Speaker 1 (00:01):
No matter where your business is today or where you want to take it, you'll get there faster and more profitably with an operating system. Welcome to Team Os, your guide to starting, growing and optimizing real estate team. Here's your host, Ethan Butte

Speaker 2 (00:15):
For insights into starting, growing and optimizing a real estate team. We're talking with Gary Ashton. A couple of fun facts before we get started. His team is the number one re max team in Nashville, in Tennessee, in the United States and in the world.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
In the world,

Speaker 2 (00:33):
In the entire world. So we'll get into a little bit of that arc and like Phil Taylor of the band Motorhead, Tom, Sonny Green of the band, alt Jay and Nick Hodgson, founding member of the band Kaiser Chiefs. Gary is a drummer from leads in West Yorkshire, England.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
Thank you so much. I didn't about the other two. That was awesome. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Good. Thanks for talking Tibo s today. Gary.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
Yeah, nice to be here.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Which one was the surprise? Did you know Phil Taylor? Was that the one you were familiar with?

Speaker 3 (01:02):
I didn't know he was from Leeds. Is he from Phil Taylor's from le,

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah, that's what the internet tells me. Gary, I did some work here.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
That was impressive. I know KA chiefs are from leed, but I didn't know Phil Taylor.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Yeah, there you go. So Gary, the opening question that I'm asking everyone is to have you name a must have characteristic of a high performing team. What comes to mind with that for you?

Speaker 3 (01:26):
The characteristic of the leader or the members?

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Either or both

Speaker 3 (01:31):
Leaders. I kind of feel like they have to be not risk averse, but you've got to have a high tolerance for risk and be forward thinking. Early adoption. I like shiny objects, which is good and bad because some of those shiny objects have been beneficial and some have been a bit of a time waste, but it's almost like, it's not really a numbers game, but your intuition tells you this should be good and we need to be the first one to market. We need to be the early adopters that sets us apart. And so like I said, sometimes that leads to you failing, but most of the time it's done well. For me, state is keeping ahead of the market. So I would say yes, you have to have, so in the team, I think they have this setup now that the team leader or the one that's kind of leading the way is usually not good at following up, not good at paperwork, not good at structure. So they appeal to their ego and call 'em a visionary. So I am a visionary, which means I'm terrible at all the other things essentially. So I've got Deborah that really runs everything behind the show. We work together. She brings me on some questions, but yeah, she likes to call me the visionary. I said, it appeals to my ego. I go, I'm a visionary.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
That's my value here.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
So that's where you've got to be. You have to be, you've got to have some vision. So I say this every time when I do a podcast, but it's really luck, vision and money. That's what you need. You need some luck to be able to do things, be in the right place, right time. You need some vision to act on that luck. And then you also need some money. Yeah, luck, vision and money. Yeah, love it. Money is, and then hopefully the luck and the vision help you create more money than you reinvest it back in it. So it's like a vicious circle as it were. But you need some levels of those luck, vision and money. That's what I think.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, love it. Let's talk a little bit more about that tolerance for risk scenario because it fits in this kind of forward momentum scenario. Have you found over time that you just have to keep making bets based on your intuition? Or does having more money allow you to place bigger bets? Or does your intuition get better and better as you kind of continue to make your be guesses and take some swings at some opportunities to stay out in front? Are you getting better over time or do you just have the privilege of being able to afford to make more and different investments and some of 'em work out, some of you don't?

Speaker 3 (04:23):
Well, the copout answer is yes to all of the above because the longer you're in it, the more that you hopefully have the potential to see some holes in the market or see a process that for years, how come we haven't done this? How come we haven't done this? All of a sudden the new product comes on, you go, that's it. That just fits in and we'll boom, we'll go ahead and do that. And then some of it, yay, you just speculate and you go, that would be fantastic. How come nobody's ever thought of that before? So you have to assume that if you like it, there's probably going to be more people that like it. So you have to be the one that jumps in first to get market advantage or first to market kind of thing. And then having the money sometimes that you've got, because you've invested in these other things, these are the peripherals that have allowed you to gain market share, allowed you to have more profitability. So that allows you then maybe to go to Vegas with a little bit more money to gamble on red or black. And sometimes you lose and sometimes you win. So that's why I said, yeah, I think all of those scenarios that you mentioned is a yes. The copper.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Yeah. So in general, I think a lot of folks like to see someone else step out and take the initial risk. And so you've just been willing to do that your entire real estate career, because I feel like a lot of people are waiting for one or two or three people to prove something out, or there's the hype cycle that pulls people into the shiny object zone. But I feel like your willingness to do this, even among your just generally, say peers, other folks leading significant sized real estate operations, a lot of people still sit and wait for one or two or three or four people to prove the case out before they're willing to take that step. A, would you observe that that's true? And B, have you always had this approach to the way that you're going to market?

Speaker 3 (06:36):
I believe that to be true, because I sometimes are the one, the person that's sitting back, I've got a lot of friends who've got teams on there, they have a different vision, and then to them, it's obvious to me. It's like, eh, I don't know. And then a perfect example, Chris Linde, I think Chris Linde up in Minneapolis. So we had a mutual friend who was doing billboards. Chris said, I'm going to do billboards, I'm going to jump in all on billboards. And I was like, eh, that's a lot of money. Let's good luck with that. Let's see how you do. Then Chris reports back, guys, you got to do billboards, you got to invest. You got to go all in on billboards. So I was like, eh. And then my other buddy, Justin H up in Calgary goes, all right, I'm in Justin, all in on billboards. And then those two are both going back to me going, Gary, you got to do billboards. It's moving the needle. You got to invest.

