The E-Myth, Leverage and the Real Estate Agent

About four and a half years ago I read a book by Michael Gerber titled The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It.  It changed how I thought.  It changed how I acted.  It changed my checking account.  Today I want to talk to you about The E-Myth, leverage and the real estate agent.

First, as I say over and over and over again, as a real estate agent you are self-employed as a small business.  You may choose to remain as a single proprietor or incorporate as a “S” corp or LLC, but you are still a small business.  So rather than use traditional real estate agent thinking I want to encourage you to think business thinking.  That’s your first mind-shift you need to make.

The second mind-shift you need to make is to stop thinking first about what you need to do each day and set aside 10-15 minutes a day (minimum), at the beginning of the day, to think about how your business should run and what it will look like a year from now. As we all know a business does not stay the same size.  A business is constantly contracting or expanding or doing both over any given period of time.  For most of us, we want a little more for our families and security for our spouses and future generations.  I’m not talking about greed here.  I’m talking about good stewardship with the talents and abilities God has given us.

If we are to grow properly we must grow so that we do not let our work swallow up all of our free time and family time, too. When we grow properly we use leverage to create other opportunities for other people to succeed and to allow us to make more money while not giving up more time.  It’s win-win!

In the E-Myth (Chapter 9) Mr. Gerber says “Your business is not your life.”

My central theme in coaching real estate agents is “Have a business. Have a life.”

So how do you “Have a business. Have a life.”?

Leverage.  Leverage.  Leverage.  Gary Keller teaches in the The Millionaire Real Estate Agent: It’s Not About the Money…It’s About Being the Best You Can Be! that leverage is key.  Let me over-simplify this for you.  Leverage is people.  People are leverage.  Not in a bad sense but in a very, very good sense.

My businesses started growing when I first started training, then started empowering and then started letting go of my leverage (people) to let them start to fly on their own.  By following this simple process I have helped to create income, very good income, for my team of six other people.  I’ve equipped and empowered them to do the same and now we are ready for the next cycle to begin.

Surely, not everyone of them will grasp the concept and/or choose to grow, develop and advance. But the opportunity is there for them to do so.

As real estate agents you must be seeing the future.  Teams are gobbling up market share.  Successful team leaders spend more time orchestrating their people (leverage) than they spend in the day to day tasks that they can train others to do.  This simple concept was so hard for me to accept that it took me YEARS to get it through my skull.  I thought “People want to work with me!”  Gary Keller pointed out “People want to work with your standards, your systems and your results.”  (Pages 59-61 of the MREA highlighted above.)

There are so may directions I can take this conversation.  This is the FUN of business.  Developing a profitable business while helping people to excel and create a life for themselves is FUN!  I implore you to read The E-Myth, learn about leverage and think of your real estate business as a business.  Your business will thank you.  Your checkbook will thank you.  And you family will surely thank you!