How to Real Estate Today
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How to Real Estate Today
14: Essential Strategies to Kickstart Your Business in 2025
We are discussing essential strategies for real estate agents to implement at the start of the year. These strategies emphasize the importance of self-care, business planning, evaluating brokerage options, and committing to continuous learning. The discussion highlights actionable steps agents can take to ensure a successful year ahead, including creating marketing plans and understanding financial health.
Rebecca Green (00:00.142)
Hi there. Thanks for joining us today. Today we are going to be talking about what three things you should be doing in your real estate business right now. It's January, 2025. Hopefully this episode airs this month. And if so, Rebecca and I are both going to give you our three things we both recommend a real estate agent should be doing right now. So with that, Rebecca, do you want me to start? Do you want to start?
You kick it off. Perfect. So I've been thinking about this because I love a new year. love January. I love a reset and I'm going to share the things that I'm doing that I find that are useful right now. And after being in kind of real safe for over a dozen years, I have found that this kind of flow works for me. The first is rest and restore guides. I'm a big, big believer.
For me, there's different cycles and seasons in real estate. Tony Michael, who mentored me, taught me this earlier. Don't freak out in January when it's quiet. Use that time to really kind of go in, nourish yourself. If you're doing all the things you should be doing to build your business, the business will come. But really take advantage of the quiet time to just...
Rest, restore, get your house in order. I love a season of rest for me. I like to work in sprints. I like to run hard and then pull back and kind of, and rest and recharge because I can't run at that intense pace all the time. So what does rest look like for you? I don't know. Again, that varies for people what that means. So historically in January, I love to take a trip. I'm a big sunshine person.
Many years I would go to Arizona or to Southern California. I actually love to travel by myself. That's a fun fact about me. I'm like my favorite travel partner. And here's why I like to go on vacation by myself. I'd say, to be honest, part of the majority of the years and last, this year's a little bit weird, so I'm not doing it, but historically I've taken a trip every January by myself. And that has really varied it.
Rebecca Green (02:20.182)
So, and this is actually, talked about this and people are like, wait, what is so weird? but here's why I love to travel about myself. Here's why I love to go on January. A I like to do what I need for myself. In my opinion, when you're traveling with a friend, a partner, a group, whatever you are accommodating their needs, their schedule, what sounds good to them. So get love my husband dearly. But when we go away for a weekend somewhere, it's where what makes sense for the both of us. Well, you know what?
I want to be really selfish in this time. I want to do what is best for me. Now, again, I'm drawn to the beach. I'm drawn to the sunshine. I'm drawn to the desert. I'm drawn to, you know, when you live in the Pacific Northwest, like I am starved for sunshine. So give me a trip to Scottsdale. Give me, know, so so so when you're traveling by yourself, you're going to do what you need for you. So really kind of look in what what does my spirit need? I'm then going to plan and stay.
where I want to stay. Like, let me tell you where I like to stay. Yeah, vacations and getting away with the family is sometimes not really the whole thing. I need a vacation from my vacation. So I absolutely love that. That's going to be on my top three things and 2026 when we do this in a year from now, because that's amazing. I love that. I'm doing it this year. Good.
plan trip and then so and then really check in with yourself where do you want to stay what kind of experience do you want to have do you want to stay in a nice bougie hotel that's walking distance you want to go to a retreat in middle of nowhere that you're going to meditate you know and you know eat clean food and drink green juice like what is that for you like for me like how like i love to travel and stay in funky places again
My, my, my partner, my, most of my friends are not going to want to stay where I want to stay. I want to have an adventure. I want to do something that feels really free and fun. And that's different. So for me, I love to take a January trip or do something just taking the time for myself in whatever way feels fit in that season of life. Uh, I'm going to say one.
Rebecca Green (04:37.434)
One of my favorite trips I did in the January that really was life changing for me is, again, I went, was like, I'm gonna go to LA. I looked at the forecast the next week. It was sunny. I'm like, I'll just book a trip. And I'd heard on this podcast, this meditation studio, I'd been wanting to get more into meditation because it wasn't working for me. The meditation I was doing it with clearly. I wasn't doing it right. I thought. And so I'd heard about this podcast or this studio in Los Angeles called unplug. I then.
Booked a trip to LA, stayed in some little funky Airbnb in Malibu. And I went to classes every single day. This met a patient, so I got like a week trial. I just did like five classes a day. And in that is where I stumbled into breath work that then ended up being a life changing experience for me and took me down this whole other path.
