The interesting thing about the third L, Leverage, is that if you focus on the first two L’s and do a great job, you will eventually have no choice but to either make less money or jump into becoming leveraged. An effective focus on leads and seller listings eventually brings you to a point where you have more business than you can possibly handle alone and will create the opportunity to start focusing on leverage. And that is how it should be. Until you have maxed out on what you can accomplish through focus on leads and listings, you should not be hiring another person. Why? Red Light, Green Light.
You do it when you need it. Let’s revisit our mountain-climbing analogy. If following the path to becoming a Millionaire Real Estate Agent is like climbing Mount Everest, then leverage can be likened to the hiring of Sherpas, the native climbers who assist on almost every attempt at Everest’s summit. Only a small handful of climbers have ever successfully climbed Mount Everest alone. None of the Millionaire Real Estate Agents we have worked with or interviewed claimed to have reached their current level of success alone. Look at it this way: Leverage answers three key questions in your business:
1. Who is going to do it? People
2. How will they do it? Systems
3. What will they do it with? Tools You might say Leverage is the “Who, How and What” of your real estate business when you are not the only one doing it.
Bringing people into your sales business to work with you has the potential to tremendously impact your business. Now, the challenge is to add the right people, because that impact could be positive or negative, depending on who they are and what they do. Great talent is irreplaceable. Great talent often meets and exceeds your standards and has the capacity to grow with you and the business. Poor hires, on the other hand, can do a lot of damage. Good talent should not be confused with great talent. Good is good and great is great.
And, although good can really help, great can actually change your business forever. Therefore, it is crucial that you avoid settling for people who merely fill gaps and who do not have the capacity to grow. An agent and longtime friend of mine once jokingly explained why most agents were satisfied with good, rather than great, talent in their business; he said, “Gary, after you’ve hired bad, good is great!” That’s true. But the greater truth is: “Once you’ve experienced great, good just isn’t good enough.” In the very beginning you will seek people leverage to help with administrative duties, answer the phones, process transactions, and place the advertising and marketing you create. They are transaction coordinators, contract managers, marketing specialists, and bookkeepers, and sometimes they are all those things rolled into one. Eventually, if they are talented enough, they will help you create and implement systems to run your business more efficiently and consistently.
When you look for people leverage to help with the administrative side of your business, do not underestimate the importance of this first hire. We’ve found that great administrators have the ability to run a real estate business and may eventually become the person who takes your place when you move on to Receive a Million. Why? Because they are not real estate agents themselves, their ambitions should not run counter to your own. The opportunity to manage a million-dollar business as its CEO is a great career path, and, as the owner, you have less reason to fear they will eventually walk away with your business. Finding a replacement for yourself is the final step on the path to becoming the Millionaire Real Estate Agent, and we’ll discuss that tricky maneuver in detail in the final stage, Receive a Million. In the interest of getting the big picture first, to help you Think a Million, you should bear in mind that Receive a Million may well begin when you hire your first great administrative person.