Adam Hergenrother: A Life Of Discipline Leads To Freedom
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This episode was taken from the REL Freedom event "Freedom Con 2020" that was held in October of 2020. This episode is hosted by Mike Swenson and Vlad Kats.
Adam Hergenrother runs a $1 billion company which includes a Real Estate company (HergGroup), a Coaching & Training Organization (Achieve Freedom Coaching), a construction company (BlackRock Construction), among others. In addition, he also has authored a book with his Chief of Staff Hallie Warner (The Founder & The Force Multiplier) and runs a podcast (Business Meets Spirituality). In this episode, Adam talks about how you have to focus on the disciplines in your life in order to gain the freedom that you want. You can't lead all of these companies, take on physical challenges, spend time meditating, traveling, and being with your family, without locking in the discipline of how to best spend your time. Hear Adam share his wisdom to help you to understand that if he can do it, you can do it too!
In this episode, hosted by Mike Swenson, we discussed:
- Adam started buying real estate early, he was driven and trying to prove himself to the world that he can make money.
- He realized the point behind everything he did, and motivated himself internally to do it.
- He started taking a different thinking approach, his organization started growing rapidly and he now owns four market centers.
- Due to the transitory environment in the real estate industry, Adam and his leadership team decided not to bring anybody into the organization that wasn't 51% culture first 49% profit.
- The retention rate has grown, Adam’s team has a 95.7% retention rate with his agents.
- They have over 100 free trainings through their organization throughout the year.
- Adam is taking all of his learning and putting to his podcast, called Business Meets Spirituality.
Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro and overview on Adam’s career
2:21 - When he started buying multiple investment properties
11:40 - When he explains his two types of freedom
23:29 - The 3 principles that guide Adam’s life
28:21 - What Adam’s biggest mistake made in business
39:36 - Adam shares his take-aways about life standards
44:35 - How he started creating Business Meets Spirituality
Links In This Episode:
Adam's Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/ahergenrother/
Adam's Facebook account: https://www.facebook.com/adamhergenrother2
Hergenrother Realty Group: https://www.herggroup.com/
Adam Hergenrother Coaching: https://businessandlifecoaching.com/
Black Rock Construction: https://www.blackrockus.com/
The Founder & The Force Multiplier Book: https://founderandforcemultiplier.com/
Business Meets Spirituality Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/business-meets-spirituality/id1484553881
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Full transcript here:
Mike Swenson
Welcome to the REL freedom podcast where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some real freedom together.
Mike Swenson
Hi, Mike Swenson here with REL freedom, you know, this episode of our real freedom stories is going to be a little bit different. So recently, we had an event called freedom con. And on there we had some wonderful guests that share their stories, and some of their tips and successes on their journey towards financial and time freedom. In this particular episode, we're going to pick up with Adam Hergenrother, and he's going to talk about his story of how he helped build a billion dollar company consumer I picked up from the event, and we hope you enjoy it.
Mike Swenson
So Adam is CEO of a billion dollar company, that is a wonderful Feat. And I'm sure he'd love to share that with you KW market center owner also is owner of the Herggroup, which has locations all over, I've got a map on the kind of the final slide here, which you guys can see also has construction company coaching and training organization. So just a guy who knows how to get a lot out of life and do it with purpose, which is really what he's going to share today.
Adam Hergenrother
Well, I'm just hoping that people spend a few minutes with me and realize that if I can do it, they can do it. That's kind of a score. for everybody. Let me share my screen. Again. Thanks. I want to thank all you guys for presenting but also for putting this on, a lot of people don't understand the time and energy it takes to put these events on and for the value that you're bringing to, you know, entrepreneurs and really kind of helping people from the wealth side. So thanks, guys, for all the speakers for joining in and jumping in and helping out. I just want to start I love this quote, this is something that I look at on a daily basis, which is just as really the only discipline ones in life are truly free. And I'm going to get into freedom and what that means to me.
Adam Hergenrother
So in probably around 2000, I bought my first investment property and I was a freshman in college, I was actually renting a place and I bought my first one to start building wealth, in fact, actually started buying multiple investment properties for I actually even owned a place myself personally because I saw it as a liability. So I started buying real estate early on which then it kind of got me into real estate. At this time in my life, I was very mercenary driven, I was all about money, I was all very I was very hubris, I was very, like the world should kind of bowed out to me. And I really was kind of building this and trying to prove to myself into the world that I can make money.
Adam Hergenrother
I'll probably approach it from a little bit different angle than then I know Bly and I had a little conversation about it. If you know anything about me, I'd love to go really deep inwardly, I was on all this, click the slide over here and kind of give you an example of this. That's me to the left. I know it's crazy to compare it to where I was the metamorphosis kind of my life.
Adam Hergenrother
Then I had this this wonderful idea that if I was going to make, and at that time, for me, it was about half a million dollars net income. So I was gonna make a half million dollars income, somehow the world was gonna just show up with this giant present that I was gonna open up and it's gonna make me feel perfect. And I and when I was 26, I hit this. And I remember having this conversation with my mom. And I shared the stories I was sitting there, my mom's most unassuming person doesn't care anything about money. And I was like, Hey, you know, I made about half a million dollars in net income. And I'm in little Vermont, we have more cows than people. And she's like, Oh, that's great, like, pass the ketchup. And I realized in that moment, right then that people just don't care.
