128: Commit to Your Vision of the Business and Lifestyle You Want with Jill Hart

Andrea Liebross: Welcome to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I'm your host, Andrea Liebross. Each week, I focus on the systems, strategy, and big thinking you need to CEO your business and life to the next level. Are you ready? Let's go.

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the Time to Level Up Podcast. At this point in our series of Business Audit to Create Business Awesome, we are talking about having a vision and putting it into action. Today, I am going to have a conversation that you're going to get to listen to with my client and now friend, Jill Hart.

Jill is a certified senior advisor, a seniors real estate specialist, and now owner of Silver Pathways Consulting. When I met Jill, at that point, she was a real estate broker and she was working with seniors to help them with their moves but she was also working with all other age groups, she was buying and selling but she had a vision of only working with seniors and really helping them sell their homes and manage any aspect of their move that they needed help with so that the process became a lot more doable.

Over the course of two years, she and I worked together to create Silver Pathways Consulting, which really is a culmination of what she wanted to do in business and the lifestyle she wanted and now is living, which included a lot more traveling, a lot more freedom, and not having to be so boots on the ground or inside the emotional chaos, we'll call it, of moves. Because if you're just working with sellers, it's a lot easier than working with buyers. If you have just niched down to one type of clientele like seniors, it's a lot easier than working with young families all the way till people moving into assisted living.

With a combination of hard work, giving herself permission to hire out, and I call it farm out some of the things she didn't want to do in her business, and sticking to her vision when everybody else said, “Jill, why would you want to do that? Everything else right now is going just fine?” she has been able to create Silver Pathways, and it has been really my honor to help her through that journey to act as her sounding board, to help her translate that vision into action steps so that every quarter she had a list of “What do I need to do and how do I do it?” and to see this really come into fruition. Sit back, buckle up, and listen into my conversation with Jill Hart of Silver Pathways Consulting.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the Time to Level Up Podcast. Today, I have my now friend and client, Jill Hart. Welcome, Jill.

Jill Hart: Thank you. So glad to be here.

Andrea Liebross: Okay. We're going to dig right in. I wanted you to share with the audience who you are and what you do right now and maybe who you were and what you did when we first started working together, which was like a year and a half, two years ago, a year and a half ago, a long time ago?

Jill Hart: I think two years ago.

Andrea Liebross: More than two years ago. I feel like it was February or something. I don't know why I think it was that. But tell us all the things.

Jill Hart: Okay. Like you said, I'm Jill Hart. I am the owner of Silver Pathways Consulting and Pinnacle View Real Estate, and right now I do senior move management, estate cleanouts, and real estate brokerage.

When we met, I was just doing real estate brokerage but doing a lot of senior move management and estate cleanout help for my real estate clients. That's really what I wanted to do is help seniors move. That's the whole reason I got into the real estate brokerage business is to help seniors who needed to move.

The more I got into it, the more I noticed they needed more help and could not figure out how to do it within the confines of somebody else's business model. I had all these great ideas and I heard you on a podcast as a guest speaker, and even though I'm an avid podcast listener and have never reached out to anybody, I got home that day, got on your website, and asked for my call.

Andrea Liebross: There you go, so podcasts work.

Jill Hart: Yes.

Andrea Liebross: Okay. When we first met, you had this vision that you wanted to shift your focus and really create something new that I think really aligned with who you wanted to be in the future. Is that fair?

Jill Hart: Right. Well, really when I got my real estate license, the whole reason was to help seniors. But the problem was I couldn't figure out how to do it within these other brokerages. I was muddling my way through, doing as much as I could, and everybody was telling me, “Why would you want to do that? You're doing so great. Why would you want to do that?”

I just did. I wanted to do that from the beginning. It was hard. I couldn't figure out how to do everything myself. It was nice to have a framework of some of the larger brokerages in the country. This is the framework on how we do real estate so it's good a learning experience for me but it wasn't exactly what I wanted to do. I couldn't figure out how to make that shift.

Andrea Liebross: It was like you couldn't figure out how to make the shift inside the confines of their container, we'll call it. You had to create a new container.