And you would never have found that if you were with your family or if we were together or you were with another friend like that wouldn't have happened. So yeah, I would have accommodated other people and not doing what I would. So that's my number one. Take this time right now. Rest, recharge. And then when once you have that for me, the next thing I'm really kind of then checking in with myself once I'm rested and I feel kind of whole again.
is what do I want for the year? Getting clear on what is for me. And again, different seasons of life, different seasons of business. What do I want my business to look like this year? I'm also going to audit last year. I'm really going to check in what worked, what did it, you know, what really lit me on fire, what really drained me. Like I'm going to cut out the things that like I even doing. Yeah. And I'm going to really be mindful of like, these are the things I love doing for me. I love events. Those light me up.
for other people, you might hate that. and really kind of being like what, what, and what was the need on auditing? You know, what was an alignment? What do you enjoy doing? What do you not? And then kind of get clear for this year, what do you want your business to look like? What are you going to lean into more of? And what are you going to pull back from? just kind of getting a clear idea of that. And then, you know, probably business plan all this stuff, but really then actually creating an action and a marketing plan for the year. So once you know what you're
Rebecca Green (06:52.398)
priorities and your goals are for this year, creating an action and marketing plan. So for me, I already have most of my marketing plan figured out for 2025. Um, in my mind, once you start getting busy, you don't have time to be able to create your plan at the, for me, I want to be actually just implementing the plan that it created when I had the downtime. Cause you don't have the downtime in real estate in March, April, May. mean, I always say like, I also know that
January's dash, February's thing will strike. then mean, March through at least June 15th, it's like guns blazing. So at that point, I want to be doing as much front loading my marketing plan so I can execute for the rest of the year. So that is how I like to spend my January. And I love that. Somebody else might. Yeah. What you were just talking about the marketing plan. I mean, it ties into so many things that we speak to being proactive versus reactive.
And when you have the pl executing on the plan, you to the busyness or worse, up front makes huge sens really when we get so bus
Rebecca Green (08:11.918)
I should get the email marketing piece out to or the newsletter out to my past clients, but I'm super crazy busy. I've got a triage, all these other things take precedent. I'm not doing it. And then at the end of the year, when things start to slow down, you look back and you're like, man, I missed the mark on that. So I love that. That's great. So with that marketing, like right now, if you're like, hey, I'm going to email marketing, you should be like,
If you don't do it right, figuring out what that looks like specifically. And that could be, again, are you going to be emailing from your email account? Who are you emailing to? Are you getting a, a service like a email marketing tool, like MailChimp or Flowdance? You're building how you have like literally just creating the framework and the structure. you doing client events? Great. Awesome. I'm going to do a Mother's Day event and I'm going to do a fall event, whatever it is, figure out that framework now. So you don't.
have to be using that head space when you're actually busy in transactions. I love that. And a quick tip I'll add to the conversation about email marketing. When you have your 12 months set up in a flow desk, for example, you could literally go in and create 12 templates for the month. And when something comes up that resonates and you think it would resonate with your client, you can quickly drop it instead of saving it as a note on your phone, you can go straight to
flow desk, open up that pre-created February newsletter and just roughly drop in notes for whatever topic you want to include in it. I teach a lot of the agents that are in my course that as a quick tip, right? And a lot of them find that getting their newsletters out throughout the year, if they're doing that, sometimes it takes as little as 10 minutes.
And the whole thing is out because they've already like thought of something and dropped it there instead of, that's something I've been working on instead of making a note on my phone or dropping a note in Notion wherever I want to use it. I'm putting it into that platform as a draft so that I can come back to it. It's already there and I don't have to search for ideas. I love that. I love that idea. Okay. So those are my three tips. How about you, Rebecca? Well, it'll be your three things that you would recommend.
Rebecca Green (10:29.688)
Three things this year, this time of year, I'm big on business planning. I'm sure everyone that's listened has heard me say that a million and one times. Business planning, evaluating expenses, understanding where you're gonna spend money and budgeting for the year is huge. Evaluating profit, understanding if you're running a profitable business or not, understanding low ROI activities and eliminating them.
really just a massive gut check on where you are with the financial health of your business. That would be my number one, because it sets the stage for everything you're going to do for the rest of the year. And that entails evaluating what happened last year. Dumping expenses that aren't serving you or your clients makes it easier when you've evaluated the numbers and you recognize they didn't serve.
a client or they didn't serve your business, it makes it easier to say no in the future. So that would be my number one thing. Let me ask you, Rebecca, this is something a little pet peeve of mine because profitability is something that a lot of it's just not talked about enough. We've been talking about this in Clever Collective specifically, you know, a lot about GCI or units sold, but not about profitability business. And I know this is a big gap of knowledge for agents.