Adam Hergenrother
People don't care about what you're doing as salary. This impacts them in some way. And so I actually got not necessarily like depressed, but I got pretty down on myself. Because I had been after since college, I've been after this goal of, hey, this linear progression, if I can just get this the next next they'll be happier, then once I get this, I'll do it. And it must be this next number. And when it didn't hit at 100,000, I was like, must be 250, that must be the number that it was 300, then it was if I get to 500, that's definitely going to be the rival point in my life. And when so when I hit it, I just realized that there was nothing externally that was actually going to give me any lasting joy in my life.
Adam Hergenrother
And so for about a year, year and a half, I kind of saw, I kind of went around and try to figure out what was going on in my life. And I realized that point that had nothing to do externally. And this was all internal. And so for the last 14 years of my life, I've been on this inward journey, which is kind of metamorphosis of my life in itself, starting out building very mercenary all about what can people do for me? How can I get something out of a person, you know, show up in my office? And how am I going to get something out of this buyer agent or this person or this employee? And sure that works and you can run a profitable company that way. I'm not saying you can't, if that's your culture, that's awesome. It wasn't for me. And so over the years, we've spent much more focus on this is kind of how I explained at the end of the day for each individual something tips, the scales, either culture or money, and you get to pick which one and so for me I wanted to end beginning it was about money, tip the scales all for money.
Adam Hergenrother
Then over the course of my life, as I kind of continued to make this transition, I realized that I wanted to, I never wanted to build an organization that I wanted to run away from. I never wanted to build the life that I was trying to get out of, I was never trying to have a life that I was trying to get through Monday to get to a Friday to get to a weekend, I actually wanted to build something that I was excited about coming to work and using my enthusiasm, energy to create and build in a life with my family and close friends that I got to celebrate with. And so I just, I started taking a different thinking approach to this. And the interesting thing about this is the minute I really started making all these inward changes in my life, my organization started growing rapidly, you know, I now own, you know, four market centers.
Adam Hergenrother
And it just everything just started growing exponentially into all the things that we were really looking forward to doing. And our construction company hrg, everything, our coaching, our foundation work, everything started growing. And the funny thing is, is I cared less about the, let me rephrase that. So when all of this kind of started working towards that direction, I started putting in place that I wanted to build an organization where people came here, because they wanted to be part of our organization for life. Now, I'm not foolish to think that everyone's gonna stay there for life. But that's the mentality that I wanted to start with. So many people in real estate, particularly in the real estate world, we live in this transitory environment where people come and go all the time. And that's part of it. And that's fine. But I wanted, I didn't want to have this turnover rate, when we started building hrg, we had a turnover rate, we bring 30 agents in in 30, we leave.
Adam Hergenrother
I remember going to my leadership team, five or six years ago, and just saying, or maybe four years ago, and just say, Hey, I don't want to build a company like this. I don't, yes, we're making money. But I don't want to I don't want to be showing up every day, not knowing who the 30 people are 30 people coming in, it's not how I want to build that organization. And so we develop and we sat down on our leadership team, and I said, I want to partner with people that want to be with us for life, and at least take that approach when you're first getting into business with each other. And so we made this, we made the decision that we weren't going to bring anybody into our organization that wasn't 51% culture first 49% profit. And so that's literally the end. Since we've put that into place.
Adam Hergenrother
One of the things that I'm most proud of our team is we have a 95.7% retention region retention rate with our agents. And we have about 240 agents in our team. So it's not like five or six people in there, our retention rate has grown at the same level as our ability to track the people that want to be part of our organization. And part of this guy's what really changed for me was, instead of running down, this is how I picture a lot of people building their organizations is let's say you're 100 yards from a stage and you're big, you're an auditorium with 1000 people. And most people start from the back and they want to run towards the stage.
Adam Hergenrother
They start stopping the audience and grabbing people and throwing them over their shoulder then grabbing another person throwing them a sled and they're trying to carry these people up to the stage, you're trying to carry them with them in their business, instead of really being very clear on who you are, who you want to attract what you do and what you stand for their mission and vision. And then, and then as you run towards the stage, you want to see who stands up and runs with you, you have a lot more energy behind you, in you with your organization, when you're hiring people that want to run faster than you every day, I think a lot of us are in situations where we're bringing people up the mountain, and then at night, we let them go the next morning or the next couple days, we're doing the same thing over and over. And it's exhausting.
Adam Hergenrother
It's exhausting, because you're trying to get people who really don't want to run at your level, versus when you can really take the approach of I want to lead with culture, and I'm only going to be in relationship with people who are reaching out to us and really want to be part of our ecosystem. Not because look, anybody can get leads, anybody can be paid a certain dollar amount. Those things are kind of ubiquitous. What people can't get is your culture, your ecosystem, your growth, the the conversations that we have around personal growth using this as a, you know, business is nothing but this conduit for personal growth. If you think it was anything different, my opinion yours approaching business from the wrong ways.