Speaker 3 (07:36):
Okay. And then I was, market forces forced me to do it, and then I jumped on billboards and then, oh, they were right. So they were the ones, they were the early adopters in this case, and I was the one that was sitting back and waiting for confirmation. And then now I can tell you billboards is a good way, but you have to have the money. If anybody's listening out there, you can't just do one billboard, you have to go all in. I started off with 50. You got to make a splash, and you also have to have a commitment to do it for not just a week, not just a month. I committed to a year to the billboard companies and said, let's start here. So now we're up to a hundred or something like that. So it definitely works. And then in terms of the marketing, just in case anybody is interested in that is, I don't think you really start with that because I've been doing SEO for a long time, been doing radio for four or five years. I've been doing sports marketing with the Titans. We do it now with the Predators. That's the NHL team locally. So we have a brand awareness. We've developed this brand equity within Nashville. So having the billboards is almost like Gary v's. Jab, jab, jab, right hook. Where does the right hook come from? So now there's all these forces that are promoting me, and then I think the billboard was the one that gave it that little lift that really was the jab, jab, jab, and then whoa, here comes the billboards.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
It's almost like it's social proof. I kind of equate it to a monstrous if you're talking about SEO, because with radio you can turn that off, internet, you can turn that off. But if you're driving along the interstate and you see a billboard, a stationary one, not one of the ones that's not the electronic ones, but you can't turn that off. So you see it every day. And then again, it's not instant success, but it reinforces that perception that you've built up in the market over the years. And you may be driving to work for five years and all of a sudden thinking about cell mass and then, oh, there he is, Gary. Oh, he's on the radio. Oh, let me look for, oh, he's on the, I'm going to call this guy. He's been around for a while. So

Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, it does all seem mutually reinforcing. I was actually going to bring this kind of topic up of television, radio, outdoor, N-F-L-N-H-L. What do you think is the threshold? There's someone listening that is maybe on the verge where these spends make sense, but there are probably a bunch of people listening where that spend doesn't quite make sense yet. I also agree with you by the way, just separate aside that the outdoor just ties it all together. You're creating all these impressions at different places, but the outdoor, because of its ever presence in the local market ties it all together. I agree with you on that, but what do you think is the threshold? Who would you say, Hey, you should maybe start thinking about this, and who do you say, nah, you're, you're X amount of time or X amount of size away?

Speaker 3 (10:48):
I don't know. There's a lot of talk about teams and when to start team, and to me, the only time you have a team is when you have too much business for yourself. So I always equate it to, I've got a couple of analogies, but I'll use the tennis ball machine first. When I was first starting in real estate, I was generating leads, and I was one of the first ones to do pay-per-click. I was just timing. I was early adopter because that just started when I started doing pay-per-click. There's probably two or three people there. And what I'm talking about there, pay per-click is when you go to Google, you search for national real estate, you've got the paid ads at the top, that's the pay, and then below that you've got the organic results.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
So when I first started out, I didn't have anything in the organics. So I was doing pay-per-click, and I think I was spending five, 10 bucks a day, and that was generating me one lead, two leads. So if it was a tennis ball machine, it was just on slow. You're just like, well, I can catch that. Oh, Mr. Lead, let me talk to you. Let me give you all my real estate knowledge. Let's develop a good relationship, let's go. And then three hours later, another one, so then I could one or two leads a day, three leads maybe at the most. I as an agent could physically handle that. Then I invested in nashville.com. They were trying to figure out who's the guy that understood the value of internet leads, because nashville.com is a geo domain back in 2000, and I dunno, six or seven, it was ranking for absolutely everything.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
This is before Google changed their algorithm. So at that point it went from, and they gave me leads as a test because it was really expensive and they gave me tests, but that was essentially that they turned the tennis ball machine onto full. So instead of one, two, now it was like so I could capture every ball that was coming in. Oh, that's a good lead. Oh, oh, that's a good lead. Oh, that's a good lead. And then you can't really see here, but what I'm doing, I'm cradling on my arm each time I catch it, cradle it, oh, cracks it. But when you get to 10 or 15 leads, you can still catch every single lead that's coming in. But then what do you do with it? You put it in your arm. Well, the ones that you caught three hours ago now as you cradle it, they just start falling off and they start rolling away.

Speaker 3 (13:33):
And then that really good lead that you were determined to come back to and follow up with like you did when you were only again, one or two a day. Now it's just rolled off into the distance and it's you try and call that tomorrow, that lead's dead. So that was the time when I started the team. It was like, I've got so much business here. I need to, Ethan, you want to lead. And I was giving it to anybody in the brokerage. And obviously their motivation isn't the same when it's, I'm giving you some leads and they've got their own business. If we're trying to figure out what's a good split, like, Hey, will you give me some money if I give you a lead? And they go, sure. And they go off and then they have a client, their client, they're going to focus on their client.

