Solving REAL Bottlenecks For Growth

Cole Ruud-Johnson (00:00): Today I show you guys pump to bring this one to you going in the me guys, we're almost halfway through the year. So this is a big one for you to actually make real progress in your business the rest of the year and, uh, you know, grow your income, grow your business and your team. This one is all about solving real bottlenecks that matter that'll help you move the needle forwards. Whether you're just starting or you're looking to go to million 2 million, 3 million or beyond, this is the episode for you. So without further ado, let's get right into it. People don't fail at real estate because they suck, they fail because there's too many ways to succeed. That's why I suggest you focus on the most important skills and all of real estate, which is finding deals. I'm Cole Johnson and in this podcast I share the exact steps I've used the sourced 400 deals by age 24. This will allow you to do three things, control your deal flow, make unlimited income, and build your empire As an off-market operator, (00:53): We all want to, uh, scale our companies. Uh, talk to real estate investors all the time that wanna do one thing that's scale. The real estate company do more deals and oftentimes real estate investors branch off into other businesses as well, or other aspects of real estate. But we run under the same problems, guys, the same problems. And I had learn this the way, the same problem you face in a million in one business, you're probably gonna face around the same range in another business. And I talk about a lot on this show, but what got, what got you here? 500,000 a year million be what gets you to the next level in your business, in your life. You have to learn new things, adapt and change your strategy. This podcast is a lot about implementing small things and this and this show is no different. (01:31): You know, so many of us entrepreneurs, you guys, especially in real estate, restart at wholesaling, we start flipping houses and we start solving for what I call symptoms. And you know, I talk about HOA a lot, hustler, operator, architect. And in the hustler stage, a lot of us solve for symptoms of a problem, of a bottleneck. We're always solving symptoms of a bottleneck. When you're starting out, right, you don't have a ton of time or you have time, you don't have a ton of money, right? You naturally have a lot of bottlenecks and with bottlenecks come, um, you doing a lot, you wearing a lot of hats. So we're, we're the ones handling title, escrow. We're the ones calling sellers. We're the ones selling deals. We're the ones managing the crm. We're ones doing the marketing. And that's great you guys. That's amazing. Cause you have to start somewhere. (02:07): Most people get stuck in that hustler stage forever, right? They're flipping homes, they're driving job sites nonstop. They're doing whole selling. They're talking to buyers and they're talking to sellers and they're talking to title company and they're working 10, 12 hour days. I had a call with one of my one-on-one guys last week, Daniel, incredible smart guy. And he's doing 60, 80 grand a month by himself, but he's working 12 hours day and he's making three times as much now as he was in his job at least. But, you know, you start having those thoughts of manage, should I just go back? At least then I had a life. And I don't want that for you guys. I don't want you guys have a has your business. I business serves your life. And don't, companies are successing. You do, you do need to internalize is how to solve for actual bottlenecks and constraints in your business, ok? (02:54): What I mean by that is, let's give an example. If you're looking to do a million dollars next year, right? You're solving for different things than you did when you're trying to get to, but so many of us were solving downstream issues from a dam. The actual bottleneck in our business. We think of a river, um, when it hits a dam, right? Only certain parts start getting through. And that's how we operate as business owners running around on fire solving symptoms and not the main issue, the bottleneck. And there's three categories a bottleneck can fall into in any business, right? You have leads, right? Marketing leads, you have lead conversion, which is sales, and you have operations, which is product, team, backend, fulfillment. Those are the three buckets, you know, leads, lead, conversion, and, uh, operations that anything can fall into in a business when it comes to a bottleneck, right? (03:34): So you need to look at your business on paper and say, what is actually stopping me from making more money? Which is scale. Scale isn't more revenue, scale is more profit, right? So a lot of times to get profit up, you have to get revenue up, but sometimes companies instead raise price on a product that also brings scale, right? Think about Starbucks earlier this year, and they raise the price in their 10 or 20 cents marginal cost difference. The consumer usually isn't scared off by that, but for them, that was one way to increase profit without adding new product or new friction to their business. With that being said, you guys have to look at in your company right now, in each department, right? At first leads, right seller, do we quality leads? How do leads? That's an issue, right? A lot of us are Chas chasing symptoms of that issue, which is we're, we're constantly buying the next course. (04:18): We're constantly chasing the next beautiful magical marketing strategy. But that's not what actually solves that bottleneck. What solves bottleneck is simplicity and two predictability, right? Predictable way to leads in. That's one marketing channel, right? Like, and Alex talks us about this a lot, but better is better, right? New isn't better. The better is better, you know, so if you guys are already already getting three leads in the door from cold calling, you're doing deals, don't go add on another marketing channel, right? Do more cold calling until you maximize that marketing channel. Otherwise, why would you be doing in the first place? You're not gonna maximize it. So the first bottle that need to solve is getting to a point with your lead flow that you can actually scale. Cause one, two leads a day. Getting in the door isn't gonna scale your real estate company. (04:58): Three or four or five. And a big part of that's getting comfortable with actually spending money. And you guys have to start thinking about marketing as an investment