Adam Hergenrother
So now as we kind of start looking at how we build our organizations, we take the approaches when we show up in the parking lot, there's two things that I encourage all of our CEOs or leaders to do is number one is to make sure that when you're walking inside, you're not trying to get something from anybody. You're trying to go there and contribute. I would even use the word serve because like a flower opens up every day you wouldn't walk by a dandelion saying are you serving today it's just contributing. And so when you just wake up and you want to contribute to the well being of other people, and when you're doing that, you then become one of the reasons or the reason why somebody else wants to show up for work. And so we have this ethos in our, in our world of all Adam heard about their companies, but you know, 600 or so people and kill all of those people in our world, I want to ask every single one of them is why do you want to be the what can you do so that you're the reason why somebody else wants to show up for work? And I think if you can, if you can, each person can answer that question.
Adam Hergenrother
Everybody is growing together. And so when I think about the metamorphosis of my life, I think it's really important to kind of point out the thinking patterns, the challenges that we've had, but also the mistakes that I've made in this into where we are today, in terms of being able to really be excited about showing up to work and contributing and growing. And yes, there's challenges every second, there's challenges. In fact, most of anything that shows up at my desk now, nothing good shows up here. I mean, it's like, at this stage, anything that's that's good people are taken and running and our CFOs, or CEOs, organizations are handling, it's the things they can't handle that show up here.
Adam Hergenrother
So I understand it's all about those challenges. Thanks, man. When you can come together and make room for other people, you just start growing at a different pace, and everyone starts running together, you want your organization running, so that if you have four people in your organization, before plus four is not 400%, it's 700%. And the only way that that happens, that type of cumulative amount of energy we can take on other things, is if everybody's rowing in the same direction, everyone's running in the same direction you've created that. That's kind of the metamorphosis of this. Now, I know we're talking about freedom here. And this is, I love this conversation. So thanks for inviting me to have this.
Adam Hergenrother
There are two different types of freedom in my world. And hopefully, you can follow me a little bit if I go too deep, I apologize on this, there's what I refer to as relative freedom. The relative freedom is, I'm financially free, I have money to do what I want, I have leverage and employees so I can do what I want my business to maybe there's some physical freedom, where you're in good enough shape where you can do most of the things that you want to do, then there's, you know, the maybe even, you know, social freedom to go hang out with your partners or your family. So there's this relative freedom that we can have in our life. And that's what most people are after. But I have to ask you, the question is, has that really made you create and have this sustaining level of joy?
Adam Hergenrother
Does financial freedom really give you the joy that you're looking for? And the answer, if you're honest with yourself is no, you're still disturbed. And so I always unpack this to one more layer is I believe there's what's called the absolute freedom, which is what I believe most, and everybody searching for, particularly on this call, the absolute freedom is to be able to walk through this world not being disturbed, so that anybody can say anything to you at any point in time. And yes, you have to deal with it. But you're no longer getting disturbed. Yes, you can make a billion dollars, you can lose a billion dollars, you're still not getting disturbed, you may not be happy about it, but you have this joy in your peace in your life, you may be you know, midnight on a on a Interstate, changing your tire and mill the rain, which may not have a bunch of happiness, but you can still have joy, you may be lying on your deathbed, at some point in time, you may not be happy about it, but you can still have a sense of peace around it.
Adam Hergenrother
So there's this underlying absolute freedom, that this yearning for authenticity that people are after. And so the first ways you kind of start to uncover what is freedom is to ask yourself is, am I searching for something externally to make myself turned on inside, which is what we're doing? We're looking for things we're trying to get there indirectly. And what I mean by that is, when you say I feel great, you what you really mean is you have this uplifting amount of energy through your system. So if you get a big deal, or you hire a big agent, or you make a bunch of money that month, momentarily, you feel this surge of energy come in there, and you feel a surge so you lifts you up, what lifts you up energy does, the freedom is to have this energy rolling through you at all times, no matter what is happening.
Adam Hergenrother
Because my starting position in life is there's me who's in here, the witness who is witnessing this human being experiencing everything. You are the witness who gets to experience life, there is life and there's everything else. And so when you stop becoming so fixated on everything else in terms of thinking that is you, you'll have this ability to start working on yourself to walk around with ultimate freedom. It's like you wouldn't walk up to your car. Somebody says who you are, you're not gonna say on my car. No, your car is just a vehicle for you. So is it your body and so is it your mind? Those are just vehicles, they are just tools in your, in your existence. There are tools that you get to experience life with. It's like you have a heart. Your heart can have incredible lows. It can have grief, it can have joy, it can have incredible highs, and it's got the spectrum of it. without a heart, you would have you'd miss the richness and texture of life.
Adam Hergenrother
So, without the mind, you'd have to think about all whose names are what time I showed up. And it's just like this. It's just that your analytical mind is your ability to memorize and to have things so that you can process things faster. But your mind is not designed to create a collage, an image of who you think you are. Because the minute you start spending all of your time, which is what most people are doing, of creating this self image, or this self identity, that they're spending 99% of their energy upholding every single day, the minute that starts to get rocked, you have no freedom, I don't care if you have a billion dollars, and that starts, your self image starts to get rocked, you're disturbed. You're now hurt. Right? When Tony Robbins wrote his book, The financial game, mastering the game of money, it's a long book, but at the very end of it is one of my favorite chapters in the whole book. And he interviews 20 billionaires, and these guys, I mean, billionaires, I mean, if they're doing okay, right, money wise, they've got it.