Speaker 3 (14:14):
They're going to forget about that lead that we were sharing. So there was no accountability, there's no tracking. So that's what started me with the team is like, I need Ethan to be on my team, but I need to be able to see what Ethan's doing every day. I need to be able to see if he's actually calling those people. And so I got two, three, I started off with two people and then it just kept expanding. And then because I would always reinvest back in the business, I'm always looking for new lead sources, then I would get more leads. So now I need more agents. And then same thing when you've got 30 leads here, but they're still coming in every day and now the agents are overloaded, they're doing the same thing, the leads are falling away. So then you have to add more team members to be able to take that because at the end of month one you've got 40 leads.

Speaker 3 (15:08):
At the end of month two, you've got 80. And then you compound that. And then it comes to a point where, here's my other analogy. It's like spinning plates. So if you remember those old cabaret shows where they got a pole and they have a plate on the top that's spinning. So if the plate represents the clients, if you can keep it spinning at a hundred miles per hour, then it stays perfectly level, and then that's your client a hundred miles per hour. If you've got five, you can keep going around and keeping those. That means you're touching base, you're showing homes, you're giving them some information, some intel. Ethan, you are doing fantastic. You're doing so good. I'm going to give you another 10. So now you've gone from five to 15. Well, now it's a lot harder, but now you're running around a little bit more, but you see someone starting to wobble. Oh, let me get that one.

Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yeah, you can't move your attention and your time around enough to keep it going. Yeah, you are

Speaker 3 (16:08):
Doing fantastic. I'm going to give you another 20 leads. And then now it's just like all you do is you look to one, oh, there's a one that's wobbling over there. Let me go. It's fallen. Oh, it's fallen. So you lose attention, you lose your capability or your capacity for all those leads. You have to figure out what that is. And so I think we're now over the period of time, we figured 25 leads is probably the most that most people can do. Some people are less and some people are more.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
And that's per day?

Speaker 3 (16:44):
No, per

Speaker 2 (16:44):
Month. Okay, good. I was going to say that's still a lot of plates

Speaker 3 (16:48):
So cumulatively over that period of time and then some months or less, because what happens is five people all come in the same month and then you're running yourself ragged showing properties and right offers, and so you can't really take more leads. So maybe your capacity goes up,

Speaker 2 (17:05):
But that's been a ratio that you've seen over the years that kind of dictates at some level the pace of hiring.

Speaker 3 (17:12):
And that's why you need a team, because when you see that Ethan's now got 50 leads, he's just, it's not good for anybody. So let's back off, let Ethan work, then let's bring somebody else on. Let's give some of those new leads to the new agents. So you expand, and just as with anything, as the people in the team, as they become more experienced, I always say, I can't guarantee you a closing in, I used to say in six months, but I can pretty much guarantee you closing in the first year. Now we've got people that join now, we call 'em bootcamps, they come on and then they're in there for literally two and a half weeks. So they're learning all the systems and processes, and by the time they come out of that, we've got 'em where they're just writing offers straight away. They have a pool of business that they can jump into. We call 'em often leads. They're in pons. It's a follow up boss thing.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
How long is the bootcamp and do you do it in cohorts or is it like a self-paced, do the modules and sequence kind of a thing? No,

Speaker 3 (18:20):
No. It's once a month. We're trying to figure out how we can do it every couple of weeks, but it's a drain on our resources as in we need people to actually physically teach that. I did a class yesterday for two and a half hours on just working what we call the backend and the relationship with follow up boss, the backend, the leads that are all coming in. So it's a lot. And so we do that every month, and it's about two and a half weeks. And obviously we want the agents to go out there that are good representation of us as the company. So we want make sure that they're educated and knowledgeable and they're writing strong offers. We also have a mentors program. So the mentors are doing this, but there's a lot to learn if you want to, when you get your real estate license, you've gone through your, I think it's here, it's two weeks. You get your part A, part B, then you go take your state test, and then you got your, is it 30 hours new affiliate license, but then you're essentially given the license to go wreak havoc. If you don't know exactly what you're talking about,

Speaker 2 (19:39):
Mess out the other half of someone else's deal.

Speaker 3 (19:43):
Exactly. So we have seen that where our agents are really handholding. The other person on the other side, they just don't have any support from their brokerage or they just, they're an independent contractor. They're just going out and write an offers and working with clients. And they may be fantastic as personality wise in terms of sales, but then if you don't have the fundamentals of actually knowing all the intricacies of the implied and express terms of a contract, then you're probably going to run into some lawsuit issues and things like that. So we spend a lot of time making sure that the agents are really knowledgeable about that, which I've always said, oh, two and a half weeks is too long, but which part do we take out? Okay, so you want to go out and they don't know anything about this. So over a period of time, we've realized about two and a half weeks is the amount of time that we spend in our bootcamp.

Speaker 3 (20:41):
And when they come out, I mean, you're always learning. You never stop learning. But when they come out, they're pretty knowledgeable. So then they're writing contracts pretty quickly. And then when they talk to the other people that we're getting a license with, sometimes those people don't have deals for 4, 5, 6 months, and they're like, well, we have to do two a month, or we're on the short list. We have standards. I'm going too much into this. But essentially agents on the team are not really prospecting because we provide all of the leads and we're not asking them to take a lead and then nurture it. What we do, when the leads come in, the opportunities come into us. Somebody registers, or one of our business partners gives us an opportunity. So those are the leads that come through the ISA department. The ISA then scrubs those, then they nurture them. They figure out if this is somebody that's moving here in six months, six years, or they're, they need a house next week. So if you look at that like a relay race and the client is the baton, the baton, the baton, when that comes to us, it goes straight to the ISAs. And the ISAs essentially run a lab.

