There are a number of factors you could probably point to that are holding back your business from achieving great things.

Interest rates, limited housing supply, huge competition from other agents, etc. all have an impact on the growth of your business.

However, these variables are external to your business and for the most part, out of your control. As well, they don’t have a lot of say in whether you stay afloat or grow exponentially.

There are other factors that have an even larger impact on your business that matter the most for your business’ success and you have complete command over them.

Areas of your business like culture, technology, and recruiting can literally make your business sink or swim based upon how you implement strategies and then improve upon them.

More importantly, when you get these three aspects of your business right, you’ll be in amazing shape to grow your business, no matter what’s happening in the market at the time.

Here are the three biggest things that might just be holding your business back.

1. Culture

Companies spend hundreds of millions annually to create rock solid cultures to help attract, and retain, top talent. And, while it’s discussed at length by experts and consultants alike, most business owners are still confused about what, exactly, culture is.

This isn’t surprising because a lot of confusion still exists about what culture actually means.

Loosely defined, culture is a specific set of processes and strategies that impacts the motivation of its people. For instance, in a culture where high performance is honored and respected, those processes motivate people. Or, if the culture is being laid back and comfortable, processes that support that are what motivate people.

In an ideal setting, your core values and culture are the standards by which you will hire, manage and fire people.

When you have an amazing culture and the people in your organization are in alignment with it, significant positive motivation and high performance of the people are the results. Super successful companies like Southwest Airlines and Trader Joe’s maximize the positive motivations their employees have for working for them, which include a sense of purpose, potential, and fun.

Conversely, these companies also limit the presence of negative motivations, such as feeling as if they are doing their jobs just to get paid.

As you create and maintain a positively-motivated culture, your real estate organization provides an environment where agents will seek to perform a high levels not because they are told to or because it’s expected of them, but because they want to.

2. Technology

Having the right technology - and the right amount of technology - to operate your company is integral to your company perform and grow at superior levels.

According to Ashley Goldsmith and Leighanne Levensaler, who are in charge of employee motivation at cloud applications giant Workday, maintain that culture can’t be created only by listing your core values and putting in place new processes and organization structure:

“Those things are necessary,” said Goldsmith and Lavensaler, “but we like to think of values as the beating heart of culture, processes and organizational structure as the brain, and technology as the nervous system that makes sure heart and head are working together to move us forward.”

With the proper technology implemented in your business, your culture will be supported in the following manner:

• Coordination of information: Having the proper applications allows you to keep data and information flowing between agents, administrative staff and brokers. Do this means that everyone in your business has the information they need to do their job.

• Supporting performance: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, lead generation platforms and other real estate technology helps agents and their teams perform at optimal level. Combined with a solid culture, your agent’s performance and the supporting technology helps you attract top-performing people to the team.

• Creating opportunity: Agents have the technology and tools they need to grow their career.

Technology, alone, will not maximize your success, but having the wrong technology certainly can hold you back.

3. Recruiting

Every real estate organization needs to recruit top talent if it wants to remain competitive in the marketplace

On average, 85% of top real estate executives believe recruiting is one of the toughest challenges they face. In addition to that, 52% have identified bringing on younger talent as one of their chief concerns.

In that Millennials make up the “younger talent” group of agents, it will take some deliberate work on your part to purposefully recruit and hire them.

The good news is that some of the most successful strategies are simple implement. For example, if you have younger agents, work with them to connect with other talented young people in their network.

If you want to differentiate yourself, be sure to take time to meet with this group face to face. They have their faces glued to their phones and computer screens regularly and are likely

overwhelmed by technology. Using a personal touch will help you distance yourself from the other companies competing for these young agents’ services.

Once you’ve secure these relationships, maintain the culture you’ve created and work at retaining good people with mentoring, training and great support.

This is important as you should find that younger agents are attracted to real estate firms that emphasize training, give them top-flight technology, and, most importantly, provide them with servant-minded mentors who will help them successfully grow their career.

Culture, technology, and recruiting are lynch pins to success for every business. Unfortunately, they are also holding back many real estate businesses from succeeding.

If you take the time to improve them at your company, you will enjoy amazing performance and growth.