KGCI: Real Estate on Air - 3 Essential Elements for Real Estate Productivity

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

Without a calendar, there's zero chance of you being productive. And some of you are like, I'm too spontaneous. I can't really live in that way. There is massive freedom and structure. The real estate industry has failed to create a clear path to time and money freedom. Having helped over 5,000 families in my real estate career and coach thousands of agents to scale their businesses, I know what works and what doesn't. And my goal on this podcast is to share it all with you, the good, bad, and ugly ability

building a highly lucrative lifestyle business so you can focus on what truly matters in life. You won't find any hype or fluff on this show, just real world tactics and strategies that get results. You just got to do the work. Welcome back to real estate business builders. My name is Lars Heidenmore, the founder of Real Estate B school where the B stands for a business. I teach agents how to grow and scale their business without losing their life without the grind. Today's episode is going to be about the essentials, three essentials to a great productivity system. And what I mean by that is that my wish for all of you is to make the kind of money that you want to make, working the kind of hours that you want to work, and not having to

endure the levels of stress that traditionally successful agents have to endure. And I want you to detach money from time. And this productivity system, and I'm going to be a little bit in the clouds on this one, and then I'll land it with some tactics. But there are three essentials when it comes to a great productivity system. And I will say that I have been working on this for every bit of, what is it, 16 plus years since I got into business for myself. I left my corporate job. At one point, we had 20 months of inventory. So radically different market than today, but it was a blood bath. Fully two-thirds of the agents to my market got out of the business. And we're in a similar time now in terms of agents getting out of the business, but it's driven by different dynamic. I'm

I'm not going to get into it too much, but there's just not enough inventory. There's just not enough sales because the shortage of inventory and rates and, you know, buyers sitting on the sidelines and wondering, hoping if, you know, rates are going to come down and if prices are ever going to come down. I don't think they will because I don't think the supply and demand issue is going to normalize or level out for who knows if, if ever. So a topic for another podcast. Today, we're going to talk about the essentials of great productivity systems.

So number one, and this is going to sound basic, as I look at my journey, and my journey was one of, you know, how do I make a lot of money in real estate and not have to give up my life in the process? And I was talking, my vision was to make seven figures and working a reasonable work week. So less than 40 hours. My goal was 20 hours a week. And not all the time have I made seven figures and not all the time do I work less than 20 hours a week. That's just the goal. That's my guiding principle. and it forces me to work on the things that only make me that kind of money.

So the number one thing here, essential, is time blocking and living by your calendar. In Real Estate B School, we have a very, very specific system for this. Every quarter, we look at where we spent our time. We actually do what we call a time study. It's a 14-day, somewhat painful. Some don't make it through the full 14 days, but we take an inventory. of where we spent our time in the last 14 days on a 15 minute from the moment you wake up until you go to sleep for 14 days in a row where you spend your time.

I know it's not the thing that's going to be like, Lars, can I work with you? I can't wait to get into Real Estate B school. Most of you are like, okay, you know, I definitely don't want to do that. The thing it'll do for you do, though, even if you do one or two of these a year, you're going to be acutely aware of the fact that you're just wasting it. time. And you can either give that time back to your family. You can give it back to yourself. You can give it back to, you know, dollar productive activities in the business that will make you the kind of money that you want to make. But bottom line, it comes into creating this ideal

week and shedding off the things every quarter that aren't making you money. So once you do a time study, you have an inventory of all the things that you worked on. You get to spread them on what we call a passion versus pay grid and then delete, delegate, or automate the things. that just aren't that dollar productive. And then put the things into your calendar that make you the kind of money that you want to make after you put in all the personal things that you want to accomplish, right? So that's the number one essential is that the backdrop to all of this is you knowing what you're supposed to do all the time.

So when I open my calendar, I live in my calendar, right? There's another cool thing I'm going to show you here. I live in my calendar. So when I look at, you know, my work week for one Monday, I've got a cool work week now. I don't start my days until noon. and I end them at four, but I know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing, you know, from the time I'm going to work. Also, I know that I'm going to wake up at 645 roughly, a little bit early usually.