Speaker 3 (22:03):
Is this, I think this person needs to go straight to an agent. So then they just hand that off to the agent after one lab because this person wants to see homes tomorrow. They've gone through the qualification process, but in other circumstances that ISA might take that lead and be running the lap for six months and until they become ready and then you hand it off. So from the agent's point of view, every time they get that baton, it's a qualified lead. They're ready to go. So they really should just run a lap, one more lap or two laps, and then we just want the baton back to give that to contractor to close. They're going to do everything else, which means now that agents written the contract, it's all accepted, all the work is going on behind them, and then the agents right onto the next baton. Let me go.

Speaker 2 (22:58):
That's another good analogy. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (23:00):
That's the benefit of being on the team, and that's the benefit of being on our team, that we give you opportunities, not just leads.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
Yeah, you offered several good value props in there, including just the ramp time, how quickly this bootcamp gets people up to speed. Okay. I want you to tell me a story that I was kind of a part of because I knew you at the time. Of course, we weren't in close contact, but I'd see you a couple times a year. So I remember this happening. But in these conversations, I always like to surface a key decision that had a major impact on your team building journey. And something that we chatted about was when you were broker released and you had about 48 hours to figure out a path forward. I think that was back around 20 15, 20 16. Yeah. Set that story up a little bit and talk a little bit about obviously the nature of the decision that you faced, the decision that you made and how that went for you.

Speaker 3 (23:57):
Well, I was a team team leader in a brokerage, max Elite. Back then, it was in Nashville and had no 73 agents. Debra Beagle was my managing broker just at that time because we, at some point, there's a change in the way that people can name their teams. I had been the Ashton Real Estate group of, in this case, max Elite for a long time. When I was naming the team, there's a legal hotline here for the real estate. It goes to, they can check everything, make sure everything's good. And I said, everything good with my name? And they said, yes, everything's fine. I said, fantastic. I'm going to call myself the Ashton Real Estate Group of Max Elite. And then about, I dunno, five years later, there's this whole movement, you can't have real estate group in the name of your real estate team.

Speaker 3 (25:00):
So I said, that's not right. But actually, I was just generically saying to re max, Hey, I think I said Max needs to do something about this because I am not changing the name of my team. So we set up a different brokerage under the umbrella of the original brokerage. So it actually was beneficial for me because we didn't have to change the office address. I actually got a dedicated phone number that was mine so that all the calls that were coming in were actually coming into me. So in my mind, this was great. Now, I was a brokerage. Within a brokerage. I needed a managing broker, and Deborah was part of the team, and she had a broker's license, and she was eminently qualified to be the managing broker. So she became the managing broker. And then the owner of that company then decided that they wanted to take over my team, ostensibly, I got broke released, Deborah got broke, released, and Johnny got broke released. That was taken away, the leadership of the team as it were. And yeah, Maxs were a little horrified about that. So that brokerage doesn't exist anymore, by the way.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
And I'm sorry. So this was just a hostile takeover. You are released and we're absorbing all this team that you got.

Speaker 3 (26:32):
Essentially, that was the idea. Oh, I got a guest. She wants to come and say, hello, this is Adeline. Adeline's my assistant, and she's eating ice cream. All right, you good. So of that team of 73, 53 eventually came with me. They were promised all sorts of things by this other broker, and they knew that, I don't know that my promises were factual. I was going to provide them with opportunities and leads this other, if they stayed with the other company, then it was all talk essentially. And then I think, yeah, we had 53 stay out of the 70. Some of them were new agents, so they were just, I dunno, they were scared. So they stayed with the original brokerage. And then of those other ones, there's a few then asked to join maybe a few months later, but at that point it's too late. I'm terrible about having a long memory. And so now that other brokerage is out of business and we're the number one max team in the world. But yeah, Maxs were a little horrified of that was going on and for me. So what

Speaker 2 (28:06):
Were your options in that moment? What were your options and what was the timeline?

Speaker 3 (28:11):
The timeline was that we had a meeting set for Wednesday in the brokerage office, and then on Tuesday night, I got an email, no, on Wednesday morning, I think we got the email saying, you broker released Tuesday night. I was, there was some signs that the lady that was the brokerage owner, she'd blocked me on Facebook. So I remember calling the CEO of the region. It was a family owned region back then, and I said, this is not conducive to a good business relationship. Those are my very words. And he said, yep, you're right. So that's when we went down the path of let's get our own brokerage. But from their point of view, they didn't know if I was going to go to Kelly Williams, if I was going to go independent or if I was going to stay on the team. So

Speaker 2 (29:06):
Were any of those viable? Did you give those any consideration? I mean, obviously you started Max Advantage.

Speaker 3 (29:13):
No, I mean, I was kind of a popular kid as it were, like, oh, come play on our team. That would be fantastic. So yeah, because I think we were, I can't remember what volume business we were doing back then. I always get it wrong. Deborah is the one that's really good with numbers, but maybe it was two, 200,000, 300,000, something like that. So sizable team. But for me, here's another analogy. I was on a train called Max, and then really what was happening is I could see the rails were broken up ahead, and then do I go left to independent into this big tunnel? Do I go right to Keller Williams or another brand, or do I stay straight ahead and hopefully we come out the either side and for me, I'm a train. I've got carriages behind me, and in the carriages are all the agents.