Adam Hergenrother
And one of the things he asked them the first question he asked, every single one of these individuals, he goes, you still worry about money and unequivocally within seconds, every single one of them said, Yes, I do. Yes, I do. It still stresses me, I wake up at three o'clock in the morning, that's not freedom. That's you're still being a slave to an external environment that you can't control. If you try to control life out there, you're going to set yourself up for a lot of suffering. So mindfulness, or waking up is realizing that there's another layer to this freedom that we talked about. It's the reason why you have this itch inside when you make it, you know, you make money or get into a relationship or have the wedding or have your kid, get your house and put a fence around it and get your dog and you're wondering why us is still this unsatisfied part of you. Because that part of you can never be satisfied for anything external.
Adam Hergenrother
It'd be like trying to go to a rock when you're thirsty. It's not doing anything for you. I get it that momentarily, it turns you on. And I can get into a whole layer of why your mind does that to you. But that's, it's a long conversation for it. So I would love for you to take away from this is just to understand his look back in your life. 30 years ago, 15 years ago, five years ago, whatever your life is, your life journey has I met along the way you've said, If I can just do that, I'll be I'll have made it, I'll be happy. And every time you get there, there's no arrival point. There's no point where you just say, oh, now I'm free. Right? There's no dollar sign or house or relationship Do you ever get in that you go, now I'm free. That's because you're still indirectly looking for it.
Adam Hergenrother
So when the term freedom comes up, there's relative freedom, like saying the sunsets every day, which really, it's relative, right? Doesn't really set every day. And then there's the absolute freedom, which is unpacking you, which is you working on yourself inwardly, so that you can then go out there and be this fierce competitor in business. Because the reality is, once you understand that, you have this absolute freedom about yourself, when you can walk around not being disturbed by anything, you're clear, your your your ability to see and have perspective changes instantly, your ability to solve problems, just like Einstein said, 70 years ago, you can never solve a problem, the same level that's created, you don't become the emotion doesn't mean you push them away, doesn't mean you don't experience the emotions.
Adam Hergenrother
If you're experiencing something in life, you should experience it. But don't push it or don't cling to it, let the experience go through you and it makes you more of a whole enriched human being. So understand, there's you way back here who is just witnessing, it witnesses the mind and witnesses life going by with witnessing the clouds. Think of it this way. You are the sky, the sky never goes anywhere. So sometimes it's dark, sometimes it's sunny, sometimes there's clouds going through it. Sometimes there's birds, sometimes there's lightning bolts, sometimes there's rain, sometimes there's snow, there's all of this that manifests in the field of Scott, you're the same exact experience.
Adam Hergenrother
There's you back there, which you know, is in perishable, which you know, is constant, which can't be her energy itself cannot be sick, it can only be blocked. And so when you recognize that you're the same thing as is witnessing the sky, you then you allow all of these emotions to go through your mind is going to talk it said I don't know about yours, but mine just starts talking. And it just says really weird things all the time. And then we go like, then we start paying attention to it. And instead of paying attention to it, just let it do its thing. Look, it ignore the guest quickly leaves. So the minute you stop paying attention to all your thoughts. At some point in time, the thought just disappears. You've probably had 70 thoughts since I started talking. Right? And here's the I even challenge people on this about separating yourself from your mind is that most people aren't listening to people.
Adam Hergenrother
They're listening to themselves. They're listening to the mind narrate the conversation based on their self image or their self context. That's all you're doing is you're listening to you're going to the mind saying you narrate this for me. So what you're doing is you're missing the direct experience in life. So I'm gonna circle this back and move on from this conversation. about freedom. But when you ask about freedom, to me, freedom is absolute. It's it's freedom to experience all of life. And when I say all of life, I mean all of it, not this concept of I want life to be my way. That's not freedom. That's a promise for suffering. That's you thinking that at some point in your life, you're going to have this promise happiness. Once I get to this point, you're some future promising that something's gonna happen.
Adam Hergenrother
Why not enjoy yourself now. And so absolute freedom is walking around from that place. And here's a question that you can write down that you can take away from an action item from this, actually, let me give you two things. What are the things I worked on really early on in my life, was using a technique called three to one relax, the minute I felt myself getting disturbed, and what I just got to unpack that word is just like when you get hit in your gut, you start feeling the energy drop, right? You know what I'm talking about, like, all sudden, it feels empty, and people go, like my heart dropped, your heart didn't go anywhere, your heart is still there, what you're saying is my energy got blocked, you shut off, you closed your heart.
Adam Hergenrother
So therefore, the energy is not feeding you. So then you have to go outside to get fed. And so we're going to stop that. And so 321, relax, the minute, you start feeling tightness, you feel up, you feel like it's disturbance, 321, relax, breathe out, drop, you take five, drop your shoulders, breathe five times, and you may have to do three to one relax 30 times the next hour. There's some big things in there, right? So anyways, 321, relax, the second technique that I'll give you to work on. And these are very simple to start very small with these things is this next time you think you have a problem, I want you to ask yourself, do you really actually have a problem? And this is the question I want you to ask with it is, is there actually anything wrong in this moment?
