Start With A Win - Are you an Agent or a Business?

Episode Date: April 17, 2019

The topic of this episode of the Start with a Win podcast is running a business as opposed to just being a real estate agent. The two might seem unrelated, but Adam explains why the most effective real estate agents actually focus their energy on running their operations like a business.There are 4 key components of running a business:Constantly building a customer base – Whether by networking or marketing, it is imperative that you always have new leads and prospects in your pipeline.Creating value – Make clients want to do business with you. Use your knowledge and experience to truly get to know what makes your clients tick, then use what you learn to help them overcome challenges they are facing. By serving them in this way, you create top-of-mind awareness that will make clients keep coming back.Repeatable systems and processes – There is an initial time investment involved in setting up these systems, but once you are up and running, you will be able to consistently execute and find success.Scaling – Now you are ready to work on your specialty and organize, outsource, expand, and increase your margins. The more time and effort you put into building your business, the more value you will create and the more success you will achieve.Links:Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/ https://www.facebook.com/adamcontosREMAXCEO/ https://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos https://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ 

At the top of the 12th floor of the Remax World Headquarters, you're listening to Start With A Win with CEO Adam Kantos. And top of the 12th floor of Remax World Headquarters in Denver, Colorado, it's Adam Kantos. I am here with producer Mark. How are you doing, Mark? I am so with producer Mark. How you doing, Mark? I am so good. Yes. We got this beautiful view. You know, I heard somewhere recently that said, you know, stuff gets old, but views never do, right? Like you get a brand new Ferrari and it's like, wow, this is cool. This is awesome. And then over time, you're like, man, I got a Ferrari or, you know, whatever that may be.

But if you have a view view you never go to that view and are like man it's just a view it's funny you say that because uh every time somebody comes up here I mean our we are totally blessed with this view of the Denver skyline here in the mountains and things like that and all the visitors come here and go wow your view is awesome yeah I'm thinking yeah it is right yeah well even we had the the mayor of denver on he was like wow this view is great i'm like bro aren't you at the top of a building somewhere looking at this view yeah we're looking at your city buddy and he was he was really taken by it he goes i didn't see it from this angle before yeah no this is a great yeah dave lineger had

some good foresight and building this building around this corner. Totally. Totally. That guy understands views. He's a real estate agent. As much as we travel in this business, you get out there and sometimes you end up in a hotel room and you appreciate a great view because sometimes you open up your curtains and you're looking at the side of a parking garage. Or the side of a building. Yeah. Or a dumpster or something like that. Yeah. You open it up and there's somebody sleeping leaning against your window. Talking about real estate and business, what is a business, Adam? So you're talking about being a real estate agent versus running a business? Yeah.

Because there are a lot of people in this world that are real estate agents they have their real estate license and then there are a lot of others like all of remax agents and and some of the other professionals out there but i mean you know you know remax agents outproduce the average of the industry two to one yeah crushing yeah the real trends 500 just came out and uh and they uh talked about that so it's like 16 or something like that per average agent? Over 16. Yeah. Yeah.

Listen, if you're not a REMAX agent. Hello. You should join the club. Yeah. You might, you know, play better golf with better golfers, right? That's right. That's true. But it's about, and those people are not just real estate agents.

They are running a business. And there are realistically a few key components to running a business versus just having a title. Yeah, it's two different things, right? Totally is. Being an agent doesn't mean that you're also a business. Right. You've got to legitimately run your business intentionally in order to be a business. It just doesn't happen.

We go, Hey, I'm a real estate license. I'm a, I'm a real estate agent in the business. No, you're not. You might be kind of circumventing the business and going, I'm dabbling. I'm a hobbyist, whatever it is, but we're interested in people running a business. Do you want to talk about that? I would love to. I mean, if you had four things that you could narrow this down. Four things. What would you say? All right. Well, well, let's, let's start with the four key components of running a business. Okay. What do you need to run a business? So the first thing you need to do is you need to constantly be building a customer base or a customer list, right? Yeah, with no customers, no business. No customers equal no business,

except for you might burn through a few friends and family here real quick. But ultimately, you have to constantly be building a customer base. Now, how do you do that? There are certain ways you can build a customer base. They come through marketing. We supply a great deal of marketing for our agents to build that customer base. They supply a great deal of marketing for our agents to build that

customer base. They should be taking advantage of that. And in their own marketing, in their own branding, such as some do podcasts like what we're doing here, a lot participate in mining, social media, doing advertising, sending out valuable items.'ll we'll talk about value here as another one of these components but ultimately your job as running a business even if same as if you have a pizza place is build a customer base people that want to do business with you does that make sense so it's it's not just doing it on occasion when it happens. It's intentionally building your customer base in order to do that business. Right. That's part of your job description.