Speaker 3 (30:15):
So they're coming along and then I'm trying to see if I can keep them in the train. So if I go left to go independent, I'm going to get people jumping out. No, I need to be part of a brand max. I'm all REM max. If I go right to Keller Williams, Canada's the same thing. But if I stay on course and stay true with the Remax brand, which I've been part of since 2004, well identified, I knew that it was going to be Rocky Road and we'd have some people being thrown around in the back, kind of like those old Star Trek movies, people running from one side to getting hit by the Clingons. It'd be like that, but eventually we want to be able to come out the other side, come out the tunnel, the smoke disappears, and then we can see, oh, the track ahead, the vision, it's clear we're going to go up to the mountains and we're going to saw, and that's what we did. We kept, yeah, well, we kept 53 on board essentially, and we have that alignment with the brand and went on to become the number one remix team in the world, five years running.

Speaker 2 (31:33):
That's fantastic. How would you advise someone, let's just say someone is 48 days or 48 months to make a decision like this. Talk a little bit about the different, I mean, obviously you were in, were on a moving train, and there was danger ahead. You had to make a quick decision. It makes so much sense. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (31:55):
We had no time. There wasn't any time to make a decision. It wasn't like, well, let's sit down, right? Let's go look for a new office. Let's get this alliance set up here. Let's do this. Now that we've got all that set up, let's go in and talk to the managing broker and say, Hey, we're leaving. And at that point, you have a discussion and can they offer you more than you're getting elsewhere? I didn't have that. We didn't.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
So you just opened the door to where I wanted to go, which is if a friend of yours was having this discussion, they had 48 weeks to make a similar decision without the force of the decision, they could just stay and there's no disruption whatsoever. What are some of the key factors? I mean, you just identified a scenario where perhaps someone comes to you with a, Hey, if you bring your team over here, we'll give you X, and then you can bring that back to your broker. And they're like, well, what if we can give you 0.15 x or whatever. How would you advise someone to think about that scenario? I mean,

Speaker 3 (33:04):
It depends. For me, it was like, so I was originally with another big regional brokerage. There's two that was big, big ones that cry like ballparks, big regional brokerages, very well respected, have good training, good, all that stuff. But for me, I needed more of a national presence because I was doing online lead generation and somebody coming from California or somebody coming from New York, Chicago, any of those, they didn't know who these big regionals were. They didn't have any brand equity or awareness. Whereas the big ones, this is back in 2004 when I switched to Max, by the way, it was, so there was only pretty much Max Coldwell Banker, I think that were National. Keller Williams was relatively new back then. And I also needed something that was instantly recognizable. I think I told you I was doing a lot of online lead generation and through nashville.com.

Speaker 3 (34:07):
Back then nashville.com was ranking for everything. And then in the top right and corner, they had this spot for real estate and you could put your logo. So nobody knew who Gary Ashton was. Nobody cares about me. But if it had the max balloon, as much as I'm not a massive fan of that balloon, that's not the first thing I would think of when coming up with a real estate logo. But it seems to have done pretty well, but it's instantly recognized on red, white, and blue. It reinforces that perception. If I'm, Hey, I'm doing some research on moving to Nashville, oh, I should look at real estate just to see what they've got. And then that's why I switched to re max because I needed that brand recognition. So depends what your motivation is. If you are trying to, I don't know, some brokerages do really well with really, they're focused on one or two areas of town.

Speaker 3 (35:06):
They become known as the experts for that. They're like boutique, usually high end, or there's a couple of areas in Nashville where people have kind of made themselves the specialty realtor in that area or brokerage. So if that's what you're looking for, that would be good. In that respect, if you're looking for support, looking for branding, marketing, all the training that some of the big brokerages come with, some of the networking that you can get, because some of the bigger brands like exp and re max and Cold Bank, they're going to have these big conferences, which usually in Vegas, unfortunately. But that's just where people like to go. But if you go, then you're going to probably going to meet some of the realtors, and then you're going to develop relationships with somebody in Chicago, so in California. And that becomes a good way of generating referral business. So that could be important to you

Speaker 2 (36:09):
Especially. I mean, you also made me think about the market. I'm thinking about markets where there may be isn't so much inbound traffic. I mean, certainly Nashville has been bringing in people from all over the country, which is a really nice benefit. I'm sure there are folks listening who are in a market that doesn't have that characteristic where the really strong local or regional brand could still be super viable because you're not looking to create that instant trust through a recognized brand and a recognized logo for someone coming in from a thousand miles, 2000 miles away.

Speaker 3 (36:44):
And I think I told you right at the beginning is luck, vision and money. So the reason I moved to Nashville was not for real estate. I'm a drummer. That's what brought me here. And I think I've said this before, I'm pretty good. I've played in the bands, we've done pretty well when I was back in England and playing around. So I thought it was good. Then when I came to Nashville, I realized, well, I'm good, but good grief, some of these people are absolutely phenomenal. So I knew within a few days I was like, yeah, you're not going to make any money doing music. So better find something else to do. And me and my dad had sold a mom and pop motel on Clearwater Beach. So we had to do the 10 31 exchange, reinvest that money, which is why I got my real estate license. I just wanted to buy some investment properties, get the inside intel if they're going to make some commissions, might as well be me kind of thing. So that was the plan was to do a little bit of real estate and it was going to be all music. And then that's when I realized it flipped not that good.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
From a vision, luck, money perspective. What was your vision initially? I mean, you've already been very clear about the idea of you started getting good at generating leads primarily online, and then over time layering on multiple different inbound channels. But what was your vision for this business you set? When did it occur to you? I can be one of the biggest, my

Speaker 3 (38:18):
Vision. I just want to be the number one in the world. Number one.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
When did that vision occur to you?

