three conferences per year and I am open to new ideas. I practice focus and discipline every day. They are my key strengths. All right, next area was my body. I enjoy eating healthy foods. I crave fitness and exercise. I have an abundance of physical and mental energy. I am perfectly healthy mentally, physically and spiritually. My key actions and goals. Well, I will weigh 180 pounds by February 28, 2010. That is my ideal weight and I will not fluctuate more than five pounds from my ideal weight. I enjoy exercising three to four times each week. My body craves it. I Make time every morning to stretch and do yoga to maintain flexibility and reduce stress. Much of this is aspirational. I have struggled with my weight just as everyone else does. Spirit is the next area. With God, all things are possible. He has given me unlimited power. God is my source of strength and helps me achieve all my goals and dreams. In God. I am strong and courageous. I was saved probably two to three months before I created this document. And so I've been on this journey to get to know God and have a personal relationship with God and understand the life of Jesus and try to be more like Jesus for the last what's today's date as I'm recording this, I was saved on. Well, I was baptized April 10, 2010. I went probably June, July 2009 is when I got saved. So a few months before I created this document. I love going to church each week with Julie. It's the highlight of our week. It helps us bring us closer to God and each other. We give a minimum of thousand monthly to our church. It will help change our city and the world. I will be baptized for the first time in my life in 2010, bringing me closer to God living the life he designed for me. The next series Family and Fun. I adore my wife Julie's son Anderson. Coming soon. Baby girl Kendall. My wife was. I guess we had. Yeah, so she was born in April 2010. So we had a couple of miscarriages. I was trying to time those so we knew it was a girl and we had named her already. They are the source of my inspiration and drive. I treasure every minute I have with them. I'm patient and fun loving. I am a patient and fun loving father and husband. I provide everything my family needs and desires. And then I talk about date nights. I talk about Thursday nights are family night. No seller email after 5:30. Friday night is a guy's night for Anders and I be with him only Sunday. Family days are sacred. No phone or email. I love that I have time and money to take four vacations this year to be with my family. Two trips and then visit friends. Two trips and then wealth is the next category. I am financially independent. I live debt free. I have all the resources I need to create a net worth in excess of 20 million or more. I have absolute certainty my ability to generate an amount, any amount of income I desire. I use my wealth and prosperity wisely and then key actions and goals. I will earn over $400,000 this year. I will have over 300,000 liquid assets and 700,000 net worth by year end. So that's interesting. So this is 2000. I wonder what my net worth, my liquid net worth and my total net worth, I wonder what they were when I wrote this document. So I'm guessing like when I say liquid assets that's what I can write a check for in less than seven days. And then total net worth includes any, any real estate. So at the time I probably had like 200,000 liquid if that and probably 400 or so. So let's call it yeah, 200 and 400. So 400,000 net worth I had when I wrote this first plan. And yeah, just knowing what's possible. I'll get into some of the long term goals here in a second. And I don't think enough business owners track their net worth or of any idea what their net worth is. I'm in a discipline of every month I track my net worth and without tracking it you'll never win the game. And it's just a game, right? You can't take the money with you. I don't believe it's the ultimate score. It is an important score when you're in business. Then I talk about giving and generate. Julie will work only three days by year end and then investing in children's college funds and all of that stuff. So, so then my profession, I'm the King Kong of my market. I'm hands down the best at what I do. I'm a great leader, people enjoy working with me. I'm proactive, talented and innovative business person applying sound and honest business practices. I'm a listing machine. I win hearts and minds on every prospect call setting and qualifying appointments is easy and fun for me. That my friends is aspirational. So I was a lead generator like nobody back in the day. I was committed to 12 to 15 hours of new business development in the early days. So I spend. Here it is. I spend 2.5 hours daily converting leads into appointments. Focus on expired fizzbos, hot Internet buyers and then lead follow up and then SOI and our client database. I will list over 100 homes this year and more than 2/3 of them will close. I will generate over 50 closed size from referrals. This year I will sell 40 homes to highly appreciative buyers. This year I will have five plus highly productive OSAs selling three