Jill Hart: Right, and I didn't have the confidence to do it on my own. That's one big thing that coaching helped me with is figuring out that yes, you can do it, which gave me confidence to really launch what I wanted to do.

Andrea Liebross: Interesting. That's an interesting dichotomy in the sense that everybody was like, “Jill, you're doing so great. Why would you want to switch something up?” You were 100% confident in what you were doing. It wasn't like something was broken or nothing had gone wrong. How long have you been in real estate?

Jill Hart: Eight years. I was raised in a real estate home, my dad was in real estate, my husband and I are investors so real estate's been part of my whole life but I've only actually been a broker for eight years.

Andrea Liebross: Okay. You were super comfortable inside that broker container.

Jill Hart: Role, I call it.

Andrea Liebross: Role. But you weren't confident in creating the role that you really, really, really wanted to be in, which is that broker plus helping seniors manage moves.

Jill Hart: Plus working exclusively with seniors.

Andrea Liebross: That's right. There's another interesting thing. Jill, if you start only working with seniors, you're cutting out half of your business. What would you tell those people now?

Jill Hart: Yeah. I don't like the word busy but I am so blessed and thankful to be able to be helping so many people right now. They're coming out of the woodwork like crazy, “I need your help.” My favorite clients are the ones that I go in and I talk to them and I tell them what I do and they are just like, “I am so happy I found you. You're exactly what I need. I need you to handle everything for me.” I love that.

Andrea Liebross: I know you're so needed because I just went through this with my parents, working with Jill, I have managed my own parent's senior move. Actually, I think that was really helpful because I could really envision what was going on in the world of the adult child trying to do this.

We needed some confidence, the recipe for success here was we needed some confidence. You had some great ideas. There was no lack of ideas or visioning. I don't think we had any lack of ideas originally, although we fine-tune things along the way I would say. But what do you think the figuring it out parts, the overwhelm parts, let’s talk a little bit about that.

Jill Hart: I was trying to do everything. The learning curve on a lot of the stuff, I'm a smart person, I could do it, I could figure it out but it took me forever. Letting some of the things go that I just didn't have time to do, you helped with. You're like, “Oh, let's see how we can outsource this, and let's see how we could outsource that.” Really, [inaudible] I don't want to spend the money on that, but now I'm like, “Oh, how much money can I throw at that so I don't have to do it?” That's me. I don't care how much it costs, I don't want to do it. Well, I do care how much it costs.

Andrea Liebross: You do. I remember actually where I was sitting and we were Voxering back and forth. I think I said to you, “I give you permission to outsource this.” It's so true that you're a smart person, we're all smart, we can figure this stuff out but it just takes a lot of brain power.

I think figuring it out, figuring out what you want to farm out, what you want to keep for yourself, how much money you're willing to spend on it, and what you really want it to look like when you farm it out, these are all questions that can really keep us in a stuck place if we don't give ourselves permission to take that next step.

You have farmed out quite a bit. Since you've farmed it out, what's that allowed you to do instead and what kinds of things have you farmed out actually? Let's talk about that.

Jill Hart: I farmed out email blast. I've farmed out social media content creation. I've farmed out social media content scheduling. I've farmed out graphic design. I've farmed out printing, which sounds funny but it's like, “I'm not on the computer uploading stuff to Staples or Office Depot and then figuring out exactly how it needs to be laid out and whatever.” I just send what my graphic designer does to the printer and then I go and pick it up.

I farmed out content writing. I farmed out my two new website designs. I had done my website prior to this and I'm glad I know how to do it but I'm glad I'm not doing it anymore.

Andrea Liebross: That's awesome.

Jill Hart: I probably farmed out some other things that I just can't think of.

Andrea Liebross: Okay. Instead, what are you doing with all that time?

Jill Hart: Oh, you know what I have farmed out which is so awesome? This is another thing I farmed out is buyers for my real estate brokerage, give those as a referral to another agent, any buyers that I get unless they're my best friend. That for me is a huge win because she's much better at working with buyers than I am and I don't enjoy it as much as I enjoy working with the seniors who are selling.

It frees up my schedule to work with those seniors because I'm not having a buyer call me and say, “Hey, I really need to see this house right now.” I have way more control over my schedule.