Where again, including me, like this is something that was not a ton of strength of mind. Where do you recommend that somebody gets guidance on profitability, how to look at it, what's normal, what's not? Where do you recommend somebody start if they have no experience in this? Yeah, and it's kind of crazy to me because volume and GCI are such vanity numbers.
Irrelevant really, you know, and from my own perspective, I've had, you know, massive GCI and massive volume, you know, 100, 110 deals a year and, you know, 100, you know, 110 million, a hundred million dollars and GCI. was super, my profit was so low, right? So why are we killing ourselves to do all of this volume when what we're keeping out of it is so low?
Rebecca Green (12:50.99)
and we just get busy and busy and busy. And this industry is like, so go, go, go, do more, do more. Let's talk about our GCI. Let's talk about our volume. None of it matters if you're not making good money at the end of the day, right? And so it's kind of crazy that I don't know brokerages. I've never heard the conversation come up in a brokerage and I've never heard, I mean, it certainly doesn't come up in your real estate class when you're getting, you know,
taking your license, right? Like you're getting your license. So having a good coach that focuses on, you know, financial health and talks to you, I think is one way. Maybe even going to your brokerage, it's saying, Hey, we should open up this conversation. That would be another thing. You know, it's a big part of what I teach in the CEO Agent Academy course. I laugh all the time.
Operations numbers are not nearly as sexy as social media and being a great photographer or any of those visual elements. But boy, once you nail those things, you can really scale your business and grow it and take it to all sorts of heights, right? Also leaning into a good CPA or a good tax advisor or both, I think is another good avenue for that.
But yeah, having a good business plan in place where you're breaking down all of your expenses, not putting it all out there, right? Whether it's good, whether it's bad, just getting it all to paper so you can really analyze it helps you really figure out where the gaps are and also where the holes are. you, you coach agents, all kinds of business. have any sort of benchmarks or guidance from profitability goals that you see or recommend or industry standards?
And it's some sort of number that people get. Yeah. So astonishingly, most real estate businesses operate under 20 % profit, um, had a under 20 % profit margin and astonishingly many operate at below 5%. So of the ones under 20%, I think some 60 % of those are under 5%. So that is crazy.
Rebecca Green (15:08.846)
crazy, crazy, crazy. Like gray hairs and the wrinkles. my goodness. the sleeper. And I'm making like $3 an hour. That's nuts. So that is, you know, I always coach my small teams, different stages of your business and different models are going to yield a different profitability. But I always, you know, counsel the agents that I coach to if you're a solo agent or a small team, you really want to be in that
40, you know, 35 to 45 % r as a solo agent, I think i get up over 60%. You kno a solo agent, Tony Michael operating at a crazy high larger teams tend to oper margin, but it's the econ
Rebecca Green (16:08.258)
So their actual profit margin is gonna be a little bit less, but they're collecting a higher volume because they have more agents. So it varies based on the state of business that you're in. One thing we should drop a comment, we should drop a link into the podcast. We'll do that for a profitability workshop where you can...
log in and listen to what have to say. I'll go ahead and post a presentation that I've done for some local agents and also something that I coached you in the course. Okay, awesome. Okay, next. I think you should be evaluating your brokerage and that ties into the expenses and the profitability. Maybe you're not interested in making a move and I'm not suggesting everyone has to make a move, but what I am saying
is you should be evaluating the expense of your brokerage and what you're actually getting from the brokerage for the money that you're spending. And that's a big thing in evaluating expenses and profitability. And then just, I don't know, information is powerful, right? Understanding the landscape, understanding other business models at other brokerages, because I mean, what you don't know, you don't know. So...
Asking questions, looking around, evaluating. That was a big part of what I did in 2023, was evaluating my brokerage expenses and recognizing I wanted something different for my business. You spoke to that point too, really establishing what do I want my business to look like. And evaluating the brokerage that you're with is part of that, for sure, for a number of reasons.
Rebecca Green (17:59.182)
are ever going to switch a brokerage. is a pain in the butt. don't care. It's it's a of effort and you want to do that now in the quiet season. You're not going to want to do that in May. If you can avoid that when you're busy in transactions and then you're like swapping out signs and emails and log it. you know, there's just, takes.
energy and emotional effe switch. So if you do it, y and also I mean doing you're home work can give power if staying with the with is super important to
Rebecca Green (18:46.292)
know, silo can really be powerful and being able to negotiate better terms, more services, less fees, all of those things. That's a great point, Rebecca. Yeah. Great point. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, one hundred and forty four thousand real estate agents in twenty twenty four moved brokerages. That's yeah. Is that more than normal? I would assume I don't probably be more than normal, way more than normal. And I think that plays into slower markets.
