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 Jenny Wemert. A few fun facts before we get started with her husband and their triplets. She moved from Houston to Orlando about 20 years ago without knowing anyone. She built the foundation of a real estate business through a farming strategy in her own neighborhood, and she like her COO, Emily Smith and like me as a native Michigander. Thank you so much for taking time to talk team os today, Jenny.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
Absolutely my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah, really looking forward to it. And we'll jump off right away where we always jump off in these conversations, which is a must have characteristic of a high performing team. When I offer that to you, Jenny, what comes to mind?

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Servant heart comes to mind Whenever we're hiring, we're looking for that servant heart. I can't train that, but I can train real estate, so we have to care about the people we're working for.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
I love it and I love it. I think when I heard that right off the bat before you offered a little bit more context, I'm sure a lot of other people heard it the same way, which is, well yeah, leaders should be servant leaders. That's the model that I think most human beings respond most favorably to. But I hear it throughout the team. So just go one layer deeper there. Why is it so important for a team member that you're bringing in, let's just say as a listing specialist, why is the servant heart so helpful in that seat or any of them adjacent?

Speaker 3 (01:47):
Well, one, I think this business is hard, right? We're at everyone's beck and call for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and if you don't love serving people, it will be very, very hard. So for us as a whole, I don't ever want to lose sight of the importance of the client and going the extra mile for the client because if we do that, the rest of it falls in place. The reputation and the brand and the business and the money and all of that will come if we do the right thing with the people in front of us at that moment. And that's true across our team. Whether you're in an admin seat or you're an agency, it's all hands on deck to serve the clients at the highest level. And that's important to me and will always be important. And then within the team, it's servant hearted towards each other taking care of each other because so many of our agents have been doing this for so long with me for so long. We've done life together, we've done babies and divorces and marriages and deaths and whatever life happens to people and we all need to be there to support each other and make sure that our clients are taken care of in the meantime. So it kind of goes from a client perspective and in-house culture as well.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
Absolutely. I think that client experience is so driven by the agent experience that those are two sides of the exact same coin. So I love the way that you described that. I also appreciate very much something that I feel like a lot of people, and I don't know how to characterize them necessarily, I was going to say maybe earlier in their careers, but I don't think that that's even necessarily a requirement of it is your confidence that if we take care of this as the fundamental, taking care of each other, taking care of people, that everything else happens as a consequence. I so often observe that people put numbers up at the board and chase them and that sometimes people become collateral in that process. You're nodding your head. For folks who are listening exclusively, we do put these up on YouTube as well, but you're nodding. What are you nodding to Jenny?

Speaker 3 (04:04):
Well, I do. I think we all, when you first come in the business, you're excited, you're helping people. And actually I always see agents come out of the gate and do their best out of the gate because they're kind of naive to the whole process, but then they get ghosted by a client or burned by someone and taken away from a family barbecue and without any results and they start to get a little jaded and then they start to kind of forget that we're serving people and then they start paying attention to the numbers and then it kind of goes downhill from there. And then as we start to grow teams, we go get coaching and training and they all want us to pay attention to metrics and conversion rates and dah, dah, dah. And the more you get into the weeds of all of that, you lose sight of the people in front of you.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
And now we're having AI respond to the people that are asking for help about a property and we have to stay human. We have to stay in relationships with people and we don't, we're not like, our team is not like we're not tracking the minutia of metrics. We're tracking production and success and how many testimonials are we getting and what's our reputation out there. I don't need to tell my agents how many people they have to call a day and how many notes they have to write and what their conversion rate is because if they have somebody and they have a need, my agents are going to step up and serve them as a human and take good care of them. And then 50% of our businesses now repeat referral because of that. And nobody wants to be on these cold leads. Everybody wants to be a repeat referral and that's the whole goal. So you can't do that without taking care of people and relationships

