Why You Should Build A Business That Can Run Without You

Is it possible to sell hundreds of homes per year without working directly with buyers and sellers? You know, traditional success in our industry will have you working 24, 7 and not making enough money to make all the stress worth it. You know, I looked at the NAR stats. The National Association Realtor puts out stats on income for agents and 16 year veterans in our industry grossed $71,000. So. So before expenses, our veteran agents in our industry are making $71,000. Take out expenses, they're probably making 45 to $50,000. Two year agents are making $9,000. So the reason why there's 82% of agents don't renew by their second license anniversary, it's because there's not enough income for them to sustain a career in real estate. The average agent in America makes $41,000 gross. So $41,000 gross before they pay their broker, before they pay their cell phone bill, before they pay their Realtor dues, before they, you know, pay any marketing, advertising or any leverage, you know, through administrative assistance.

Right.

So traditional methods and the traditional success and the industry itself wants a lot of agents to sell a few homes because they make a little bit of money on every agent.

Right?

There's about 5 million sales in the US in a year and there are about 2 million agents. So even if all 5 of those million, all 5 million of those transactions have two commission checks, there's only five checks available, five families served per agent in our country. And so the way the industry is set up is not going to get you the success you want. Make sure you stick around to the end of this video. I want to show you exactly how to go through from struggling real estate agent all the way up to business owner. Six stages of business growth. It's called our real estate Business Growth Navigator. If you like these videos, make sure you give me the thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications and leave us comments as well. So this journey, you know, and this breaking through the status quo in our industry is not a path that is promoted or supported all that much. I mentioned the stats about a veteran agent making $71,000 in our industry and our journey and what we stand for at real estate B school, it's more money, more freedom, more impact. So we don't want you to just sell more homes for the sake of selling more homes. We want you to do so in a way where it provides you with opportunity to show up differently outside of your business. So to have time, freedom and freedom from stress and to have more Impact in your family and in your community. You know, one of our members, Dave Hook, has been in our world for over four years now. In fact, his wife Jenny was pregnant with their first child when they came to real estate b school. They now have three children. So a busy household of young children and his ability to show up and be present in the home to support his wife and to be an awesome dad and be there for his children. And it didn't start out that way. When I met Dave, he was working 70 to 80 hours a week. He was selling under 100 homes with an administrator and a buyer agent or two.

Right?

So he wasn't selling hundreds of homes. He didn't have, you know, money freedom or time freedom. And he didn't have much financially to show for the amount of effort he was putting into the business. And so there were a few things that we focused on specifically to his journey that I want to go through with you because you may be struggling with this notion, maybe even it's a limiting belief around, you know, can I really, you know, do this? Can I really go from struggling, working too many hours but not having the money to show for it? And you're stressed out all the time, right? Time, money and stress. Can you go from that equation not being real good and being challenging to completely free and being a business owner? And so Dave's journey started in a bad place. But the punchline is that he's doing 250 to 260 transactions. He's working 30 to 40 hours a week, he's scaling his time in his real estate business down to two days a week. He's launched two other businesses that he runs one day a week each, respectively. So he's gonna be working four days a week running three businesses. And his ability to do so came down to his commitment to build his business differently. And when I think of Dave's journey specifically, specifically it's his approach to time. You know, he trained our whole community on what he called the 4D time system. It's a way that he processes, you know, information and tasks as they come at him. And it's this Eisenhower grid. If you look up Google Eisenhower matrix on decision making, it's two axes. You know, it's urgent and important and, and we rarely spend time on the things that are not urgent but critically important. So a good example of this is in your health, right? Is it gonna hurt me today if I don't work out or if I eat like crap today, Is that gonna hurt me? So taking care of my physical body is not urgent but really important. If I have a heart attack, you know, it's really important and really urgent that I take care of myself and get to the hospital. So in our business, the things that aren't important today or aren't urgent today are typically critically important. And so when you're looking at the things you're spending your time on, how are you making decisions around where to spend your time? So that's the first thing. The second thing is just a straight up planning system. You know, real estate, B school. We talk about a three year vision, a one year plan, 90 Day World. How do we translate that into monthly goals, into weekly commitments and into our daily planning? If you don't have a process that covers any of that, and I'll go through it again because I want to get clear on it. A three year vision for your business and your personal life. A one year plan for the areas of your business and your life that matter. Breaking that down into a quarter at a time, a month at a time, a week at a time, daily and by hour. And then a process by which you're going to be honest with yourself about where you're spending your time. We call those time studies. Then a process quarterly where we sketch out and we design our ideal week. A process by which we delegate so that we can elevate, we look at what we're passionate about and what we get paid really well for.