Adam Hergenrother
What is wrong in this moment. And what you'll find 99.9% of the time, is that there's absolutely nothing wrong in this moment. What is wrong, is you're imagining some future event that could go wrong, or that could happen, which we know 99% of time, it doesn't unfold the way your mind just drummed it up. And so the suffering for that reason. And if you ever are in a situation like being chased by a bear, you're not going to stop and go, What is wrong with this moment, you're just going to be in the moment and running away from the bear.
Adam Hergenrother
So the times that you're actually have a life threatening situation that something's wrong in this moment, you're not going to be sitting there thinking about your it's going to be acting. In fact, that's probably one of the only times you're actually going to be in the moment. So I love sports so much you're skiing or running or, you know, competing or any of those things, you're in the moment, you're not going to your mind. And so you get to experience life for what it is that is absolute freedom for me. Alright, let's switch gears a little bit less you guys want to stop.
Adam Hergenrother
Sometimes it takes a slide count or a couple seconds to do it. Now I want to jump into the biggest mistakes that people make. And there's two slides on this. And I'm going to unpack it in the next slide a little bit more. But really, for me, the biggest mistakes that I've made growing my organizations are number one time, this is the things that for me, and that I see most entrepreneurs making. Number one is time is not using their time wisely, which for me, I made the decision to measure my day days in minutes. Instead of measuring my days in days or weeks, and really not holding yourself or your team to the standards of productivity. Look.
Adam Hergenrother
There's three principles that guide my life. The first one is I have to organize myself in the most efficient way to get the highest output in my life. So when I wake up, I say my organizing my time organizing myself in the most efficient way to get the highest output, given the time I'm willing to give for each activity. To each day I live work and play. I don't wait till I'm 60 years old to go play. I live work and play every day. I start I get up earlier on four o'clock in the morning, I do a lot of personal development, I exercise for a couple hours. And I have a certain amount of time that I'm willing to allocate to my business, that's four days structured a week, it's actually three and a half structured days. And I work from 830 to 1130. And then 1130 to one is a break from 130 to about five. And so I have a certain amount of time that I'm willing to give my business.
Adam Hergenrother
What this does, though, is makes me extremely impactful. What goes into my calendar. And it makes me really focused on the minutes that I'm doing. The really interesting thing was the minute I stopped, I started removing myself from my organizations, I realized I was the problem. My organization started doing so much better. And I realized that the minute I started getting out of it, the only reason I was stepping in there is because I felt like I needed to make myself feel better about myself. So once I realized that it was good. So then I just really started measuring my day minutes. And if I were sitting in a room and we had all of you on here and I asked you I said hey, what do you value most in your life? Most people are gonna say their family, their kids, right? And I would say okay, great.
Adam Hergenrother
I would say we'll give them your calendar of what you actually did for the past 30 days, and then give me your bank account where you actually spent your money. And I'll tell you what you really value. Because a lot of us have this audible. And then we convince ourselves that we that these things matter the most, and I get the intention behind it. And yes, if there was a life threatening situation, you would probably put that first. But what about the simple everyday practices of this, if you're telling me your kids matter the most, then why would you make the most out of every moment that you're working, so you can actually have time to go spend with them, you'd probably change the way you invest into people, it would change the way you invest or spend your money. So you can actually have time to spend with your family.
Adam Hergenrother
So when people say this, you have to be very clear and look at it honestly, about what is actually happening with your time. So start measuring it in minutes. Number one money is, is really the same thing with time is measuring your dollars in dollars, you have to protect yourself from your own money. When people have a good month, if all said whatever good means you make maybe $50,000 in profit is a good month to awesome month, maybe you're used to 10,000. So all of a sudden that month, 50,000, you stop paying attention, you thought $100 is a blot before you stop paying attention to the $100. Now you're like, well, it's only 1000. I mean, 50 grand over here.
Adam Hergenrother
So you have to have, you have to have protective measures in place to protect you from your own money, which is that which is a whole wealth component of this. Money, by the way, is nothing but a tool. If you think money is anything else, but a tool, you're still attached to money, money is good for the money that it can do. And for the good that it can do, it can do a lot of really cool things, money can make your life easier. But for anybody listening to this call, it's not going to make yourself happier are going to have any more joy.
Adam Hergenrother
At some point, the only thing that really money is going to do is give you maybe some is besting it into like non negative areas, negative things that turn positive meaning like, if you invest money into a dishwasher that isn't working, so you get some time back, that'll probably make you a little happier in your life. But investing into you know, like a new car that really gets you to the same place will make you feel good for a small period of time. And then it's just the car. And it's just there. So invest your money into things that are already having negative impact on your life, like the dishwasher for instance, or getting some time back or having somebody mow your yard you kind of know those things. But measure you're gonna get into a little bit more Next slide.
Adam Hergenrother
But measure your day in minutes, measure your dollars in dollars. And then for me is not really investing into the right people at the right time. I wish I invested into people earlier on in my life. And so I missed that. So I'm gonna jump into this next one, but so time, money and people. By the way, the interesting thing is the biggest challenges that you're ever going to have in your life are money in people. And if you have the right people, they're going to give you the right growth opportunity for it. If you have the wrong people, they're going to suck your money away. So just remember that those are two of the biggest things you have to pay attention to with your money.
