From “Hero” to Leader: Evolving Your Business

Huge Ego = Huge Mortality Rate; Business Is Humbling

As I continue my journey as an entrepreneur, I am struck by the fact the basic lessons I learned as a real estate agent apply equally to my other business ventures.

It’s all about how to leverage into long-term sustainable growth.

When you first start a business, you wear all the hats. You are your company’s CEO and its janitor all in the same day. But eventually that has to change.

You have to evolve from the mindset that you could and should do it all in order to scale and succeed long-term.

The “Hero” Phase of Business

During start-up, you are what some refer to as the “Hero” for your business, doing whatever it takes to get it off the ground and running. But when you’re taking care of every single little thing, you run the risk of hitting a brick wall and getting totally burned out.

This is a common scenario for most real estate agents. They try to be their business’ “Hero,” maintaining a death grip on every task and responsibility throughout the entire transaction.

They delude themselves into thinking that there's no one else out there who could handle any of these tasks--big or small—as well as they can themselves. They see some sort of honor in carrying the entire operation on their backs.

Actually, this “Hero” approach to your business can become a huge ego problem.

Have you ever noticed that the superheroes in movies have massive, larger-than-life, egos? When agents develop that type of ego, they become unable to recognize that their “Hero” complex is their Achilles heel that prevents them from scaling their business into sustainability. That is one of the reasons the mortality rate for real estate agents within their first two years is 87%.

That’s not to say some of these “Heroes” don’t make it through consistently enough to generate business, grab customers from different sources, and remain hyper-competitive with a strong value proposition. But there are only so many hours in the day, and at some point, they all must hit a natural ceiling for achievement. Something has to give or the “Hero” will stunt the organization's growth.

The Leading and Leveraging Phase of Business

The successful agents are the ones who realize the “Hero” phase must inevitably end, and a second phase, one of leading through leveraging, must begin.

This leveraging phase is much less exciting, and the skills required to succeed in the “Hero” phase are not the same as the ones required for the leverage phase. Nevertheless, this progression is necessary to allow your company to grow.

What is involved with leveraging or “scaling”?

Basically, leveraging gives your operations the legs to run on its own, so that you don't have to always be the legs yourself. That means finding staff, hiring and training them, and managing them. It requires leading talent to take over your responsibilities, and holding them accountable to your strategic goals.

The key to success in the leveraging phase is becoming a leader who holds your talent accountable and constantly oversees the core activities that have made your business successful.

This requires creating a concise but comprehensive operation manual, one easy-to-understand document that tells your staff how to handle the many tasks required. It’s kind of like the type of information you would provide if you were franchising your business.

Creating this manual is not an easy task for all business people. It requires carefully examining the many tasks and decisions you make almost automatically every day. And it will be an evolving document as you recognize areas that are unclear or make changes in the operations themselves. But in the end, the manual should be so comprehensive that if an alien came to earth and wanted to take over your business, you could just hand them the manual, and they could quickly replicate your business.

Many of Momentum’s agents come to us as successful Heroes who need to move on to the leadership and leveraging phase of their business.

We love teaching them how to do that, from tips on who to hire and how much to pay them, to which types of agreements and scripts could be useful. We teach them how to create accountability that can help foster an environment that leads to further success. And most of them are quick learners, as evidenced by the incredible, sustainable growth so many of our agents have achieved.