From Job Owner to Business Owner- Building Leverage in Your Real Estate Business

If your business only works when you do, then you don’t own a business—you own a job. And let’s be honest, that’s not why you got into real estate or entrepreneurship. In this episode of The Raquel Show, I’m pulling back the curtain on one of the biggest traps that keeps agents stuck: operating with no leverage.

I share the exact framework I teach my private clients to move from being the bottleneck in their business to creating freedom, growth, and peace of mind through systems, people, and technology. You’ll hear the story of how I went from being terrified to take a vacation because everything depended on me… to building a business that runs without me micromanaging every single detail.

✨ Things I Cover in This Episode:

• Why systematizing before delegating is the secret to scaling without stress
• The 3 types of leverage every Agent CEO needs (people, systems, and tech)
• The most common mistakes agents make when hiring (and how to avoid them)
• Practical steps you can take this week to reclaim hours of your time
• Tools I personally use to document, delegate, and automate

By the end of this episode, you’ll know exactly how to put leverage in place so you can grow faster, take time off without worrying, and finally step into the CEO role your business needs.

👉 Your challenge this week: Pick one repetitive task, document it, and delegate it—or better yet, automate it.

🎧 Listen in now and get ready to scale your business without scaling your stress!

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Thank you for joining me on this episode of The Raquel Show, and remember, keep pushing your limits to achieve your goals.

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Chapters

• 1:42 Recap: What we’ve covered so far in the series
• 2:12 Trap #3: No leverage = no business
• 4:08 The 3 types of leverage: People, Systems, Tech
• 5:35 Common mistakes agents make when hiring
• 6:04 Who to hire first: TC, VA, showing assistant
• 7:29 Weekly challenge: Pick one repetitive task to document & delegate
• 8:53 Tech leverage: tools to automate & save hours weekly
• 9:51 Weekly action step recap: Delegate, Document, Automate

Transcript

Operating without leverage is going to cost you more than you think. It's gonna cost you growth because you cannot take more clients without more hours. It will cost you your freedom because you can't step away without income stopping. And it's going to also cost you your peace because you are constantly on call. Leverage is not just about hiring. It's about creating systems, people and tools that allow your business to operate without you touching every single detail. 

Welcome back to The Raquel Show. This show is for entrepreneurs who want to play bigger in business and in life and today, we are talking about episode number four of our six part series as the first time we've done it on this podcast because it was highly requested to have a series from you guys my audience. So we have these series going on right now called the agent CEO system build your empire live your legacy.

And if you've been following along, here's what we've already covered. Episode number one is the three traps that keep agents stuck. Number two is getting off the commission roller coaster. And episode three, we're going to break down the hustle addiction. Today, we are diving into the trap number three, which is no leverage. If your business stops, when you stop, you don't own a business. You own a job. 

And I'll never forget my mentor, Kent Cloddy, are telling me that: "And the problem with that is jobs do not create empires. And I know some of you guys got into real estate because you want it to be a vehicle to fund your life, to build your legacy."

So by the end of this episode, you'll know exactly how to build leverage into your business. So it runs without you giving you your time back, giving you more energy and the ability to grow without burning out. 

So for years and years and years, I told myself I couldn't take long vacations because things would fall apart. And I really believed that every single time I would go on vacation, I fell into that notion. And I remember planning a trip to Italy because my cousin was going to get married and feeling way more stressed out from being away from my business than excited about the trip itself. I don't know what it was. I think it was being in another country, being on a different time zone. And I remember having no systems and no people that I fully trusted because everything went through me and no clear plan of how things would actually run if they didn't get my approval. That's when I realized I didn't have a business. I had me running everything with no leverage. 

See, operating without leverage is going to cost you more than you think. It's gonna cost you growth because you cannot take more clients without more hours. It will cost you your freedom because you can't step away without income stopping. And it's going to also cost you your peace because you are constantly on call. 

And here's the thing. Leverage is not just about hiring. It's about creating systems, people and tools that allow your business to operate without you, touching every single detail. 

