Want to build an absolute real estate empire? Most high achievers do, yet most high achievers make one fundamentally critical mistake, in how they prepare themselves, to do so. In business, there are three completely distinct “muscle groups,” required to have true long-term sustainable and significant, business growth. For the most part, our industry only teaches you how to develop one of those muscle groups, which is “Sales Skills,” in any meaningful level. While, by any analysis, sales skills (scripts & dialogues, language of sales, art of persuasion, effective presentation skills, etc.) is the foundational component of success in our industry, and the one that real estate agents should master first… it, by itself, only provides the ability to produce a decent income in the “good” times, as well as the ability to merely survive the “bad” times, yet only if our willingness to work exceedingly long hours, put everything on our shoulders, have the same energy levels as when we were younger, and face no health or physical issues that prevent us from being at 100%, each and every day, remains constant. Should any of those areas falter, then so does our income, and unfortunately, as well as our freedom to have our other desired components of a “balanced life.” Instead, to truly build a sustainable empire, one must make the commitment to developing their “muscles” and skills in two other key areas, that when layered on top of sales skills, can contribute to the high likelihood that you can both build significant wealth, yet also have some level of freedom and leverage, to be able to actually enjoy it.
The first of these two additional muscle groups, is “leadership skills,” which can most succinctly be defined as “the ability to influence others towards their success first, in a way that will guarantee our own success, in the future.” Strictly speaking, if I build a business whereby I help other people (who have some sort of formal or informal financial affiliation to my business,) hit all of their own financial and professional goals, then I will almost certainly hit most or all of my financial and professional goals. It is for this reason that we see so many successful solo agents eventually explore the possibility of starting a sales team or opening their own real estate brokerage. And while for a select few, either of those options may be the right decision, for most agents, these are foolish endeavors, because they haven’t actually pivoted, and are unwilling to do so, from being “sales-skills-oriented,” to “leadership-skills-oriented.” They are still relying on their sales skills to be the catalyst of success for their team or brokerage, and thus they are fundamentally limited only to the results that they can personally drive forward in any given day.
Now… Here’s the sobering part… Take your current age and subtract three, and that’s how long you’ve been developing your sales skills, which all started early in life, when you’d work to convince your parents to buy you a new toy, or to let you have dessert before dinner. Building world-class leadership skills takes just as long…. so, the question is, have you spent enough time and focus on leadership development, to allow you be effective with those muscles, or are you just running a big business that still comes down to what you can get done in a 24-hour period to keep it all from falling apart?
The last set of muscles is “Business Skills,” and when built on top of sales & leadership skills, you’ve got the recipe to build an absolute empire. Business skills are primarily related to the capacity to layer an effective strategy onto a clear vision, and then execute in a manner that exploits an economic opportunity that no one else is pursuing, or is not yet doing at the highest level of effectiveness. It’s about how you allocate resources (time, money and talent,) to optimize your desired outcomes. Great business-people understand the difference between growth and scaling. Scaling fundamentally does imply growth, yet also combined with increased efficiencies and increasing profit margins. What kills so many real estate teams and brokerages, even with a strong leader, is a broken financial model. Typically, either their cost of lead generation, or their agent compensation structures are so out-of-whack, that not only are they barely eking by today, their financial structure basically guarantees that they won’t be able to grow beyond a certain point, because they won’t have the ability to hire sales managers or growth-oriented leaders in the future, because there’s not enough meat on the bone left, to pay them. The number of teams operating at a profit margin in the single digits is staggering. They may have “grown” their business, yet they are one hiccup in the market, or small tweak in the cost structure of their primary lead generation sources, away from a complete implosion. When the market shift happens, it’s going to leave countless teams and brokerages in utter ruins, if they haven’t spent the time to build business skills that allow both for sustainability, as well as the ability to pivot effectively, when market & economic factors require being able to do so….
Make no mistake, sales skills will ALWAYS be the foundation. Any emerging agent should work first towards mastery in that area. Agents that want to truly maximize both income and freedom, however, at some point, must pivot towards developing, and then mastering the other two muscle groups: leadership skills and business skills. Recognize though, that almost no one in our industry is talking about this, and even fewer are actually teaching on it. GloverU has taken a stand for developing great salespeople into great leaders and business-people. If you’re ready to take that leap in your own journey, and you are either currently running a sales team or a brokerage, or you desire to learn the skills to be able to do so effectively, visit GloverU.com/EmpireBuilding to get started.