Speaker 2 (05:57):
Really good. I also heard in that response, the idea that the activities are dictated by this as well. I don't need to dictate activities to people, their own call to be of service and value and to do the right thing by people kind of guides the activities. Characterize your team however you wish. Talk about the market or the size or the structure or the culture. I know culture is a big part of Wemert Group. Characterize your team however you'd like for folks who are listening.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
Yeah, I think it's been built on, our team has been built around the people on the team. So for me I was like you said, mother of triplets, I was trying to always get time back, so I was trying to take hats off and replace them with people and over time I would hire an assistant, hire an agent, hiring an agent, and then based on their availability or their strengths, we would hire the next person. And because we've been able to retain agents and staff, which is the thing I'm probably most proud of, we've been able to just continue to grow and build on such a strong foundation. I think at this point we're a team of, don't hold me to these numbers. Roughly 90 people and 32 of them have been with me for more than five years and most of them have been with me almost 10 or more.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
So we're just continuing to grow and we grow when we have enough leads to feed another family or the availability to help somebody grow a business within our foundation. We're just not hiring to hire fog of mirror, you're in where. So I think to characterize that we've built on a collective group of skills and we trust each other and we rely on each other. It's a true team environment. And from there, like you said earlier, the culture comes, the brand comes, the reputation in the marketplace comes because we care so much about taking care of each other and our brand because that's important out there.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
So your teammates are not teammates, we mates. Mates is actually an acronym that captures your values, which I think is awesome. And I heard in there a little bit of complimentary strengths and that you've built around the team. Also, the longevity is pretty unique as well. So feel free to speak to we Mates if you would like to, and anything that you're doing, just give folks a practical tip on how do you make sure that these values in this culture and this process is alive and well day to day, week to week. Do you have to talk about it? Is it exclusively modeled? How do you bring that to life in such a tangible, meaningful way that actually delivers results? Like 50% repeat and referral?

Speaker 3 (09:11):
Yeah, well we do talk about it. We don't shove it down their throats every day, but with that we mates, we use that term to refer to ourselves, but the community uses that term for us as well. So I'll get calls from agents out there and they'll say she's just not acting like a we mate. There's some sort of standard now for a we mate even from a community, which I love, which actually I love a lot. But so I think that when we came up with that mates, we've also attached that to our mission and when we're hiring, we hire to those qualities I guess. And so we make stands for something, it's we never I to start with and then mates, it's a masters of our craft. We want everybody be proud of our partners out there. We want to be experts and so masters of our craft accountable for our actions. What is that T?

Speaker 2 (10:25):
Teachable spirits.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
Yeah, there you go. Yeah, teachable, that's it. And then E is elevate others. So we're all going to have a bad day. We're all going to maybe just not be at our best in a transaction and we look for those opportunities to lift each other up and then also give each other a lot of grace because we will make mistakes and as long as, and we're not doing neurosurgery, so a mistake can be fixed with money. We don't hang people around here for making mistakes. So we want everybody to try their hardest and go the extra mile, get on that limb for those clients and then we can fix everything on the backend. But when we say we mates, it actually stands for something and that's the stuff we celebrate. We don't compete internally because each of our agents have different goals and different whys and it doesn't make sense to pit my young gun that has 24 hours a day to work against my mother of four children and single. They are both doing the businesses they want to do. We're there to support them, but it doesn't make sense to have a leaderboard and compare them. We compare as a group externally, but we don't compare internally and I think that helps. We don't have a bunch of ego divas. Everybody is a humble servant. So I think that's sort of who we are in a nutshell.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
We support each other as a brokerage, as a team, I guess we try to keep everybody in their highest talent areas. So our agents are just focused on being agents. We have leverage behind them in transaction management and listing directors. So every listing that goes out is like our billboard and we're proud of it. And then we just try to keep our agents working with their clients, hunting for inventory winning deals and then keeping up with their database that they build over time with us. And it seems to be a formula that works for us,

Speaker 2 (12:44):
It has for some time. I want to go back a little bit because in every one of these conversations I like to spend time with you and thank you for spending time and conversation with me, Jenny. I like to spend time with each person talking about a key decision that they had to make along their journey. And for you, I would love to talk a bit about your shift from production into leadership full time. I think that'll come up quite a bit in these conversations, but in particular, there's another layer of it of you chose to use the model, which I think is not uncommon of replacing yourself with a listing agent. There are a few things that you learned in hindsight through that experience. So take us back to that time and tell that story however you wish.