So let me break it down. There are three types of leverage every agent CEO needs. 

Number one, you people leverage, delegating the right roles in order. And that today doesn't necessarily mean hiring full-time employees or even part-time employees. You can now hire people on project basis. 

Number two is system leverage, has your process been documented that anyone can follow? And now with AI, you can get really quick SOPs and put them in a dashboard that makes everything visible, everything in one place so that you can hire even way easier. 

And number three is technology leverage. What can you automate or what are tools that can help you run your business? 

So one of my private clients started with zero leverage. She was showing every home. She was writing every contract. She was running every social post herself. And we know that's a job within itself. And we implemented an executive assistant that had a built-in marketing checklist on Trello that had an automated follow-up sequence. And even just with those little things, she doubled her capacity in 90 days without increasing her hours. 

So a common mistakes that most agent makes is hiring too soon, too late, or the wrong role first. So here's what I would say when it comes to hiring for your business. Number one is hire somebody that can take all the tedious stuff out. When you get really busy with your business, you can hire a transaction coordinator. Some of them it's per transaction, so you don't even need to hire them full time or part time. 

Then you can go into a VA, which could be a marketing or listing VA. You don't even need them in your office anymore. If you have strong processes, if you have strong systems, believe it or not, a lot of our team members are remote. And number three is when you get really busy and you got some of those things already dialed in is you can hire a showing assistant or a buyer's agent and they don't actually need to be on your team today. 

I have lots of clients right now that have built a million dollar business with just showing assistance. So by hiring in the order, sometimes I always tell people that you can know a lot of things. 

You can Google a lot of things. You can watch YouTube. You can go to all these free classes that you see on social media, but the order in scaling your business matters. So you protect your time for CEO work and you put all these other things in place and put the leverage in order, I promise you, your business is going to skyrocket. 

So here's the thing, if you are going to hire people, you need to systematize before you delegate. Don't just hand things off, hand them a process or hire somebody with experience and build the process for you and your business. So here's what I want you to think about.

This week I want you to pick one crazy repetitive task in your business or if you keep saying to yourself, I wish someone could do this or I wish I had a system for this. That's probably it. I want you to document every step in writing or do a loom video or even put it in chat GPT, then document the process and go delegate it. So this ensures that your team member or the person you hire for this project can deliver results without you micromanaging it. 

And one of my key tips is when you're hiring somebody and you're working with them for the first time is you want to 

• give them a scale of how they did, like you're grading them. So on a scale of one to 10 with the 10 being like rockstar status and they completed the task, where would they fall? And if it was a seven, what would have made it a 10 so that they can understand your thinking? 
• And step three, is let tech, especially, especially, especially today, do the heavy lifting. Tech isn't here to replace you, it's here to amplify you. I think with all the CRMs out there, there is automation galore. There are social media scheduling tools. There is, and believe it or not, Instagram now has a scheduling tool, which I found out last week. And there's project management apps like Trello or Asana, but you all know or even notion I like. And one of my favorites that we've used for years and years and years is Trello only because it's so easy to learn for my team. 

If there's a task that can be automated or if it could be batch, you've just brought yourself hours of freedom each week. So imagine going on a one week, two week vacation and knowing your clients are taking care of leads are still coming in and every listing or transaction is being taken care of, it's being marketed without lifting a finger. That's not a dream, that's leverage. And it's the only way that you could truly scale your real estate business without scaling your stress. This is exactly what we have done and what we've implemented inside of agent CEO accelerator so that you can go from job owner to business owner faster than you think. 

So if you've been running your business with no systems, no leverage, your challenge this week is simple. So pick one task you can delegate, one process to document, and one piece of tech to automate. And in the next episode, we're gonna be shifting gears and we're gonna move from fixing traps to expanding income streams in real estate. 

I'll show you how how to build multiple revenue pillars in your business so you're not 100 % dependent on closings just to pay the bills. And until next time, I want you all to keep Playing Bigger because guess what, my friends, there's something great on the other side.