Speaker 3 (38:25):
So I remember seeing the top 100 list for max teams, and I think the first time I was on it, it was like 90, and that's probably when I had maybe three or four people on the team. I was like, whoa, 90, I'm on the list. Fantastic. And then I kept each year get a little higher. Well, then you start having aspirations. Well, I want to get into the top five if I can get into the top five. And I was lucky because a couple of times some of the big teams left Max. So by default I got bumped up and I said, oh, this is fantastic. I've just went from number nine to number seven, and then it became within reach. So not that that was the prime focus, but then when you get to number one and you can actually say you're number one in the world, that's pretty cool.

Speaker 3 (39:19):
So I don't have vision boards or anything like that, but maybe I have a mental vision board that I always wanted to be number one at something and I always wanted to be. When you Google Nashville Real Estate, my goal was to have 10 websites that are all different. They're all different personalities as it were, different, but they're all filter back into me. So we're kind of close to that because we're partnered with Zillow, partner with realtor.com, partnered with Ojo, which is Voto. My sites, Nashville's, MLS ranks really well. And the organics, nashville realestate.com, which is my other URL, ranks really, really well. Gary ashton.com ranks really well, tn real estate ranks really well. So we've got lots of opportunities. So I don't have 10 on one page, but we've definitely got three or four on one page.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
That's amazing. Progress against your original pay per click as like I have none of them, and so I need to pay to show up at the top. That's fantastic. One of the times we spoke recently, you said something like, and I could be misquoting, you teams are the new brokerages A, does that resonate with you? And B, break that down a little bit. What does that statement mean to you?

Speaker 3 (40:44):
Yeah, I think so teams, I didn't say that. I think that's just common knowledge. Like me, Chris and Justin have had teams for a long time, and I think what we realize that we are doing what brokerages used to do when they first started, because maybe back in 19 80, 85 or whatever a brokerage would, the splits, the commission splits were different. So you would either pay a fee or a high fee, be part of that brokerage, or you would pay a fairly sizable split. You might be on an 80 20 or a 75, 25 and 25% being retained by the brokerage. Well, the brokerage then has money then to reinvest back into the agents, which then allows them to train agents, offer courses, which then means that they've got agents that are better trained and then go out and do better jobs and then actually expand their business.

Speaker 3 (41:52):
So it was a self-fulfilling prophecy really, that the more that you invest back in the brokerage, the more brokerage goes. But then there was this movement to, I don't know when it started, but for I think probably Max might have been responsible for, they came up with this new model. It's a hundred percent commission, but you pay higher fees. But then there was a change, and then people were doing just really high splits, like 99 1 or 95 5, and then obviously low office fees to attract more and more agents because they were trying to capture that peripheral business, which would be the mortgage and the title. So the brokerage almost became a lost leader. So then they're not really making any enough money to reinvest back into the agents. This is my kind of thinking, but teams came along. So teams are under the brokerage and teams are responsible for generating leads, which is what brokerages didn't.

Speaker 3 (43:00):
The teams are investing in advertising, all that stuff we talked about earlier on to generate leads. That means they've got enough money then to reinvest in the business by going after new lead sources. So that's generating more business for the agents, but they're also reinvesting in the agents by making sure that they're got good training. Because essentially you want the best, I'm not going to say workforce, but you want the best representation for when they go out and then they're writing contracts for you. You want those to be, wow, this agent is so professional and so knowledgeable. Well, you have to invest in that agent so that they can actually go out and be knowledgeable and aware of all the stuff that's going on in the market so they have that added value that they're bringing. So teams have that ability to reinvest, I think.

Speaker 3 (43:57):
So teams are the new brokerages, and that's my team is 185 agents. So is that a team or is that a brokerage? So now there's this new phrase, team image, which is essentially what we are because we've got a mega team. We got to the point where we can reinvest in the business, go after new lead sources, generate more business because the agents have already got 25 leads. Now we need new agents to be able to deal with these new lead sources that we've got. Also, as time goes on, agents become more and more knowledgeable. They establish themselves as a real estate authority, as it were. So their friends now start seeing that, and we'll use Ethan, Ethan's on the team. Ethan's been on the team for three, four years now. Ethan's doing really well. Now, when you first start in real estate, your friends are probably going to be saying, Ethan, how's it going?

Speaker 3 (44:58):
Have you sold anything yet? How's it going in your first view of real estate? But after a few months on our team, we can see that you're actually selling. Then your friends are going to see that they know you, Ethan, that was prior to this doing used car sales or was doing whatever another job. But all of a sudden now you're in real estate. So how does Ethan doesn't know anything about real estate, but now they start seeing you. It's like the social proof. We are reinforcing the fact that congratulations, Ethan sells person of the month. And if you keep seeing that the friends, then next time they see you six months or a year later, Hey Ethan, how's the real estate market? How's it looking? So now their perception of view as Ethan that doesn't really know anything about real estate. Well now they see you as the authority figure for real estate and you are your friends. So who are you going to talk to when you think about selling your house two or three years down? Well, Ethan, he's in the number one remix, Tina. Well, I'm going to go straight to Ethan. So that helps people on the team build up what we call personal business. I'm still generating business for the team.