Right.

So very intentional planning system that we're able to use together to be able to go from struggling in the trenches, working all the time. That's where Dave was when Jenny was pregnant with their first child to now he's home every Friday.

Right.

And he's not working past 5pm the other four days of the week. And he's got three businesses. And so where are you in the journey, right, of making good decisions with your time in terms of a planning system? The third area that Dave focused on, and it's more a mindset, our industry is just overwhelmed with the amount of things that were marketed that are marketed to us. Dave was really good about only doing one thing at a time. So I would tell Dave, like Dave, I'm the guy that doesn't chase squirrels. I'm never going to try to get you to look at a shiny object. This thing though, Dave, you have to take a look at and we have to implement it right now. He would tell me so this would be like, say it was February when I said this. He'll tell me I may be able to slot it in in August. No joke, true story. And I'm like, dave, this thing is so important. You've got to do it. You've got to throw it. And so I'm the guy that taught him, in a certain sense, to not chase squirrels and not to get distracted by shiny objects. Yet his approach required the right thing at the right time. So that's the third sort of learning about, you know, kind of witnessing his journey is that, what is your next right thing? What's your next right move? Your next right move? A lot of us will look at, you know, we'll be doing 25 transactions a year, and we'll study an agent in our market doing a thousand transactions. We're like, man, they're doing mass media, or look how good their videos look online. Or, you know, that person. I know guys spending 150,000amonth on mass media, and they're 6,7 million top line, and they have hardly any profit to show for it. Yet we're comparing ourselves to that person. So this is your race, and Dave was real clear that he was going to use a planning system, this 3,190-weekly-daily planning system. He was going to have a system by which he was able to think about tasks as they came at him during the day, and then he was going to commit to doing the next right thing for where he is in his business growth journey. The last thing I'll say about Dave is the way he measured growth. You know, I made the comment about making, you know, doing your next right thing. It's almost like the analogy of if you've ever seen a racehorse, a racehorse has these, you know, cups, these. They're called blinders. I think they're called blinders. Who knows what they're called?

Doesn't matter.

You look at a horse, they have these things around their eyes that is so the horse can run their race. So if the horse didn't have the horse's eyes, you know, they're like big and buggy. They could probably just see right out the side and they would get spooked and distracted. They wouldn't be able to run fast. And it's in business, right? We have to keep our blinders on, and we have to measure growth not just by more homes. As an industry, it's the only way we measure growth is more homes.

Right?

And that's not the determining factor. It's like, how many date nights did you do this year compared to last year? Your physical body, right? Are you in better shape this year than last year, you know, are you spending more quality time with your kids now compared to last year? Financially, are you just keeping up with the Joneses? Are you making better decisions, spending less money than you make?

Right.

Novel concept, right? And in your business, are you installing systems that are going to give you leverage in the future so that you have a solid foundation to scale? So that's my last challenge for you, is to not measure your growth only by the number of homes you sell or the floor flashy stuff you put out there online, but by the actual systems you put in place, by the actual impact you have on those around you. Like I said earlier, if you're at the point in your journey where you just wish there was a report that can detail step by step each of these stages, go to realestatebusinessgrowth.com it's our real estate business growth navigator. Realestate businessgrowth.com if you like this video, give me the thumbs up and subscribe to the channel. Make sure you turn notifications on so you're the first to know about a new video when it drops. Leave me comments as well. We'll see you in the next video.