in your real estate company. Cause it's, and that, that was a big change. The change for all of my companies. When I send out just social media, which you guys watch or listen to this podcast, just for me to produce podcasts twice a week every single month with publishers, editors, um, everything like that for me to produce the shorts I do with editors, for me to produce the content I do for me to produce everything that I do. I probably pay out about 20, $25,000 a month between editors, content creators in terms of I guess short form editors, podcast editors, everyone that's involved in my content ecosystem, right? Is thousand a month. And I get excited to spend that money cause that's an investment in distribution and that's a big bottleneck, right? (05:41): For any company. I, I have agencies, right? I have my call center, I have other consulting. One of biggest bottleneck in both of those companies, right? Is lead flow. And so my content distribution maximizes lead flow, leaf flow, which maximizes distribution, which solves that bottleneck for me. So that's how you guys start. Have to start thinking if spent towards a detangling, a bottleneck in your company. And solving that isn't an expense. It's an investment. And so when you guys look on paper, if you have the money rolling in, right, and you have the bandwidth to spend more money in your business, that's not gonna hurt your life, then you can say, okay, what's the bottleneck in this company? Right? If you have a good partnership, if you, if you're a solar operator and you, you understand the business, right? That your bottleneck is at first leads. (06:20): Do you have enough leads to grow a company? Most of you guys, you have to be honest with yourself. You're looking for all these magical solutions. This next software, the next system, the next mastermind, the next tool, the next way to you, innovation, all this stuff, you're not solving for the actual bottleneck that you have. And for most of you guys right now, you don't have enough fricking leads. And I'll be direct here cause I get this question all the time, is how do I scale? How do I scale? How do I scale? Ok, well the first thing you need look at between leads, conversion and operations. The first thing, you're not even solving the main problem leads. You need more leads. I don't care if you hire our call center, different call center, you do texting, you do paper lead, you do mail, I don't care. (06:54): You need to find something that works for you and stick to it until you can get at least 10 leads a day in the door for yourself. Or a sales guy. If it's you right now and you're getting leads in the door for yourself, you need 10 leads a day, you can handle that. You can have eight to 10 new leads a day. Build your pipeline, work your pipeline, use automated follow up and nurture sequences. You can do that. That's the first thing you need to solve for is getting enough leads in the door free to do revenue. It's math, right? It's, it's absolute math. Why? What's the reason that McDonald still advertises, right? They don't need their billion dollar company, but marketing is so important, it's an investment for them. They know if they spend X amount of dollars, X amount comes back in. (07:27): And you know that in this business, even if you suck, you should be getting a three to four x return on your marketing. Two worst case. And if you ask someone, Hey, if you've spent a hundred thousand dollars and you knew 200 is coming back three months later, would you do that a hundred percent of the time over and over and over again. That's what good companies do, good operators do and responsible business owners do. So the first bottleneck, which is 90% of you guys that I talk to you have to solve for is more leads. And that's in any business, right? We generate thousands of leads across our companies every single year, right? Just in our call center guys, beyond, beyond our real estate company, just in our call center, we generate almost 2000 leads in the past 24 months with no paid adss, all organic. (08:03): That was a bottleneck for us. What we solved this, you guys need to look at solving number one, it's leads. It's pretty simple. Hire a cold call service cold, call yourself, hire a protection service, text yourself, hire, pay, click service, do pay, click yourself, send out mailers, whatever that is that you're already scaling. I've talked plenty about marketing and cold calling and blah blah blah. And other podcasts you can go back and listen to. Highly worth your time. But that's the first thing you guys need to solve for and that's most of you guys is, is leads. You need enough leads to get enough reps. Cause everyone talks about, yeah, get better at sales, you have to get better at sales, but how can you really get better at sales? We don't have reps and you have to have reps. So that's either working for a different company or getting on the phone seller yourself, ok, once get past leads, then you can conversion. (08:41): That is sales. But again, need reps up conversion but also with lead conversion, right? Those follow up systems, having a sales process, right? Having some tracking systems. You track you retal training, playing around with your scripting, those are all things that go into lead conversions as well as um, you know, lead to call time, right? How long does it take you to call lead? Lead comes in. So many people I talk with and my one-on-one clients or group clients with our group, they come in, they say, yeah, cool, you know, I get lead comes in and you know, three days later I get to it, you know, I have kids, have a job. Cool man, well I a hundred percent understand, but your business right now is also a baby for you and your business needs attention. If a lead comes in and sits there for three days, they're not gonna remember who you're, so many people talk to them. (09:23): They get so many postcards, so many texts, so many calls like everyone does for everything, right? I get probably 20 touch points a day about every car that I own get 20 touch points a week. I get, I get postcards in the all the time about my house. So whatever the situation is, you guys marketing to someone for other people are as well. So you can't let leads sit. So those are things that go into the lead conversion process. You can need to, if I have enough leads, how do I conversion? Cause before operations doesn't matter. You don't need to system, you don't need to automate, you don't need to put VAs in place if you're