Andrea Liebross: Okay, so you got control over your schedule. That buyer's thing was huge now that I'm reflecting. It was huge because the buyers to you were emotionally draining. I can see that.

Jill Hart: It's not as predictable and my personality loves predictability. Buyers are not predictable.

Andrea Liebross: Okay. To summarize all these farm-out things, you've figured out what to say no to and what to say yes to. You're really only saying yes to the things that are moving you closer to the goal. With all the things you are now farming out, you have, I would say, I always talk about our freedoms, more time, money, and brain power. Is it a fair statement to say by farming out, you've gained more time, money, and brain power space?

Jill Hart: Yes, because giving up the buyers freed up my brain power a lot because now I'm super focused on listings so I don't really have to think a lot about the buyer process, I only have to think about the listing process so it's keeping me more focused, more money because yes, I have more business even though I'm spending money on other things. I've got more business and time, way more time. I've got my weekends back. I can cook dinner at night.

Andrea Liebross: So good, and travel. Tell us about your travel plans.

Jill Hart: I love to travel. I have a fun trip planned that's at least four days long every month this year. Some are longer. I have a two-week time period in July but every other month has at least four days of going somewhere fun for fun.

Andrea Liebross: I love that. This is what I call lifestyle design. That was actually one of your big main objectives when we first started working together because you said, “I want to be traveling,” you thought your husband was going to be retiring, which he could but he's not but that's another whole other story, but think about that, how you've created that lifestyle that you had wanted for so long that would seem impossible inside the old container with the old rules that you had made, which I'll take any buyer, seller, anything in any age group.

Here's something interesting too, we all fear this, but by narrowing down your focus and niche of only working with seniors, only working with sellers, only working with senior move management, in a sense if they want that component, you actually have created more of all these other things.

Jill Hart: Exactly. I love it so much. Everybody's like, “Oh, I could never do what you do,” but I love it so you gotta find out that just because somebody else doesn't love it doesn't mean you won't and I love it.

Andrea Liebross: So true.

Jill Hart: I love packing boxes, I love helping these people. I love it.

Andrea Liebross: Okay, and you've added some options to get help in the packing. You've figured out, that was another thing that we talked about, who's the right person, how do you do this.

Jill Hart: Yeah. I ended up finding three people who are 1099 employees that help me on an as-needed basis and they love it. They're so happy to have the opportunity to just work as their schedule allows. I have a retired lady, then I have a lady with a six-month-old and a two-month-old that just wants a couple of hours break from her kids and a little bit of extra pocket change, and then I have another lady with school-age children. They all help me and they're great.

Andrea Liebross: It's a win-win because I've got a lot of clients who struggle with “Where am I going to find someone? It's like a needle in a haystack.” It took a little while but you figured out the model and who would work. Also, all three of those people are different and want to work for you for different reasons and that's okay, it's not a cookie-cutter situation.

Jill Hart: One thing that was holding me back on that is I thought I had to hire somebody at least on a part-time basis. Through this process, I realized I don't have to do that. I just need to find the people that don't want to work part-time, that just want to work as needed so just changing my mindset on that, that I didn't have to have a full or part-time employee, I could use somebody on a 1099 basis, is huge.

Andrea Liebross: That is huge. That was a mindset shift. It was a mindset shift that you didn't have to be all things in the back end of your business like all your email and social media. It was a mindset shift in it's okay to only serve the people that you want to serve.

Jill Hart: That's the biggest one. That's the hardest. Now I'm on the other side of it, I would never go back.

Andrea Liebross: Interesting. Those were mindset shifts, tell us about the effectiveness of creating your master lists or your vision and traction organizer that we created with the goals and the action steps. I have to give you a gold star on that.

Jill Hart: Because I love lists. I'm a list person. I have been a list person since I was a kid. You hear a lot about big visions and goals, okay, that's great, I had all these ideas but you helped me organize them into a list that was doable because when I looked at my idea, yeah, okay, here's my goal, great, here's my list of stuff I need to do, but giving them even more specific and drilled down and you helping me with how to figure out how to do that, giving me ideas on what I could outsource, helping me find to get them outsourced, just saying, “It's okay, it's okay to outsource, it's okay, that's your biggest thing. It's okay, you got this.”

