A single-speaker YouTube/podcast monologue by Lars Hedinburg (Real Estate B School) arguing that company culture—defined centrally as the team’s lived core values—is critical to real estate team success. He gives three actionable directives: (1) get clear (identify existing core values by examining top performers), (2) get real (honestly identify culture misfits on your team), and (3) get going (make tough cuts and recruit/train replacements). Lars frames culture as a practical hiring and retention filter, shares personal lessons from past mistakes, and closes with an offer for confidential strategy sessions and a CTA for Real Estate B School programs.
Hey there, Lars Hedinburg, founder of real estate B School. Today, on the Good, Bad, Ugly edition of the Business Freedom Podcast, I'm going to dive deep into how critically, I mean, life or death critically important culture is to the success of your real estate business. And this conversation is directed square to right in the eye sockets of your soul if you are a real estate team leader. And I say that because I've made more mistakes than anyone in this area of my business, my real estate team. So culture, before I get into three things, three tips, three words of advice, three areas to focus on, I want to really define culture. I think it's one of those kind of out there concepts that it's more for business school than it is for a small business and an everyday sort of thing to worry about. Culture equals your core values. That's it. It's your set of core values, who you are as a company internally. So this isn't an external set of core values that you put up on a wall and your customers are sort of happy to be doing business with you because you came up with some nice words to say about what you stand for. This is the DNA of the people in your company and these are who you are, not who you aspire to be. That's another mistake I see real estate team leaders make is their culture, which is their core values are 100% aspirational. They say they want to hustle and work hard and their agents don't even show up in the office most days or weeks. And so these are core values. There's a process you go through to discover what your core values are, not to decide what they're going to be or how you're going to show up in the future and who you aspire to be. So the cool thing about culture, which is your core values, is that it helps you identify who you want to surround yourself with. And this is an area I've just, I've made this mistake so, so, so, so so many times is that you see the potential in somebody where they haven't demonstrated any pattern of success and you talk yourself into them being a great culture fit. And, you know, you finally find someone that wants to join your team at the splits that you're offering. And like you're, you're just sort of blind to the fact that they're a total culture misfit. And so that's something that I definitely want to help you work through. So I've got three things that if you're taking notes, I want you to write These down. Number one is that you need to get clear on your core values, which is your culture, and so really need to be crystal clear on what you stand for and who you've surrounded yourself with, the best of who you surrounded yourself with. So it. And so it could be an exercise where you're looking at your best team members, what you love about them, how they really make your life easier, how they really move the business forward, how they show up every day, and that'll help you get clear on who you actually are right now as a team. Number two is to get real. So get clear. Number one, get real. This part is harder. This is you taking you, meaning the collective you, meaning I'm in that you getting our heads out of the sand and getting real about members of our team that are a complete culture and core values misfit. And this is a harder exercise, right? Once you get clear on your core values, there's no escaping the fact that in order to succeed at a high level in our changing industry, with a shift storm that we have going on right now, the only way to survive is to have a band of brothers and sisters that are aligned in their core values. The way they show up in the business every day that are gonna fight there, just fight. Fight this battle that we're fighting. And so to get real on who isn't willing to fight the good fight and to go shoulder to shoulder, you know, who are the folks on the team that just are a misfit and they're going to drag the team down. Doesn't even really mean, you know, the term they're a cancer on the team. Right. Those are sort of obvious. Hopefully those people don't exist on your real estate team. If you want to succeed in the future, those people will drive, you know, top performers, a talent right out the door. There could be people on your team that you just know that they're not showing up the way they need to for them to be successful and to help the team succeed. So that's number two. Number one is get clear on what your core values, your culture, to actually define it. Number two is get real. Be honest with yourself about who's on your team. That's not a fit. And number three is get going. Make the tough decisions. If you're able to make the tough decisions to park company with folks that aren't going to help you build an amazing business that delivers a service that is unparalleled in your market or in the country in terms of helping buyers or sellers, and just to get Going to eliminate those folks from your team and to get going to really do the work necessary to find folks that will be able to be a good fit for your team. Right now we're running like one or two out of 100 applications. Make it all the way through to our agent incubator training program, which is a 90 day extended. It's like summer camp for like football team training camp. Right. Not everybody makes it onto the team. And so we have a very specific 30, 60, 90 day program that we put them through to make sure that they can hang on our team and that they really are a true culture fit and we can verify that over time and that they can, they can perform at the level that we need them to perform. So get clear, get real and get going. Take action, eliminate the team members that are not part of who you want to be, who you are and then get going to add folks to your world who will help you build an amazing real estate team. So I speak to this from experience and having done it the wrong way for probably the first part of my business journey and then really about six years ago, really leaning into the importance of culture and in the last two and a half years or so, just being absolutely crystal clear with our team what we stand for and how you need to show up to keep your spot on this roster. So hopefully there's some encouragement in here. And I know also for some of you that are listening to this is going to be a tough. It's going to be a tough one because you know in your heart that there are folks on your team that don't deserve a spot and you maybe have some fear around letting them go. I'll tell you, anytime you let someone go, that's not a fit. Your other team members, for the most part, they respond to the challenge and they step up and step into that void and they appreciate that you're getting people out of their world too, that are dragging them down on a daily basis. So if you're at a point where your business is not what you thought it could be, not what you think it could be or thought it would be, it's not giving you time, money, freedom you're after and you're more stressed now than you've ever been and you've taken on the additional responsibility of people, and maybe you're still in production on your team, or maybe you're out of production and your financial model is just totally bonkers and you're not making the kind of returns that are possible with a fully leveraged Real estate team, you've got to take action. All I have to offer you is a personal conversation with me, one on one, confidential, to dig into your business to see what's going on and to see where you want to go, where you are, what's holding you back, what's working, what's not working, what are some of the strengths and opportunities you see and then what are your weaknesses and where have you messed up? Let's just have an open conversation about what's going on in your world and then I'm going to help you no matter what. If there's a fit with real Estate B school, that's fine, we'll talk about that. That's not the intention of our conversation. I just know there's a lot of suffering in our industry right now. A lot of guys and girls with real estate teams that are not profitable and not as profitable as they should be and some that just are outright not profitable. And so that's the passion that I bring to this industry is an ability to just get in there and dissect what's going on and come up with a plan for you to right your business to turn the ship toward more profitable and sustainable existence. That's what we want, profitability and sustainability so you can own this business asset for the long term and not get burned out, you know, with all the stress and excess hours and not as much money as you deserve. As you deserve. So take action. Go to real Estate B school. Click on request. A strategy session. That's all I do is I have conversations with real estate team leaders that are suffering and we help them implement tools and systems to make the journey easier to have a more graceful business that is making them money even if they're not putting in, you know, 50, 60, 70 plus hours a week. So we'll talk to you soon. Be good. Bye.