not getting leads and deals in the door. So many people come to us in our groups and they say, Hey, you know, I just wanna automate, I just wanna delegate. (09:57): I just wanna systemize. Oh system, uh, automate, uh, passive income doesn't exist. Does not exist like you think. Its solve for the bottom you're facing. If you solve the lead bottleneck and you truly have dialed in on lead flow, having enough lead flow for your company then need to solve for conversion. Cause if you can't convert your leads, you can't do anything else, your operations don't matter, right? If we're talking this business, a conveyor stuff's coming the front of conveyor but nothing coming. The backside, no matter put in the conveyor belt then cares you business. And so focusing after leads on lead conversion and um, tangent here, that's why I hate people to see people on Facebook and coffee shops and just mentally masturbating. Cause you guys aren't solving for what matters. And we get so caught up in responding to emails, responding to Slack, gonna events, buying new courses, buying new masterminds, sitting on Instagram, sitting on Twitter, mentally masturbate over and over and over again. (10:44): We never actually better off focusing, focusing on one simple thing a week and doing that every single day for four hours than you would what you're doing right now. Most of you guys. So solving for first leads and lead optimization, right? That's putting the reps trainings back to calls, doing script training, um, and, and really crafting the fleet conversion process for your company. The last part of this guys is operations. Once you have stuff moving down the conveyor belt, then how do you make the conveyor belt more position more efficient? But that's not gonna take you from, you know, zero to five. That's gonna take you from seven to 8.2 on a scale, zero being the worst, 10 being great at business, right? Improv your operational side is gonna take you from a seven point two's not gonna take from a zero to five, zero to five more leads, better conversion after that, you guys, it's, yeah, you might wanna have some virtual virtual assistance. (11:29): You might wanna start making some hires. Document your SOPs, create a playbook, track your KPIs better hire, train, and manage people the right way. You know, going from 10 99 w2, right? Doing the things that actually take you from, you know, eight, seven to 9, 7, 8 0.5. Those are gonna take you from zero to 5, 0 6. That's gonna be more leads in getting deals in the door. And I can look back in our real estate company guys, and a lot of times when we got stagnant, I was just focusing on the wrong stuff and I take accountability for a lot of the issues I had in my past partnership is, you know, we started focusing on the wrong stuff. Cause we thought we got us to a million half, you know, one year we did almost three including flips and wholesale to, you know, five. And that's, that's not the case. (12:02): You can't get to five what one, what two, three you have. Start focusing on the next bottleneck. Cause bottlenecks change at every single level, right? It goes from weeds to conversion and then operations. Like, you know, in our call center business, right? Guys, an example bottleneck was leads, plenty of leads. Now then we have operations, we have a great team. Then right now our biggest bottleneck is retention. And it's going up tremendously. But if you, you know, new leads don't matter if you don't solve that bottleneck and that's gonna give us 3, 4, 5, 600 grand a month, that's how you continue to solve bottlenecks in the company is slowing down, focusing on one bottleneck at a time. So if I can tell you guys one, anything on this Monday, according, it's actually Sunday May 7th. So you guys can get this May 8th. If I can tell you anything take away on this 8th of May, um, we're almost halfway through the year already. (12:43): You start solving real bottlenecks. You have you guys, again, hustler phase. You have to go through it. You have to be the ones door knocking and cold calling and doing text gets to get some deals in the door. But then start solving, start solving for the issues you're actually facing. Not problems down, not not symptoms, right? A symptom not having enough leads is that you're worried constantly about your pipeline. Cause you have two leads coming in day. That's a symptom. The root cause is more lead flow conversion. You're worried that you suck on the phone, you can't seem to get enough deals signed. Fixing that, you know, studying, training, putting the hours in, putting the reps in, fixes the actual bottleneck for operations, right? You can't get deals closed fast enough deals are falling through, sellers are confused, earn moneys getting forgotten, putting playbook, SOPs, a team in place solves that. So, solves sounds a lot more simple than it, but focus on one thing guys. Focus on one bottleneck this week and ruthlessly attack that and put everything out off as later. You're gonna get to it later, but right now you gotta solve one bottleneck at least this weekend. That is my message for you on this Monday. (13:41): Great show. I loved recording that one. I think it's, it's something that's been on my mind a lot. I constantly have to remind myself, you know, what constraints, bottlenecks, I actually need to solve for versus doing the busy work, right? We all get caught up and overwhelmed and we just wanna control something. We wanna, you know, respond to the email, handle the slack message, pay the bill, do something that feels like true work. Really we need to be focusing on is what actually moves the needle and removes bottlenecks from our company. And that's what I, what I want you guys to focus on this week is how do you actually remove whole bottleneck this week and then do that every single week. Success especially in business guys is knocking down one domino, domino over a time. Why I realize that more and more as I get older is it's about doing one thing well and the next thing well and the next thing, well not 20 things decently well at one time. So when you can do more and more as your team grows and whatnot. So I don't truly mean it has to be one individual thing, but that is my message for you guys this week. As always, apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to a show, even your rating, review, share on your stories. And again, as always, DM me your feedback. I love, uh, your guys' feedback on these shows. So as always, you're only one deal away.