Andrea Liebross: It's okay, you can figure it out.

Jill Hart: Helping me get that list with a goal like before our next meeting, I wanted to have that done so I didn't always finish but I wanted to. Either I push some things up and sometimes we just decided to eliminate some things that were on the list. I'm like, “That's not really the direction I want to go,” because as I started down the path, I realized there were some things that weren't really fitting with what I really wanted to do. It just was a great idea that might have worked but it wasn't really in my wheelhouse.

Andrea Liebross: Okay, so really what we did is every quarter actually, Jill and I, for over a year, maybe a year and a half, we created this document, which had her vision, where she was going and that shifted slightly as time went on, and then we translated almost that vision into action step of what she could accomplish or what she was trying to accomplish, setting out to accomplish in the next 90 days.

This is, listeners, where you shift your vision into action, and having those action steps that you already have thought about are sure that align with the goal, that is magical. I do that in my own business and I think it's super magical because then you're not always going back to “What do I need to work on? What do I need to work on? Why am I working on this? Or what am I trying to accomplish from this?” You've already done that pre-work, that thinking work, and now you can just put your head down and put it into motion.

Jill Hart: You quit adding to your list of ideas because you have things to actually work on.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. What you do also, like you mentioned, is we eliminate, you cross some out because as the month went on, you're like, “You know what, this isn't where I'm going to go right now,” and that's okay.

Jill Hart: And that's okay.

Andrea Liebross: It's lonely being a solopreneur in a sense. It's exciting. What do you think the difference was between having a coach within your brokerage house, which there were options for that, for everyone who’s really willing to have a coach, versus having some outside person?

Because a lot of times, people will say, “Well, I don't know if I wanna work with an outside coach because you're not a real estate agent, you're not in my business, or you don't understand exactly what's going on,” how did you find that experience?

Jill Hart: Well, from a real estate point of view, I had some great real estate coaches that was really good at what I did in the real estate business but it just wasn't the business that I wanted and that I had envisioned. Those coaches could not see what I wanted.

By having an outside coach that could look at the bigger whole picture of my whole life and not just what I wanted for my business but what I wanted for my life and how I wanted to feel about my business was huge because the real estate people are like, “You're great, you should be coaching people.” I'm like, “But I don't love this. I think I would love what I really want to do,” and I couldn't find the right person to help me figure out because the coaches I had were very real-estate specific. By going out of my industry, it really made a huge sense.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. Something you said, that lifestyle piece was super important to you. Part of what was driving you to shift your business and create a different version of it is because you didn't want to be so tied also to having to be boots on the ground all the time right there. Someone had to see bigger than that. I think that's true, in your industry, right in your own brokerage house, they couldn't really do that. I can see that.

Jill Hart: Yeah. At my age, I started my business when I was 45, my real estate business, so we’re getting to the age where it's like, “My husband's thinking about retiring, well then what?” I want to be flexible. I homeschooled my children so we were always very flexible to get to travel on schedule and I didn't want to change that. I wanted something that would work around my life and what I wanted to do. Now I have it. I love it.

Andrea Liebross: You love it. Just to wrap up, tell us what do you think the value is that you are providing your clients? Why does someone need Jill?

Jill Hart: First, I think my clients see that my heart is really in helping them. It's really a mission for me, to be honest, and I know that sounds super cliche but it really is. They need somebody who will come in and sit with them, that will talk to them while we're packing.

They love that, “Oh, you're going to help me figure out what I'm going to take, you're going to help me pack it. My kids are so busy they don't have time. I feel bad asking them to take time away from their jobs and their families, but you're going to be the one that's going to help me through all of this, and then you mean we can just take what I want and give you the keys and I'm done?” Yes, they love that.

I go through and help them pick out what they're going to take with them and then if they list their house with me, they just hand me the keys and I do the cleanout, staging, get it sold for them, and they love it. They're like, “That's exactly what I want.”

Andrea Liebross: I find this so interesting in the sense that the value is not always tangible. Yes, you are helping them physically move but their value in there has a lot to do with how they feel and giving them confidence that they can actually do this, just like you needed the confidence to create your business. Now you're passing that confidence on to them that they can do that too.