I'm going to spend, you know, 30 to 45 minutes with my wife. We're going to go work out together before, well, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we work out together. Those days we wake up a little bit earlier so we can still get our connection time with our devotional and stuff like that. And then I've got a big time block to take care of my physical health. I do a weekly financial review. It's all in here.

I do my value post in the real estate business builders free Facebook group, which you should join, by the way. It is all scripted for me. There's no guesswork. If you're watching the video version, I'm showing my calendar right now, right? But if I click on this and I click off my calendar and I click on the ideal week, you won't see this if you're just listening. But we actually have. I'll put that up there. If you can see it.

Well, you probably can't see it too much. But there's actually an ideal week, right? Where the afternoons or appointments, the morning is, you know, new business development. And you've got the time blocked in red there for family time or buffer time or exercise time. You know, when you're with the family, when you work out, when you're doing date night, when you're going to church, when you're working on the business, all those things. right so without a calendar there's zero chance of you being productive and some of you are like I'm too spontaneous I can't really live in that way there is massive freedom and structure

that's what I'll end this this first essential with there's massive freedom and structure the reason I'm able to take off whenever I want and time block my work week essentially is Monday through Thursday 12 to 4 it wasn't always like that first year in real estate my first full year I sold 44 homes I know I say the time. Bear with me, I was working 24-7. I was sneaking out of, you know, bed to answer leads that came in, or to take a client call, or we would be at the zoo with my son, and, you know, I'd be on my phone, or you're feeding him a bottle. I'd be on my phone and just not present. One picture my wife has, you know, I was, we were on our first vacation after I got into real estate, and I was working a deal that ultimately fell apart. And it just destroyed the connection I had with my wife at the time, right?

So there's all these things we do to get where we are. And I can't say I did all of it perfectly. But over time, the thing I realized that the essential here is that you have to time block, you have to live in your calendar and there's freedom and structure. That's number one. Number two is you have to establish a weekly cadence. This is essential. And what I mean by weekly cadence, I'll break it down starting with a week into the daily.

And this fits into a bigger framework in real estate B school where we call it a 3190.3190 137. So or five, five days in a week. So three year vision, one year plan, 90 day world, 13 weeks in a quarter essentially, and then seven days in a week. But the weekly cadence, let me just focus on that now in terms of like the day to day week to week productivity system. There's three parts in it. So once a week, you're going to have a weekly planning session. This is when you're looking back the prior week and you're answering a few questions. You know, what did I, did I actually achieve the things I set out to achieve last week? What went well? What didn't go well? For the things I didn't achieve that I said I wanted to achieve, you know, what got in the way? Anything based on this last week that I should start doing or stop doing that didn't lead me to be more effective or to actually achieve meaningful goals in the life that matter to me.

And you're just sort of sitting with a look back. In that same weekly planning session, you're looking forward and saying, okay, based on, you know, this is more the quarterly rhythm, you know, based on the projects that I commit to working on this quarter or the focus areas for the quarter of my business, you know, what are the three big things I want to accomplish this coming week, you know? And, you know, what other things are going on this week that I need to sort of take, be aware of as I consider these three projects that I want to move forward or chunks of projects that I want to move forward, right? So you're kind of thinking of the week ahead.

And then in the daily, there's two things you do. One is you start the day and one is you shut down the day or you stop the day. When you start the day, the most important, there's two parts to it. First part is the top three action items that you're going to do that fit into those three big moves for the week that I just talked about in weekly planning. The three things you must get done today. These are not necessarily like you already know you're going to go on a listing appointment. You already know you're going to show some property, not those types of things, but it's above

and beyond those types of things, things that you have to get done that are going to move your business forward in a meaningful way. Also in the daily to start today, it's just writing down three things that you're grateful for. Very simple. It's going to sort of instill this contentment, you know, this attitude of gratitude by always looking for the things that you're grateful for. That's to start the day. Top three, three things you're grateful for. When you end the day, you know, this daily debrief, as I call it, you're looking for three amazing things that happened today, just, you know, not necessarily tied to your business,

but just three amazing things that happened. Again, it's going to sort of fuel this psychology of contentment and fulfillment. So three amazing things that happened. And then what did I accomplish today? Did I actually accomplish the three things that I set out to accomplish? If not, what got in the way? That's it. That's your daily, your daily cadence. So top three for today, your daily debrief and the weekly planning session. That's the weekly cadence. The third essential of an effective,

monumentally productive system in terms of getting stuff done is you have to be able to organize tasks and projects. So I've used a bunch of different stuff over the years. I have just found an app. There's a, so I'm a Mac, Apple user. And this is, I think it's probably a same for Android. It's cross-platform. It's called T-C-T-T-C-K, T-I-C-K. It is unbelievably powerful.

