How to Start a Real Estate Business: Insights from Greg Harrelson

Every week, our Real Geeks coach Greg Harrelson breaks down a new concept of real estate in an insight-filled mastermind session. As the head of Harrelson Group, generating hundreds of organic leads every single month, we tend to follow his advice.

This week, Greg decided to bring it back to the basics: if he were to start in real estate from scratch today, what would he do?

Expect to learn which daily habits he would put in place, the mindset he would embody, and the strategies you can use to make this year the most successful for your real estate practice yet.

Remember, if you want personalized help from Greg himself, join his private community for Real Geeks users at RGMastery.com.

How to Start a Real Estate Business – The Mindset

As real estate professionals, we are not employees. According to the IRS we are independent contractors. In other words, it means we are our own business.

So to get started, Greg believes that the first thing you should do this year in order to grow your real estate practice is ask yourself the right question.

Most of us at the beginning of the year will be asking:

"How can I generate more this year?"

"How can I close more deals this year?"

"What new channels can I try to grow my database this year?"

According to Greg, these are all the wrong questions to be asking.

The right question to be asking is this: "if I were to start all over in real estate, what would I do?"

This question is fantastic because it does two things:

Number one, it forces you to really think about the fundamental activities that have grown and will continue to grow your business as time goes by. It cuts out all the excess "fat", all the bells and whistles, and it brings it back to what you know really works.

And number two, it forces you to consider the current atmosphere. The question is "if I were to start today in real estate", which means you'd be starting with all the information you already got about the state of the industry and the market you're in. 

You know about the NAR lawsuit. You know about how buyers' behaviors have changed. You know the role AI is playing in real estate. 

So this question allows you to both consider the evergreen activities that will always work to grow in real estate, and the specific considerations of the current atmosphere.

With this in mind, let's move on to the four things Greg Harrelson knows he would focus on if he were to start a real estate business from scratch.

Starting a Real Estate Business: The Question of Time

If Greg were to start a real estate business from scratch, the first thing he would consider is how much time he could actually dedicate to it.

Now, why is this important for us seasoned realtors? Because the start of the year is a fantastic time to reevaluate our goals and design the lives we want.

So, even if you're not starting from scratch, it's a good idea to come back to the question of time, for a very simple reason: 

You should be thinking about how much time you would want your ideal real estate business to take you.

Think about it: Say you're making great money with your business. Not enough to retire tomorrow, but good enough to change your car and upgrade some of your restaurant choices. However, this business takes you 14 hours to run each day. And if you're not working those 14 hours every day, you don't make as much money.

Would this still be a good real estate business? Probably not.

So think about how much time you would ideally like to dedicate to a profitable real estate business, and this year, see if you can slowly experiment with scaling back your hours while maintaining the same profit, or even growing.

Some other considerations in the topic of time will naturally be:

Do you have a family? Do you want to build a family this year?

Do you have another job? 

How much time does that job leave for real estate, and is the goal to eventually quit this job anytime soon?

Perhaps you've got all the time in the world to dedicate to starting and growing a real estate business. That's great.

Now the next question is: what are you dedicating this time to?

For Greg, if he were to start a real estate business today, he would start his day at 7:45 in the morning, be at the office no later than 8am, and then work until 4pm. 

"Some agents ask me if they shouldn't be seeing people in the evening," he adds, "No. The only agents who need to see people in the evening are those who aren't starting their day early enough."

Fair point.

The last thing to remember on the topic of figuring out your ideal schedule, is that it should be something that you can commit to in the long run.

Sure, you can work nine hours a day today. But for how long will you stick to it, because people will probably expect that from you, at least for a period of time. 

"Consistency is the thing that's most lacking in the real estate industry," says Greg.

Starting a Real Estate Business: Defining Your Activities

Once you've figured out what you want your ideal schedule to be (and the one you can commit to), the next step when figuring out how to start a real estate business is determining your daily activities.

What are the things that you'll be consistently doing, day in and day out to grow your business?

Are you lead generating? Are you working on marketing? When are you working on servicing your clients? When are you going to be showing property?

Here's a sample schedule from Greg, assuming you're working from 8am to 4pm:

8am – 10am: You do nothing but call your database. Call your hot leads, your old leads, your FSBOs, your past clients, your circles of influence, your for rent by owners, etc.

10am – 1pm: You service your active clients. You follow up with them, set appointments, give presentations, sign contracts, etc.

Depending on the amount of clients you're juggling, this can also be a good time to finish some admin or marketing work, like writing a blog post for social media, crafting an email workflow, or optimizing your Google Profile.

1pm – 4pm: You show properties.

The idea is that you stick to these time blocks religiously. So that if someone asks you to show a property at say 10am, you say that you're busy at that time but that you'd be happy to do it at 2pm. 

Measure, Measure, Measure

In our thought experiment of "how to start a real estate business from scratch", there's one thing Greg knows for sure he would do if he were to start over.

And it's probably the thing nearly every agent misses when they first get started.

Measuring their business.

First, measuring in net numbers.

How many contacts you added. How many attempts you made. How many appointments you set.

And then, figuring out the ratios:

What's your attempt to contact ratio. What's your contact to appointment ratio. What's your appointment to showing ratio. What's your appointment to listing taken ratio. What's your listing taken ratio to contract ratified ratio. What's your contract ratified to closing ratio.

"A lot of people are in the real estate business right now, but unfortunately, they haven't been running it like a business." says Greg.

Ouch.

So if you're starting from scratch, or you're thinking about the key aspects of a perfect real estate business – don't forget your key performance indicators. 

Measure. Measure often. And then measure again.

Starting a Real Estate Business: Finding Your Main Lead Sources

The last thing Greg covers when it comes to the main aspects of running a successful real estate business is the main lead sources you're going to commit to.

This is a great thing to ask yourself whether you're thinking of how to build a real estate business, or you're thinking of how to make this your best year in business yet.

What are the lead sources that have worked for you thus far, and how much time and resources did they take you? Are there new channels you'd like to explore this year?

You probably don't need to reinvent the wheel here. The best lead source channel is the one that you can consistently stick to. Because ultimately, as with most things in life, whoever stays in the game wins the game.

So think about your strengths, your weaknesses, and the resources you have at your disposal.

Maybe you don't have a lot of money to spend this year, but you have ample time to spend writing blog posts, creating social media content, and looking at other ways to build your online presence organically.

Perhaps you're an aggressive prospector, and that's how you'd rather spend your time on.

Maybe it's the opposite – you have no time, you only want to focus on closing, and you have some money to invest. Here's where a service like Real Geeks' in-house marketing might come in handy. We take your budget and invest it for you to fill your pipeline with qualified leads, while you focus on building those relationships. 

Final Thoughts on How to Start a Real Estate Business

Most of you who are reading this are already in real estate. You don't need to be learning your scripts, build your website, understand commission splits, pick a brokerage.

And yet—a lot of you are not treating real estate like a business. 

So this year, imagine you were to start over from scratch, and ask yourself how to build a real estate business that is successful – not only today, but in the long run.

You'll probably find that there are many things you're doing today that you shouldn't be wasting your time on. You'd probably focus on the activities that matter most. You'd probably stop neglecting the lead channels that have consistently brought you leads in the past, and that you've ignored because of some shinny new thing everyone's been talking about.

Sometimes, going back to the basics is exactly what we need. Because there's a reason those tend to prevail in time.

To your success, agent.