Adam Hergenrother
For me, overarching, you know, it's so funny, Mike and Vlad the the other day my I have three kids on rate. My youngest son or my youngest son, I have one son so I guess my youngest, my middle child is six and laying in the some of the sweetest time we have is like that, like the 30 minutes before we go to bed. I always snuggle with them. It's kind of like hanging out with him and and he just share some thoughts me and the other day he goes to me goes dead randomly. He goes, what was the biggest mistake you made in business? And I was like, Dude, what an awesome question, man. That's I'm like, I'm like, thanks for asking the question. And so I had to think about for a second I said, You know what, Asher is my son's name. I said, Hey, buddy, I say the biggest mistake that I made was making success more complicated than need to be. And he said, Well, what does that mean? I try to unpack it in like five minutes into it. He was like, So anyways, what are we doing tomorrow, like he just got to go off topic.
Adam Hergenrother
But I'll explain it a little more detail. What I mean by this is success in most organizations is extremely simple. Yet we feel this need when success starts to feel when success starts to occur in our lives, and meaning we're starting to make money, and we're starting to make money, particularly through other people, you can start to feel like a fraud, you can feel like an imposter. Or at least I did. Like it's like, oh my god, I'm making all this money and I'm not doing anything anymore. So then what you do is then you go back to this self image that you've created, you go, Well, I need to make myself feel better. So I'm going to go complicate some things in my life. So I can go solve them or fix them. Or in fact, we should actually have another meeting. So I can be a part of that. So I can contribute. So I can pat myself on the back when I go home to make myself feel good.
Adam Hergenrother
And all you realize is you're the one complicating everything in your business. It's like if there's a rock underneath a river that is blocking your business, and it's because it's tied to it. When you go down to lift the rock up, you realize your right arm is the one holding the rock down. It's like if you just let the right arm go the business would take off. And so man that's that's been the number one thing for me that I've made a mistake. For too long was holding on because I needed to feel validated. You know, Matthew McConaughey is a good friend of mine. He's not really but we just pretend we are. But he's, he's just, he's instead of a dude. And he, he wrote this new book out called green lights. And one of the things that he talks about in his book is running downhill.
Adam Hergenrother
And what he says about running downhill is that he's like, man, when you're running downhill, like things start to become too easy. And they start to feel too easy. So therefore, I used to trick myself. Like I just tripped myself ride trip, somebody else, just like it stopped them and fix them. And then he Oh, he said, but you know, when you're running downhill, there's always an uphill afterwards. So he said, I, throughout my life, I started realizing that I needed to enjoy the downhill and prepare myself for the next uphill, maybe you're doing really well in business, and then all sudden, something happens in your personal life. Maybe you're doing really well in your personal life, and something happens in your business. Look, life is not supposed to be on your terms. It's not supposed to be easy.
Adam Hergenrother
They're supposed to be experiences that you get to experience and enjoy. So we shouldn't label them, I like them or don't like them. Understand that you would want things to be your way. But if there's 10 people out there, we all have 10 different ways we want the world to be the poor world is trying to unfold. And we're like that needs to be that way. And then he's be that way. And then he's unites over here. And farmer Sandy's the rain, right? So just your life is a dance, and she's in the lead. And so just accept that, right? So for me, the when I think about the mistakes that I've made one of the biggest ones, it's over complicating success, instead of simplifying, so a little formula I have is success equals simplicity. And failure is equals complexity. And so I would go back into your organization's right now and go, where am I complicating things just to get value? Where am I over complicating something?
Adam Hergenrother
What am I holding on to that I need to let go off right now, because we're all holding on to some rope that we need to let go of, you know, always reminds me of how they catch wild monkeys. And I bet they were gonna bring monkeys into this conversation. But well, it's a good point. How you catch like, like anywhere is that has monkeys, essentially, there's a wild monkey needed to catch it, what they'll do is they will put a cage and they'll put a banana in the cage. And the cage is you can't go in the cage. But the cages is blocked off. It's a it's like a two by two cage. And it's got just enough opening like this big, so that a monkey can reach his hand in there. And what they do is they put a banana in there. So the free monkey is always free, walks over to the cage, puts his hand in there and realizes they can't pull up in and out.
Adam Hergenrother
So the bit it's holding on to the banana, the monkey is entirely free, and somebody just walks up and picks up the monkey, the whole time the monkey is free, but it won't let go of the banana it thinks that it needs it's so bad that it can't let go of it. That's how most of us are holding on to our personal lives and our business lives. We're holding on to this banana yet we're free. We're already absolute freedom, but you were holding on to something that's so silly, because we think that's who we need to be, we think we need to be bad, you just let it go. The minute you let it go, you're free, you're already free, you just gotta let go. It's the same thing for your business as well, too, you're holding on to something that you need to let go of. Alright, so when I think about time, money, and people, I think about this as well, too is time is meeting meetings in general or productivity or any of these things need to be cut down.
Adam Hergenrother
So a tactical thing from this, I'm just trying to give tactic things so people can take away from each slide. What I would do from here is and what we personally had done, Allina over the years, is literally go the next week and cut all of your standing appointments by 50%. Everyone should, you can go back to them just for one week, To view an hour long appointment, bring it down to 30 minutes. If you have a 30 minute appointment, bring it down to 15 if you have 50 and bring it down to seven half. Because here's the thing when somebody goes, Hey, Mike, can I get 30 minutes on your calendar? Did somebody really stop to think about how long it would take to engage in this conversation and realize that they after doing all these calculations, they derived that they need 30 minutes of your time. Right now.