I'm going to show you my, that's sort of like my different folders there. So it's essentially a task manager that bleeds into your calendar. You sync it with your calendar. There's an Eisenhower matrix where you can, if you don't know the Eisenhower matrix, it's essentially a quadrant for a two, two by two quadrant where there's urgency and importance. So if it's not urgent and it's not important, just don't do it. If it's really urgent and really important, do it immediately.

And then if it's not urgent but really important, you schedule it. And if it's not important but urgent, I think you delegate it or something like that. So it's like the 4Ds. It's a 4D calendar system. There's that and there. Then there's also a cool habit tracker, which is awesome. I used to have a different app for my habit trackers. And then it all rolls up into like a daily list.

So I look at today and I've got all my habits and all my different tasks for today. It is just about the coolest thing. Knowing what I know now, this is the system. and I could probably do a deeper dive on on that one platform and how I'm using it. But essentially, when I look at my main screen here, I have the inbox is where my inbox is empty, which is good. You need a system, bring it back to the productivity system. You need a way to just get stuff out of your mind.

So as I think I'm laying in bed and I think of something, my phone is in the bathroom. But I'll like run up and I'll just put it into my inbox. So I'll capture it. And then I'll decide where it goes, what business. Is it a project? Is it personal? A podcast idea. So organize all of this.

And then just a way to make sure you're not missing out of the things that truly matter and a way to integrate it back into your calendar. And now so when I look at, you know, I mentioned the weekly cadence in here. I've got recurring tasks in here that remind me to do my startup for the day. So my top three, my gratitude for the day. I've got a, it pops up as a daily debrief with the template that with the questions laid out there that I want to answer. Let me get those exact questions because they actually weren't. I didn't cover them exactly.

So the daily review. Yeah. So what did I accomplish today? What's the highlight of today of the day? Did I encounter any difficulties? What's my mood and any special thoughts? Right. So and then my weekly planning session, you know, kind of went through that.

my daily top three are the three gratitudes and the three three things I must accomplish in the day. So they just show up in that productivity app. And the app doesn't come formatted anyway. So you sort of have to bring this mindset of everything has to integrate into the calendar. You have to have this cadence of start today, stop today, weekly planning session, and then just a way to get stuff out of your brain and into something that can hold all of it. So that is my wish for all of you.

is in order to achieve great things to build a massive business that allows you to make the kind of money that you never thought was possible, but not give your life away in the process, right? I'm all about helping you grow your sales, grow your income, you know, grow your net worth without the grind, without the stress. So hopefully these three essentials will get you on your way. I want to ask you to jump into my free Facebook group, Real Estate Business Builders. You may decide to have a conversation with my team about what that might look like,

but the nature of that group is to give as much as I possibly can, to help as many agents as I possibly can. This is going to be a squirly time in real estate, the next 12, 24, even maybe 36 months. I watch some guys that are thinking it's going to be a lost decade in terms of the kind of turbulence that we're going to go through. and the reckoning of politics aside, just kicking the can in terms of some of our fiscal habits and, you know, quantitative tightening and easing and, you know, all of it, I think,

is going to come to a head. So that said, you want to be in a community that doesn't give a crap about any of that. We're aware of it, but we're still putting our heads down. We're doing the work. That is real estate business builders. Go to Facebook, get on real estate business builders, a couple questions to answer. we'll let you into the group. We'll tag you in trainings. We'll find out exactly what you're struggling with. So apply these three essentials to your business, to your life, see massive

success. And we'll see you on the next episode. Much love.