Speaker 3 (46:12):
I need more and more agents. The longer your tenure on the team, probably the less you really need the leads that we're generating for you. But you use that as a safety net because sometimes you don't have any business from your friends. So you come back and you dip into taking leads from the team. So the team keeps on growing. So that's how we got to 185. Start with two. Now we're at 185.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
So go back to 2016. I assume that this hemorrhage that you have today where the entire brokerage is your team, it's been that way from day one.

Speaker 3 (46:54):
Yes. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:57):
Okay. So someone is listening to this or watching this right now, they're a solo agent, they're inside a brokerage. They may or may not be getting great support from their broker. Let's just kind of set that aside a little bit, although it's a factor. How would you advise someone to think about whether they should stay in as a solo agent, whether they should perhaps join a team or whether they might have what it takes to start a team? And obviously leads are a big part of that. We've covered some of this ground already, but simplify it a little bit. How do you advise someone in that situation, what is their best potential future, or at least how should they think about it?

Speaker 3 (47:36):
I mean, at the end of the day, this is a cliche, but you want to provide the best possible experience for your client. So to do that, you're probably going to need some peripheral support. And the way that I always look at this is that the title company, the mortgage, the mover, the insurance, it's just economics that we get better service because when we say, Hey, we need somebody to call this person back, can you get them set up? Well, we're providing X number of clients a month, and then little Ethan over here has got one client, Hey, can you call my client which client they're going to call first? They're probably going to call mine because they want to reestablish or reinforce that relationship, the level of service, because the agent is the gatekeeper really. So they want to make sure that we're happy.

Speaker 3 (48:36):
How do we make sure that I'm happy, but we want to make sure that my clients are happy, so they're going to jump on looking after our clients and then we'll get to you. But they might be, oh, I'll do that tomorrow. And then, so you're not offering the best level of service to your clients, not because you are not a good agent. You don't have that support network in place. So that's why I think the teams leverage all that. It's economies of scale. You've got economies of lead generation that you probably couldn't have yourself. I don't think there's anything wrong with being a single agent and utilizing your own network, but if you want to grow your business, I mean, I'm obviously biased. I think that there's more opportunities to do that with a team. And then if you have aspirations, start your own team.

Speaker 3 (49:33):
But don't just go, I'm going to be a team and then hire three agents. They're going to be sitting there twiddling their thumbs. We can be really well-trained, but there's two sides to that story. You can be really well-trained, but you got to go out and actually have some business to act upon. So I feel that the business comes first and then you make sure you get your team around you. And then like I was saying, you have more money to invest back in the team. Make sure that they go on training, make sure you bring guest speakers in. Make sure you're leveraging the opportunities that you have with your brokerage or your network. So that's the good thing about being part of a big brand. It's not just me. We have access outside of that

Speaker 2 (50:24):
To really good. And I appreciate especially the decision-making filter of what is going to allow you to support your clients the best. What it comes down to, it just reminds me of where you were maybe 15 or 20 minutes ago, this idea that the brand reputation is built certainly within your team and your brokerage in the consistency. I've worked with four agents from that team and all of them are top shelf. That's what it's about. It's building and reinforcing that reputation in the market in a very consistent manner. And there are lots of ways to be successful doing it, but I agree with you that there are a number of benefits that are very unique to this, and teams are obviously very, obviously I'm just preaching to the choir here, critical to the future of the industry. Gary, this has been super fun. You've been really generous with your time. Before I let you go, I have a set of questions that I think you might enjoy and I'm definitely going to enjoy hearing from you on them. So first pair of questions you only need to answer. One is, what is your favorite team besides your own real estate team, or what is the best team you've ever been a member of besides your own real estate team?

Speaker 3 (51:39):
Well, team will be soccer, so that would be leads Lead United, and then team is a band the best. I was in a band that we did really, really well. We opened up for Krista Berg and then went on to do tears with Sophia. So we were at a level that was pretty good. So you had to have a good strong team in that. Unfortunately, that team then fizzled out. But when that team was working well, we were doing really well creating songs and performing well. And so I enjoyed all that.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
Love. It was that Officer dibel?

Speaker 3 (52:14):
It was Officer Dibel, yeah. Love

Speaker 2 (52:16):
It. And do you regard the bass and the drums as the core of the team?

Speaker 3 (52:21):
The foundation with

Speaker 2 (52:22):
The rhythm section? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:23):
Yes. Well, my other analogy that I like to use is pay-per-click or SEO. Which one do you want to do? Well, both are fantastic, but SEO is takes longer because you're building a foundation that you're building your business on. So you've got to really dig deep down, put some ion pilings in, create a strong foundation. So you're building a house. PPC is like renting. As long as you pay your rent, you can stay in that house, but as soon as you stop paying your end, you're off. Yeah. So the same thing with the band. You've got the core of the band is the foundation, which is the bass and the drums. If that people can recognize that Steve is a great singer, or Joe's a great singer, they can recognize that Richard is a terrible singer, but they don't really know the bass drums if they're locking in, but they instinctively know something I don't like about that band. They know when somebody's singing off key, but if the timing's not great, they don't really know what it is, but they just know that. But if the timing's good, they're going, that band was fantastic. Singer was pretty good, but the band was great.