Adam Hergenrother
They just said Can I grab 30 minutes. And what you do in these meetings is everyone goes in there and a couple minutes later talking about things and you get into the heart of things like six minutes, and then people realize they're still 10 minutes left. So they figure out something else to talk about just to extend the time. And then magically, at 29 minutes and 50 seconds, they figure out a way to to adjourn instead of going like hey, you've got seven minutes, we've got three minutes. Let's jump into this. I'm glad I know you're a big proponent of this because when when you and I have our conversations, you're like I need 90 seconds of your time, right and it's just we're in and out and we get to the point and it's great and and people will respect that. So with your meetings, cut it down, cut it down in 50%.
Adam Hergenrother
Next week, just cut down on 50% money when you're deploying we have almost 1000 units in either that are owned or in development right now for a construction company with healthcare campuses and building these things out. Construction and develop element can be an awesome asset, it can also wreck you, it can wreck you faster than anything else can because you have debt and mortgage and all these things that all sudden show up and all this capital outlay on a project that could go nowhere. So one of the things early on that I had to put like five or $600,000, in my company in the first couple years, because I went out there and tried to just get as many projects as I could didn't realize they took a long time to actually see the benefit from so that was we had to walk a line there for a little while.
Adam Hergenrother
In fact, we still are we just got so much money deployed in these these projects, it takes so long that you got to be real careful with them and people don't realize in in development is you can have a million dollars in a project. That's all after tax money, you spend $500,000 a year you can't take that as an expense. Because there's a capital improvement until the project's now sold or done, you then you can take it as expense, but your money is going out there after tax. So you put a million dollars into a project that's like 1,000,006, after before tax. So he was gonna be very careful about the tracks of development. So that was for me, I learned that lesson early on. But making sure that you you, you don't go too fast, too far, success is sequential, not simultaneous, which I first approached us simultaneous, because in the brokerage side, where I live to begin with was like, let's just go get as many as you can.
Adam Hergenrother
That doesn't work in development. And or doesn't work with w two employees either. So you've got to be careful on how you're spending that as well. And then again, people, you know, really making the decision to invest through people a business is where truly you're succeeding through others. And I think that there's, there's three kind of, you know, thinking evolutions around investing into people. And I kind of look at it as this at some point, at least in real estate you walk into or a sales position, you walk into save horizon, and you walk in there, you say, hey, Justin, you know, I wonder who in here I could buy or sell a house with who wants to get to be a client of mine in here.
Adam Hergenrother
Then as you kind of evolve a little bit, maybe you walk in and you say, Hey, you know, I wonder who I could hire in here, wonder who I could hire and here then goes out and sells and and helps me build my organization. Then at some point, as you continue on your journey, you're going to walk in there and you're gonna go, how do I buy everything, the real estate accompany? And then how do I make that more efficient. That's what Warren Buffett does. He's a savant, when it comes to that. He literally just buys operating companies like we bought Coca Cola, his flagship first purchase, he realized this, it was already extremely profitable, he paid a lot of money for it. And he realized that there was seven to $8,000,000.07 to 8 million bottles of coke that were sold every day.
Adam Hergenrother
So he just did this simple math, it was so simple. That's why its success is simplicity. He said, Well, I can buy this company, and I was going to do is raise Coca Cola by one set, nobody will even notice. And I've just added $360 million plus to the bottom line that puts our evaluation at 10 times what I just paid for it. He did that the next day, when he bought it, he instantly. It's the same thing. When when, when Amazon just bought Whole Foods, the data, Amazon bought Whole Foods, Whole Foods stock went up higher than the entire acquisition price. I mean, so these are the things that success is simple, if you're willing to look at it from a simplistic nature of these things, and then so investing into the right people, and then be being willing to make the wrong hires, on your way through leadership.
Adam Hergenrother
And I think that's really important is a lot of people make a wrong hire, and they think that it's them or think they can't do it, they stop. You have to be willing to do it. And again, you know, I said this before, but only the discipline ones in life are truly free. If you are undisciplined, you are a slave to your moods and your passions. You just are. And this is Isla Cupid who broke the two hour marathon record. I love this quote. Because if you're not disciplined in life, people think I live a disciplined life. If you're not disciplined, you're just a slave to your mood in your passions. It's like if you don't discipline around your exercise, how many people wake up, even people who exercise seven days a week wake up going, I can't wait to exercise this morning. I know. I mean, it's true.
Adam Hergenrother
Like every day I saw this battle with this with my mind and the self mastery of like, you don't have to exercise today and I'm still I'm not gonna listen to you, I'm not gonna do it. You have to be disciplined. Otherwise, you're losing your passions, run your life. So, live your calendar, live a disciplined life in the areas that you want to be disciplined. You don't have to be disciplined every part of your life. But in the areas that mean the most to you, which should be one or two things. Make sure you're purposeful and make sure that you're disciplined in these particular areas, so that you're not just a slave to how you feel that day. So here's some takeaways from this slide. And you can take a photo of this whatever you want to do, but what standards do you have in your life? Right?