to four homes per month. These agents will be continually amazed with the value offered by our team. My business will be fully systemized by year end. Nothing will fall through the cracks. Those are the six areas. Those are still the six areas I want you to sort of do an inventory of. If you're struggling right now, get clear on what you want it to look like. So that is the vision that I walked through on all those. What it is like today and how do you bridge the gap? And then the last thing I included on this side was three year goals, five year goals and ten years goals. And I'm going to read them to you. Some of them didn't come true. A better version of it came true. So I didn't quite know exactly what I was projecting. But three year goals was for 2012, five was for 2014 and 10 year goals were for 2020. And so my three year goals 2012 was 240 sides in 2012 we did 248 sides. And I had a number of outside sales and administrators, but I'll skip that for now. I was very active in the business Monday through Friday only, 45 hours a week and listings only. So I knew when I wrote this plan that I only wanted to work listings at some point. I only wanted to work Monday through Friday and working listings was the only way that I can get there. Then I talked about charitable contributions and work and then four weeks full vacation per year. I wanted to have 500,000 in liquid assets and 100amillion dollars of net worth. And my wife could work two days per week. She went from five to four to three to two. And then she, she dropped working in a hospital altogether. So that was my three year goal. My five year goals were 320 sides. And that was 2014. We did over 400 sides that year. I was at that point I wanted to be 50, 50 in versus on the business Monday through Thursday, nine to five listings only. And then charitable work and contributions. Eight full weeks of vacation. I wanted to 800,000 in liquid assets. That's less than seven days. I can write a check for that amount and then 1.4 million of total net worth including a home or any real estate. And Julie, my wife, only works if she wants to and she was out of her work at this point already. My 10 year goals, 2020, which is this year as I'm recording it, 600 sides. We did not get there 3.6 million GCI. So we will do about 3.33 million or so. And there's a big lesson in some of that. Most of the teams I've seen scale beyond 3 million don't do it very profitably. So there is this sort of sweet spot in business where growth beyond it, you can buy it. It's not as profitable as it was to get 3 million. We still have growth plans. We're still pushing that business aggressively. It's just we're not willing to sacrifice profitability to get there. So not making an excuse. I'm just saying that that is part of the reason why we haven't pushed too hard 100% on the business. Less than 20 hours per week. Separate office building. I didn't get an office building. I'm working eight to 12 hours a week in that business now. Charitable contributions and hours 12 full weeks of vacation which is pretty much what I take. 1.5 million liquid net worth, which I've increased by multiples and then 4 million of net worth which I've crushed as well. And then enough money to retire. I don't think I have enough money to retire. So I think I probably missed that one. Everyone on here, some I just, I sort of missed. I didn't really truly understand. I will say, you know, our, the 600 sides assumed a $6,000 commission check. We're at about a $12,000 commission check with increase in pricing in our market and just what we charge for our services. I said 18 outside sales agents, which we run a very Navy SEAL like model which is not even close to that many to do over 3 million GCI. So that's the plan. And so hopefully there was something in these parts one and part two to inspire you. No matter where you are in your journey, even if you're in the thick of it with a leading a team and you've set it up the wrong way or you're doing 3, 4, 5, 600,000 GCI with an administrator and you know you can't keep doing what you're doing. It's just not sustainable. If that is you all we have to offer you a couple things and this is sort of a. Probably don't want to give you a couple options. But the first thing is just a total give go to marketshifttoolkit.com and it's just the 12 most appropriate trainings right now for what we're going through. I've organized it by protect what you have, pivot the business and then profit as well kind of going into this shift. And then if you're at the point where you know you need to have a conversation with us, just go to real estate B school and the next step is obvious there, there's an apply now or grab a strategy session, few questions and we'll jump on the phone, we'll talk about your business. So much love and respect. I'm hoping this really served you. And just to give you a glimpse of what I was thinking back in the days where I was just launching into this business growth journey, not knowing at all what I was getting myself into. And yeah, so if I can help you in any way, go to marketshifttoolkit.com or go to real estate Visa.