Speaker 2 (53:41):
Love it foundation. Gary, what is one of your most frivolous purchases, or what's a cheapskate habit that you've held onto, even though you probably don't need to?

Speaker 3 (53:56):
Frivolous? Yeah, I've got a few of those. So I like expensive watches. So I've got a Rolex, here's my Apple watch, here's my Rolex. So why do I have two? I don't know. The Rolex is just, it is kind of like men's jewelry, I think. I dunno. I always like watches. What was the other one?

Speaker 2 (54:24):
No, that's good. You only need to answer one.

Speaker 3 (54:26):
I'll take you my habit though. I love Waffle House. I could probably afford not to go to Waffle House, but I love it. It's fantastic. That's

Speaker 2 (54:34):
Good. It's a highlight. Cool. Last one. What are some of the ways you keep learning, growing and developing, or what are some of the ways you enjoy resting, relaxing, and recharging? What does it look like for you to unplug?

Speaker 3 (54:51):
Unplug. I'm a big fan of documentaries and I don't know why, but World War II documentaries. I love that. So I don't really watch tv. I have a subscription to Hulu for sports and things like that, but I don't really watch tv. But I do pay, I think it's 18 bucks a month for YouTube. Not YouTube tv, but YouTube. So you can pay so you don't have to deal with the ads. And then that to me is the best source of entertainment ever because it knows what you like. So you start watching the YouTube documentary about World War ii. I like World War II music documentaries and travel. Those are kind of the three that I like. And so what happens is YouTube has the algorithm where it goes, well, if you like that, what about this? And I go, this is great. And then next thing you know, it's three o'clock in the morning and that's

Speaker 2 (55:48):
How to say, next thing you know, the sun's coming up.

Speaker 3 (55:50):
Yeah, I've got to go back. So that's relaxed. And then traveling, love to travel. So luckily I could combine a little bit of that with real estate. So with conferences, as long as they're not in Vegas all the time, I like it when, so I'm going to California tomorrow for a realty.com conference, so that'd be nice. That'd be, where is it? Where all the courses are? I can't remember. Just south of la. Can't remember. Anyway, so yeah, travel. And I have an rv, a little RV Sprinter rv, which I like to take that out. Just as an aside, I drove from Nashville to Anaheim for Disney, Disneyland. Wow. So girlfriend,

Speaker 2 (56:44):
That's a commitment.

Speaker 3 (56:45):
It was a girlfriend, two kids actually now fiance, and two kids and two dogs. And we drove from Nashville. It's a sprinter van, so it's 25 foot long, not one of the massive ones, but it was fantastic. And I enjoyed driving. I always say, look, yes, you can go from Nashville to LA, and it's like four and a half hours. That's really easy. But along the way, there's some really interesting things. Now, would you fly to go see the Petrified Forest? I don't know. But if you go in and you're driving past it, well, let's take a little detail for an hour or two and go look at the Petrified Forest and let's go look at the Route 66 Museum. Would I fly to go see the Route 66 Museum? No, but if I'm driving past all, I mean, I kind of like all that stuff.

Speaker 3 (57:42):
So yeah, when we went to the Grand Canyon and yeah, you would probably fly to see the Grand Canyon, but it was along the way. And then driving through, going through, where did we go through, just like one day it was sunny, and then later on it was snowing and went through all these different climatic areas. We went to Palm Springs, went up the mountain at Palm Springs where you go through, it was snowing at the top. It was fantastic. 85 down on the desert floor and I dunno, 18 degrees up on the topic. So I enjoyed that. That was fun. And then having the audible listen to books when you're driving along, it's great.

Speaker 2 (58:24):
That's awesome. I love it. And I also like driving, not all the time, but some of the time, for all the reasons you described. Congratulations, by the way.

Speaker 3 (58:33):
Oh, thank you. And your

Speaker 2 (58:34):
Engagement.

Speaker 3 (58:35):
Yeah, enjoy that.

Speaker 2 (58:37):
And you offered a number of websites along the way. But for folks who have spent almost an hour with us, where would you send them to learn more about you, connect with you, or learn more about your team?

Speaker 3 (58:50):
If you Google Gary Ashton, probably the number one site is either going to be Max or gary ashton.com. So if you go to gary ashton.com from there, then there's links to all the other sites. But nashville realestate.com or gary ashton.com. The other ones are just too, it's too hard to Nashville's MLS. You'll get it wrong. It's the worst URLI ever got, but that's the one that organically ranks. I'm not sure why, but it does. So nashville realestate.com.

Speaker 2 (59:22):
Cool. I'll put that immediately adjacent to wherever folks are watching or listening. Gary, I appreciate you. I look forward to the next time I get to see you in person. Whether you drive there or fly there, I always enjoy it. And I appreciate you spending this hour with us. Alright,

Speaker 3 (59:35):
I enjoyed it too. Look forward to seeing you.

Speaker 2 (59:37):
Thank you. Ciao.

Speaker 1 (59:40):
Thanks for checking out this episode. Of Team Os get quick insights all the time by checking out real estate team os on Instagram and on TikTok.