How do you systematically grow and scale a business without falling victim to shiny object syndrome? Mega agent and business consultant Lars Hedenborg joins us to share his story and lessons learned while building a team that sells 400-plus homes a year while working only one day a week.
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Lars Hedenborg is a top agent in Charlotte, North Carolina, whose team sells over 400 homes a year while Hedenborg works in the business one day per week.
Hedenborg is also the founder of Real Estate B-School, where he teaches top producing agents and team leaders the same mindsets, systems, tools and strategies behind his success.
Real Estate Uncensored Podcast
Hosts Greg McDaniel and Matt Johnson with guest Lars Hedenborg
Buyer side
We started with the buyer side of real estate, and Hedenborg explained that one of the key skills he built in his first year was mastering buyer scripts.
Time-blocking, discipline and holding himself accountable were key to building his buyer side business. “I didn’t like prospecting; it was the worst thing in the world. But I knew nobody was going to call me,” Hedenborg explained.
Regarding how to scale your buyer business, Hedenborg explained that the best buyer leads are yard sign calls, so exclusively working with buyers isn’t a sustainable business model.
If you do choose to remain a buyer’s agent, you can focus on internet leads, open houses or even join a team that allows you to focus on buyers while passing off listing leads to a listing agent. Hedenborg also shared that even on the buyer side, you need two focused, 90-minute prospecting sessions in the morning to generate the leads you need.
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If you’re looking to become a top listing agent, Hedenborg explained, “I don’t think there’s a more highly leveraged activity than marketing — designing an expired piece or an FSBO (for sale by owner) piece or putting an FSBO system into your CRM (contact relationship management). That’s how I build my listing inventory initially. I never was much of a smile-and-dial to expireds guy. I was always good at creating direct response pieces that got people to call me.”
Listing side
Then we covered the challenge of focusing on listings and giving your buyer leads to other agents or hiring your first buyer agents.
Hedenborg explained that if you want any freedom in your life, it’s tough to keep working with buyers, and you must set a date to delegate this part of your business and establish good systems for your buyer agents.
The key is that Hedenborg personally worked his BoomTown buyer leads for a full year before he brought on a buyer agent, so he had systems in place that he could teach his buyer agent — who is still with his team.
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On scaling up and out of the listing side, Hedenborg shared his processes for building your systems to take listings and finding the right person to replace you.
“Not having the systems in place is where it tends to fail,” Hedenborg said. He also shared how he would enter the business today with internet buyer leads and a database. Those two things could put you in the 50-75 deal range.
Just working yard sign calls and adding some direct response marketing, you could do over 100 deals per year. Then it becomes much more about systems, vision and leadership.
Clarity and systems
Finally, we talked about how Hedenborg gets clarity, how he chooses the systems to install next in his business and how he goes about installing those systems.
Hedenborg recommended a book called “Traction,” that helped give him an overview of the four pillars of business: marketing, sales, operations and finance.
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To that, Hedenborg has added vision and leadership to come up with six total drivers he teaches agents to implement in their business. “People drive the systems, and your business is a reflection of you, but it really is a systems-based approach to business … It’s a little checklist for everything.”
So whether you’re looking to scale and exit your real estate business or you’re just starting out, taking a systems-based approach will give you a huge advantage.
There’s a pattern you can follow, one that many other agents have proven to work, and the key is to put in the effort to build the momentum. Great systems are the key to scaling your business and getting big or even exiting daily production.
Click here to learn more about Lars Hedenborg and the B-School, or book a strategy session.
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Matt Johnson is the CEO of Pursuing Results, a podcast production and PR firm, as well as co-host of real estate podcasts and video series such as Real Estate Uncensored and Elite Real Estate Systems Hangout.
