Where Hiring Goes Wrong

Welcome back to the Business Freedom Podcast. This is Lars Hedinborg, founder of Real Estate B School and co founder of High Performance Real Estate Advisors. And today we're going to talk about where hiring goes wrong. The good, the bad, the ugly. Of my experience with leverage through people, this is the area that is going to give you the most pain and frustration in your business, and it's going to give you the most opportunity for growth and freedom. And so I don't care if you're hiring one administrator or if you have a team of 20 to 30 people, if you want to be successful as a business owner. When I say business owner, it's someone that can make a return without having to put a whole lot of hours into a thing. So true business ownership does not require you to show up to your business. So in order for you to be a successful business owner, this is one area that we need to get super clear on. And I share all of this with an immense amount of humility, because this is not an area that I had any natural inclination to toward. It's not an area that I learned that quickly. I feel like I failed over and over and over and over again. And I always hoped that somebody that told me they were going to do a good job, I hope they would do a good job. And so anything I share with you is out of love and respect for you to not make the same mistakes that I make. And I want to tell a story, and this story hopefully doesn't come off wrong. And if my wife, Julie, listens to it, this is all the reasons why my wife isn't good at hiring is because her heart is so big and full of love and wanting to believe the goodness in people. And I mean that sincerely, with every ounce of respect. You talk about a better half. Julie is like, easily my better half. And so we're hiring someone to help out in our home, and we had someone come through for an interview. And it kind of exemplifies every mistake I've made in hiring. I don't make them anymore. In the early days, though, someone would come in and they would just kind of say they could do the job. They would maybe throw up a few red flags that you'd ignore. You'd end up hiring them, and it's like two, three, four months, and you're like, oh, man, I saw that. I knew that. I sort of sensed that I didn't dig deep enough. I didn't spend time to do the references. The references came back. So. So I'm still going to Hire them anyway because they told me they could do the job. They told me they want to do the job. They told me. And I feel like that's the first mistake that we make in bringing people into our world is that we want so badly to believe they can do the job to alleviate whatever pain it is. And so in our house, we do have a ton of laundry, a ton of things I want done a certain way, my wife needs done a certain way, and we just need leverage. And so we're at a point where everyone looks good. And this is so true of real estate team leaders. When you're wanting to get out of, say you already have, or let's say it's your administrative hire. 85% of real estate agents don't even have an administrator. So they're spending more than half of their work hours doing work that someone at an administrator pay would be happy to do and just love every minute of doing it. So let's say you're a real estate agent and you're hiring an administrator. You have a lot of folks to choose from if you run a real process. Here's what happens, though, is somebody needs a job, a friend of a friend, and you end up hiring them. There's no process whatsoever. You're not choosing from a pool of 100 folks. You're not doing personality profiling. You're not doing any skills assessment. We have skills assessments for every position on our team now because we've been burned before by folks that say they can use a computer and they're good at this program or that program. Even for a marketing coordinator position that we just hired, I had a really detailed skills assessment. And just to get to watch this person in their element do their thing, because it's not going to get better. And so I feel like the first part of the process is having a system in place to give yourself the opportunity to hire someone that's a good fit for the position that's number one. And it takes way more people than you think it's going to take. I recorded an episode recently where I kind of picked on two guys that I spoke with. And one of these two guys listens to the podcast. It was the one on Mindset is Everything. You know, they. They had hired two agents that didn't work out, and I asked them the question, like, how many did you pick from to hire the two? Well, it was two for two. Two people wanted to join their team, and they let those two people join their team. There was no process. We're 100 to two. 100 people want to join our team and two are allowed into our world. Maybe three and two survive. So maybe it's 100 down to three or four and a couple survive, you know, past their 90 to make it to the 365. And these guys had two for two. So they two applied, two were hired, and neither of them worked out because. Because you're dealing with the 98% that aren't going to work out. And so that's the other part of it is to make sure you put yourself in a position to choose from a pool of talent. And so that's sort of number one. Number two, and this is happening with us is that we are really clear in our home the way we want things. I have this vision for my home and I think it drives you. I know it drives you really quick. And it's just my vision because I think it's cool to be able to live in like a Ritz Carlton. I want my home to be like living in a hotel where everything is sort of turned over and, you know, we do a clean sweep of the house and the outdoors kept nice and we just have someone who's keeping up with our home along those lines with a really high standard around it. And that's just what I want. And so knowing the outcome that we want, we're able to build a very detailed checklist of daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual things that we need done for this to be, you know, an awesome place to live where we don't have to worry about all of those things that have to happen that are like maintenance Y type things that we can bless somebody who God created to do that job, they can come in and do that job. So super clear expectations. And here's what happened, though. We interviewed somebody who a bunch of red flags about the way she likes things done. And you know, like, we just sort of knew that this thing was going to work out and we had our clear expectations and we knew that she wasn't going to fit into what we wanted. Most folks, though, just hire the person and they don't have anything documented about what they're supposed to be doing. And so for the administrative example, you need to