Adam Hergenrother
How many times a day these are standards in my life, you can you can take them you can cross them out, you can steal them, I don't care how many for me, I tell my kids a Sir, I tell my kids, I love them a certain amount of times every single day. And so towards the end of the day, if I haven't told them off, grab them and I'll go Maddie, I love you. I love you. I love you. Why do I love you? And they'll point to their heart they go because of my heart. And that's exactly right. So I just a little routine, I always use my kids. How many date nights a month do you have? And I don't like going out to dinner. Like, that's just not my thing. So I have a date night to me is not going out to dinner. It's like walking or doing a, you know, a board game together and just a bunch of things you can do. It doesn't have to be the standard, like, let's go to dinner. I hate going in dinners.
Adam Hergenrother
But anyways, so how many days you want to be away from your family on business? That's something you should have a standard for? How many hours in office per day? How many books do you read a year, how many training events attach a number to everything. If you do not lead with numbers, you're just an emotional leader, and you're relying on your moods and your passions to dictate your entire life. So when discipline equals freedom, take this and make sure that you're purposeful on attaching a number to anything that you're doing. So that you're actually living a life that you can measure versus, particularly in areas that you need to Alright, self leadership precedes leadership, I start talking about the organization principles, you first organize yourself in the most efficient way.
Adam Hergenrother
So you can get the highest output, then you organize your business in the most efficient way. So that you're organizing people in the most efficient way as possible and keeping them focused. So they have the highest output. And then you do the same thing for money, you organize your money in the most efficient way. So produces the highest output for the money that you have. Right, same exact organizational principle. Self leadership precedes leadership.
Adam Hergenrother
And I believe my definition of self leadership is overcoming or self mastery really is overcoming that voice inside your head that says no, that voice inside your head will sneak in there all the time it's overcoming that voice.
Adam Hergenrother
It's just not in really mean overcoming at some point, you just really don't need to listen to it. The nature of the mind is to talk 95% of the thoughts that are in there just show up that you didn't, you don't think of those negative thoughts that come in this show up. It's not your fault, it's not anybody else's fault. They just show up just like a clown shows up, you have no control of the cloud, you have no control over 95% of your thoughts. The analytical mind is different. I'm talking about the personal judgment, the mind just shows up. So self leadership is leading yourself first, which really is what I've been talking about this entire presentation, discipline, understanding what freedom really means the mistakes, success equals simplicity, instead of complexity.
Adam Hergenrother
These are ways that you lead yourself and lead your business to perform at the highest level. And when you start doing this, this starts creating to what I think is the most important thing that any of us can do in business right now, which is this right here. I think the next generation of leaders are as just as committed to the inner growth in their spiritual life as they are to spreadsheets and bottom lines. Look, our world is changing our world in a different place. People are searching for authenticity, they're searching for the absolute freedom, they're searching for better strategies they're searching for anything that they believe, is going to raise the level of energy within them.
Adam Hergenrother
And the only way that you truly do that is to put in the work, which means that you have to work inwardly, it's self mastery, it's this split, all these things are training you to be able to sit with very tough emotions, or sit in very tough situations and not be disturbed. And if you can live your life, for going through life this way where anything can happen, and you can be okay with anything. Because you're no you're not it, then you've reached the level of absolute freedom, which is being able to enjoy every aspect of this wonderful world that we call our life. Right.
Vlad Kats
Wow, Adam, that I will tell you this man, I will be rewatching this, because just like how much you've packed in a short period of time has been amazing. And I love your differentiation between absolute and relative freedom. I told you this before when we spoke on the phone, I was like, bam. Like that's a huge distinction for for, for everybody who is on the path to freedom. Right? And then one of my favorites is the simplicity. Right? Yeah, it's just success is simple. And, man, we complicate everything. I think freedom is simple as well. And we tend to complicate it right here. Adam, if people want to hear more about your teachings about who you are, and how you contribute working, they find you.
Adam Hergenrother
Yeah, I think you know, we have a podcast that Holly Warner and I do my chief of staff. It's called business meets spirituality. So it's really business meet spirituality is really the conversations we're having today. It really, we created business, meet spirituality, because I didn't want to go live in a cave, and meditate all day. But yeah, I didn't want to have a business without fulfillment in life. And so I realized you just didn't have to choose. And that was a big struggle in my life about 10 years ago was like, Well, how do I do both? I just go be a meditator or do I just be a business mercenary.
Adam Hergenrother
I realized, hey, you can actually incorporate both of them, that open heart and so we had a lot of those conversations about How business meet spirits out and how you can use it for personal growth a lot of the stuff that we're talking about, so you go on on any of your favorite, you know, podcast players, you were on all of them and then you can go to adamhergenrother.com, we have over 100 free trainings through our organization throughout the year we give a lot of our content away for free, you can go check out the site, we'd love to have you there I'm always happy to answer any questions people have as well.
Vlad Kats
And then there is project you right that that you're running I've heard nothing but awesome things about so you can find more about Adam online social media and all the all the places that he mentioned, Adam, you are a true contribution. Thanks for like knowing how much you value your time and how you plan your day and then you measuring in five minutes. Just know that brother that your minutes today has contributed people's lives.