changing business models, changing perspectives, agents getting leaner, more nimble, things like the internet, marketing opportunities. I think it's for a lot of reasons, but yeah, that's a pretty high number. And at a minimum, like you said, and I said at the onset, just understanding what's out there and understanding the landscape can be really enlightening. Yeah, and absolutely. And in my opinion, I know lot of there's been some agent
Commission compression for some agents in their business. And I will say I've also seen, you know, some brokerages out there actually increasing their expenses because they're having compression as well. You know, so I don't know. mean, really like looking at that and knowing their range. I now have worked at three different brokerages, different fees.
vastly different in commission structures and all that and in different seasons of my business. Like they all were good choices for where I was in my business. And so really kind of knowing that. So that is a great point. We change as individuals, our businesses change, our needs change. And I find a lot of agents don't consider changing brokerages.
when maybe it would be really good for them at the season that they're in, right? So that's part of the evaluation, you know, that I'm a big believer should happen at the onset of the year. You know, it all ties in. number three, my number three would be set your sights on learning. You know, one of the most common questions I get
Rebecca Green (21:01.902)
in coaching and in one on one, how do you manage your day? What are the non-negotiables? And a time block in my day, every day for learning is slow down negotiable. That's like so important. And I think everyone should implement that. Seeking out coaches, seeking out rooms, seeking out, and it ties into the evaluation actually. Part of the business plan that I walk agents through,
ask them to identify thin they need help with opera if you don't identify it, so, you know, tying that out, you know, coaching, financial planner, you know, 30 minu getting better at so
Now, I'm a believer that we can all be good at everything, right? And we have to seek out help. So I'm not saying you have to learn every aspect of your business, but you do have to learn the things that systems are a good example, right? If you're a system is only as good as what you use it for, right? Garbage in, garbage out. So maybe you have a CRM system that you really want to be using better.
30 minutes in the course your week to actually train on that because the more efficient you are using it, the more it will work for you. And ultimately, that's what you're looking for, efficiencies in your business and efficiencies in your day and things that are going to save you time. So education, again, coaching, mentoring, putting yourselves in the right rooms. Collaboration, I think, is part of that as well. Collaborating with agents at different brokerages.
collaborating with agents of the country just to re knowledge base because tha how you show up and serve your and your teeth. Totally. and also, you you talk about say, like for me, that's p I actually like to do em
Rebecca Green (23:25.802)
Attending an event in person online, hiring a coach. I've much of my career I've had business coaches. I've been like, I'm a big, I do a lot of personal development, you know, my business, my personal side. So yeah, maybe you'll hire a coach this year. Let me tell you, if you're, if your business is not worth that, that's usually my number. Like who can you hire to help get to where you want to go again? You want to get shredded? Could you do it yourself?
I mean, your body shredded. Like, how you do it yourself? Maybe. But you know what, if I really want great results, I'm probably going to hire a really great trainer, you know, so really investing in your business and finding the right partner. Are there conferences you want to attend? where do you get where the gaps you have and where can you find that information to learn? For sure, for sure. And yeah, you know, the 30 minutes a day is
For me, it's like tying b plan because I think a bu about the goals and more a way. Right? We could have have the right habits, we' them. And so, you know,
Rebecca Green (24:49.358)
But you're right, tying into you setting your sites out for the whole year. What are some of the things that you want to do throughout the year? Those conferences for immersive learning, yeah, I love that idea too. I mean, that is amazing. going to any of those or working with a coach, you still have to put the work in. You have to come back.
And you have to, regardless of who you're listening to, regardless of what podcast you're listening to, because your 30 minutes of learning every day could be a great podcast, right? At the end of the day, you still have to do the work. And so, you know, that's all about building the habits. You have to have the habits in place in order to make the change in your business that you desire. Totally. Yeah. the work. Do the work. Do the work. All right. OK.
awesome. Um, if anyone ha what they're working on, from you. Um, we appreci if you could do us a favor like passed along to someb be amazing for any of you I'm Rebecca Green. I am real real brokerage in Portland
Rebecca Green (26:11.022)
And I'm here with Kim, I'm going to turn it over to her and she can tell you a little bit about herself. Oh, I'm, I've been an active agent since 2011. I'm licensed by the EXP Realty and I also run a, a business development kind of group called Clever Collective. It's a broken agnostic group for agents in the
Portland area who are looking to level up and build community. Yeah. Kimbell. Yeah. Kimbell. Yeah. That's what I do. Yeah. Thanks so much for joining us at Hot Real Estate today. We'll catch you the next time.