have a clear list of the things you need to offload to this administrator written up so that they can win at their position. And most people don't do it. And so most administrators don't work out. And. And you do that by doing a time study. So if you're a solo agent or if you're a team leader, it doesn't matter if you're working too many hours and you're not making the kind of money that you want, it means that you're working on things that are below the pay you want to make. And it's a series of just analyzing your time and then delegating the lower dollar, producing activities off of your plate and doing that once a quarter until you're making the kind of money that you want. And we do that with the 14 day time study. Once a quarter you get to where you want to get to. And so when it comes to setting a person up for success, that doesn't happen. So there's not real clear expectations. This is exactly what you're going to do. This is how you're going to be graded on what you're going to do and this is what the accountability is going to look like. So that's number two, there's not a clear understanding of exactly how this person is going to win at this position. And then number three, there's not a great cadence. And so we had someone not succeed in a position recently in our home. And I've done this probably over a hundred times in business. So this is not a thing on what we're doing in our home right now. They didn't succeed partially because we didn't have these regular conversations with them. So once a week I sit down to connect and talk about what's working and what's not working. So if we all just did that with the people in our world, they would have a voice to let you know what's working and not working. And you would have an equivalent voice to say, okay, great, here's what went really well last week. Here's what we need to work on so it doesn't lead up to the point where there's this big come to Jesus conversation or you know, what happened with this prior person was that Julie was not happy with their performance yet we weren't having those regular meetings. And it's happened to me over and over in business. So I've done the same thing and I failed in that regard. It's only through that failure. So this does sound like I'm dissing Julie. I'm not dissing Julie. She has not failed a hundred times in this area like I have. And I've only learned these things through failure. So if you're not having that weekly conversation with someone in your world, what's working, what's not working from their perspective? What's working, what's not working from my perspective? Let's solve some of the not working stuff we can't solve and some we can solve. And so let's just have an open dialog about it so it doesn't come to the point where there's this impasse and we can't work through it. And so that's the third thing. And there's a lot of advice in there, so hopefully that serves you. We're living it out in our home. We live it out every day in our real estate business and in this coaching business. I failed a lot in this area, so I feel very, very qualified to give you advice in this area. In terms of where hiring goes wrong and team member success goes wrong. Clear expectations, open conversations, and only letting people into your world who have earned the right to play that position, you need filled. One last thing. Hire everyone on a trial basis. Hire everyone on a trial basis. So this goes to the next hire we have for our housekeeping position, which we're hoping to elevate into a house manager position. It's going to start out with a trial basis for agents that come into your world or an administrator take it 30 days at a time and have really clear deliverables that that person has to hit every 30 days to earn a spot on your team. I can't say it any more clear than that they are moving forward. So that 100 goes down to two. So two people start in that example. Those two people have to continue to show up and play that position at a high level and do the things that you know they need to do to be successful in that position. In sales, I feel like most team leaders do not have a quick path for them to make money. And I think most team leaders aren't real honest with new agents that join their team about what they need to do to be successful. And they're not tracking their results, they're not coaching them properly. There's not the cadence that they need to be successful. So I guess that's a bonus. Number four. So if any of this connects with you and you have this vision in your business of going from agent to owner, or even if you're a team leader, but you still have to sell because you haven't set it up the right way or your systems aren't tight, or you're not recruiting the best people, you're not onboarding folks properly and it just doesn't feel like a real well run business. The analogy I like to give is that of a McDonald's. The owner of the McDonald's doesn't even go there to pick up their cash. They just get it wired to them. We have to all have this vision in our businesses. Even if we're going to stay working in the business and selling homes, we you have to have this vision of it being a McDonald's, a franchise E myth Michael Gerber. You know, franchise prototype. You have to build a franchise prototype. And so people, even if it's just a couple, three people, you know, and you're going to have a small, close, you know, tight knit team, you still have to honor the basic principles of hiring and just to heed the advice of someone that's done it wrong many, many times. And so if you have this mindset of business ownership and you just don't know how to get there no matter where you are in your business journey. We just launched our Business Foundations program. It includes live coaching, daily Monday through Thursday, live training from me, weekly access to our foundational tools, all of our specialist trainings, all of the tools and systems you'll need to grow this business. There's not a long term commitment. So we go month to month on this thing and the Launch price is 297 per month and we're increasing it to 497 per month once we get 100 folks in this program and it's filling up quickly. And so go to getbusinessfoundations.com right now to take action. Get businessfoundations.com and if you want to do more than just sell homes and you want to build a business, then this was built for you. We'll see you over there. 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 free. 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 real Estate B school and apply for a free business growth strategy session. No matter where you are in your business, growth journey. We have the tools, system, strategies, training and coaching to get you where you want to be. Remember, only you can create your future. So take action now.