Jill Hart: I'll tell you a quick little story. I'm headed out after this to move a lady into assisted living and her daughter flew into town yesterday to help and drive her because she can't drive. I heard them talking in the living room while I was working on something and she said, “I just feel so good when Jill is here and I know I can do it, and then when she leaves, I'm sad.” I was like, “Oh, I love that so much.”

Andrea Liebross: I love that too. See, that's exactly why you set out to do what you want to do to give people that feeling.

Jill Hart: Yeah. Those comments make me want to cry. In fact, I need to do a social media post about that.

Andrea Liebross: You do. I need to tell Lynda to do a post that says this. I love it. Okay, Jill, how would you define leveling up? That's a question I've been asking all of my guests lately. How would you define leveling up? When we say it's time to level up, what does that mean to you or what would you advise people out there to think about if they want to level up?

Jill Hart: It's time to stop listening to other people and what they think you should do and start doing what you want to do. To me, that's leveling up. I quit listening to other people and just said, “You know what, this is what I want to do.”

Andrea Liebross: And the world is a better place for it.

Jill Hart: I love it, and I'm happier.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. There goes back to lifestyle. It's like we worked on your business but we worked on increasing your happiness quotient too in the back. That was all going on in the background. That was like every decision including farming things out. You were happier when you finally did it. Including breaking away from working with buyers, all this. Also, even how you're talking about your business now as two sides of it. Remember, we tried to work smooshing it all into one? That didn't work too well. All of those things.

Jill Hart: And experimenting. We did a lot of experimenting and I'm still experimenting. I'm still experimenting with the way I present it to people but I'll tell you, I'm so much more confident going into an appointment with a new client as I feel like I'm a helper and I know real estate agents talk about themselves as helpers, and I get that, it's hard to sell a house, but I feel like my value is so much greater for my demographic that that confidence is just like I go in there and crush it every time, which I did that on my listing appointments too, but inside, sometimes you feel like, “I don't know.” I feel like inside, I'm crushing it and outside I'm crushing it.

Andrea Liebross: You are crushing it. The science experiment paid off. We've tried a lot of different hypotheses but we finally drew a conclusion which one works the best.

Jill Hart: Yes, and this was working, not to say it won't change later but right now this is great. I've got some other big ideas and you know about them, but right now, this is exactly what I need.

Andrea Liebross: So stay tuned for the next version of Jill. How can people find this version of Jill? What's the best way to find you?

Jill Hart: Okay. I'm online with Silver Pathways Consulting. That website is silverpathwayshome.com. Real estate brokerage is jillhartrealtor.com. I have been on a couple of podcasts you can find but, Andrea, I'm sure you'll put the links.

Andrea Liebross: We'll put all the links in the show notes. Well, Jill, thank you for being here. It has been a pleasure to talk to you today but also to work with you through this journey and see it all evolve. It was a journey but it’s all along we’re going to the right direction.

Jill Hart: Thanks for having me. So glad to have found you.

Andrea Liebross: You’re welcome. I’m glad I found you too.

So, Jill, I bet you can see some of yourself in Jill. I know some of you can see yourself in Jill. Nothing's really gone wrong, nothing is gone wrong scenario but she has a vision and she wanted to put it into action and she knew that she needed someone to read the label of the peanut butter jar because she was getting in her own way and people around her were actually getting in her way too.

Be like Jill. If you hear me on this podcast and this sounds like something you need just like Jill needed, do what she did, reach out, set up a call, let's chat. Let's see how I can help you move past just having a vision into the action phase and then into the reality, making it a reality.

It's inevitable once you get yourself into that action phase if you have the right support and if you have someone helping you maintain your confidence. Head over to andreaslinks.com, set up a consult call, and you could be just like Jill, going on vacation every month, not so bad, is it?

Remember, my friends, now is the time to level up. No one else can do it for you and you're only delaying your own results, your own freedom, and happiness by waiting any longer. See you next week.

Hey, listening to podcasts is great. But you also have to do something to kick your business up a notch. You need to take some action, right? So go to andreaslinks.com and take the quiz. I guarantee you'll walk away knowing exactly what your next best step is to level up.