Exactly. Go get customers. Yeah. I mean, it's like if you're a farmer, you don't hope that seeds fall in your field. Right. I mean, you go out and plant those seeds. Same thing with a customer list. You go and create that field full of customers.

That's good. Number two. Number two. Number two. So I mentioned this before, but you have to create value. So even if you have customers, if you don't create value for those people, you got nothing except for an angry crowd

because they want value. You've attracted them to your business. You've told them what you do. Now it's time to create some value. And that value comes through knowledge, through experience, and through application of uncovering their challenges and delivering value to solve those challenges. So you're there for a reason, right? Just like, you know, if their challenges, they're hungry, you give them a pizza, that's your value. Or maybe you're educating them on the types of pizza, who knows. But ultimately, for a real

estate agent, you need to help them uncover their challenges. And their challenges are questions about homeownership, personal finance, if you will, because being a homeowner is the largest investment typically anybody ever makes in their life. And you're an advisor in that whole process. So how do you create that value and answer those challenges? Because I'll tell you that that contract, the multi multiple pages that are in that contract are scary. There's a lot of negotiation that goes on. There's some litigious opportunity in that if you do something wrong. And that's value that the real estate agent delivers, particularly those full-time REMAX agents that have that great customer base.

When I like to, what you said about kind of mining to understand your customers so that you can provide value to them, right? Because I feel like that's like a positive catch 22, where the more that you're connecting with your customer to understand them better so that you can provide better value to them, the more that you're building a relationship and goodwill and favor and all those things staying at the top of their mind so that they have good vibes towards you and maybe share your information with somebody they know. That's right. Regular value creates top of mind awareness. So you're, you're creating that top of mind awareness. You're building your brand and ultimately you're, you're continuing that

momentum through continuous delivery of that value. Yeah. So what's number three then? Number three. So this is interesting because you can build a customer base, you can deliver some value, but do you truly have the wherewithal, the systems, and we've talked about systems on one of the other podcasts about reasons that agents fail. Do you have the ability to do this over and over again? So you have to build a repeatable business, a repeatable system and process and execute on it regularly. Because if you just kind of, you know, jump in and do things once and then head off, your business is going to die. Right. Business is not going to repeat itself.

Does that make sense? Yeah. So, I mean, you know, a lot of people who are not in business for themselves, their repeatable ability is they get up in the morning and they go to work. They're repeating their business because they're showing up. And the company that they work for is handing them business to do. As a real estate agent, you have to continuously work the system to continuously keep this cycle going. Nice. And then kind of once you reach that terminal velocity. Continuously work the system to continuously keep this cycle going.

Nice. And then kind of once you reach that terminal velocity. That takes us to number four. Then you can get to number four. Fourth component. So let's review the first three real quick. First of all, you've got to create a customer list, a customer base. And that is fundamental to any business. You do that through marketing, through advertising, through collection of your potential customers. The second is you have to

deliver value. Delivering value creates a sticky factor to your business and keeps those people interested in your business and doing business with you. The third one is the ability to repeat this and do it over and over again. Really, that's a that's a focus component as well. So you're not distracted, you're not trying all sorts of other stuff that's taking you away from that. But ultimately, you're creating that value over and over again and doing that business. And then the fourth one, you need to organize or outsource. So this is scaling your business. This is the ability to grow your business and continue

to expand it, to increase your profitability, to increase those margins, and really build your business into something bigger. Because if you continue to do business today and make the same amount today that you made yesterday and then make the same amount tomorrow, you're going to start going out of business because the cost of doing business continues to grow up. You need to organize your business, get yourself more money, more time in doing so. And that helps you build your customer base continuously, continue to add value, continue to do more business and repeat your system. So it's a cycle. So build your customer base, add value and execute on that business. Keep repeating it, doing it over and over again, and then organize and or outsource what you need to. Does that make sense? Yeah,

totally. And too, I think that when you get to that point, right, what's nice is, is that, you know, you may not be an expert finance person or you may not be an expert marketer, but as you are outsourcing and growing your business, you can start to do what you maybe you're really good at, right? Focusing on networking, focusing on, you know, building those relationships and outsourcing all that. So that's right. Yeah. Fourth one's good. That's it. You're, you're absolutely right. And you know, it's like me and the heart surgeon, the heart surgeon goes in and does the heart surgery. The heart surgeon doesn't do the prep or the cleanup. You got to be the heart surgeon. You got to outsource to everything else, work on your specialty. That's where you're really going to see performance

increase in your business. Yeah. Love it. Thank you so much for listening to Start With A Win. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Don't forget to go on iTunes and subscribe, write a review or rate the show. It helps us get the word out and reach more people. You can follow Adam on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. And remember, Start With A Win. start with a win.