Speaker 3 (13:27):
Well, I was with Keller Williams for 14 years. I built our team there, followed the red book, followed Gary Keller's teachings very closely. And so at that time as a rainmaker myself, like I said earlier, I was trying to take the hats off and the first hat that had to go of course after my admin was the buyer agent position because I just didn't have the time to be in the field. It is my favorite part of the job of course, but it was the part that I needed more time back to be able to lead, generate, convert and so on. And so I early on had to hire the buyer's agents and that went well for a long time and I was slow to give up the listing side of things because honestly that's where the profit is. Doctors don't get out of the operating room and expect to make the money they're making.

Speaker 3 (14:30):
So I held onto that listing agent position for probably a little longer than I should have. I was getting kind of burned out. I'm like, call me. I'm not going to call you kind of follow up at that point because I was just wearing so many hats and it was just being pulled in so many directions that I was starting to lose sight of that customer service piece. So I knew that I needed to replace myself, but I was holding onto the profit. And then one day my daughter, she was in sixth grade and her cheer coach called me and said, I've been praying about it and God just keeps leading me to you to be my volunteer assistant cheer coach. And I was like, oh, well how do you say no to that? Well, God says, I guess I got to do it. So that turned out to be the straw that broke the camel's back.

Speaker 3 (15:30):
I didn't have 20 hours to be a volunteer cheer coach and listing agent and run the team and dah, dah, dah. So I finally stepped out of the listing role, handed it to one listing agent and said, don't screw this up and I'm going to go be a cheer coach. And he didn't screw it up, but there were a lot of lessons learned in all of that. One probably waited a little too long, but two people who are leading teams are probably superstar real estate agents and have high capacity. And so not everybody has that same capacity and nor should we expect them to, nor do we need them to be part of a team.

Speaker 3 (16:16):
But the guy that I handed it to, he did well, but the reality is you can only handle so many relationships at one time. So if you're carrying 30 listings or 20 listings and you have how many pendings, that's a lot of relationships and balls to keep in the air. And it was too many, it was too much when I was doing it, had a large staff behind me picking up the majority of the pieces. So because of that, I transferred these listing agents into these roles with a ton of leverage behind them, which was unsustainable is the reality. The cost is unsustainable. In hindsight, I should have let all of my agents start to take listings and not overload one or two agents and also spoil them with a bunch of leverage that was unsustainable. I needed agents to carry their 10 or five and maintain all of the relationships and do the work and not be so leveraged with admin behind them because that just became kind of a house of cards. I couldn't continue to hire that much leverage behind these agents.

Speaker 3 (17:35):
Those shifts were difficult because when that one agent is getting all of the leads and you bring in a second agent that never feels good. So I would almost recommend bringing in two. So they learn to share early, but we've always led with very transparently and said, when our agents were coming to us and saying, we're dropping these leads, we want better for the team, we want better for you, it's time to hire instead of hoard because they don't know when they're going to get that next lead or be afraid of that next person coming in because they're going to get less. We've always kind of come from abundance and worked with our agents to help make decisions. And when you're a young team, you start, your value proposition is small, you, you're the coaching, you maybe have some extra leads, but you're still wearing all the hats and you're still cherry picking.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
The value proposition is small, so you tend to offer up a higher splits and then as you grow and you have to build this whole thing and leverage and keep buying more leads, and it's unavoidable to have to back down those splits. But in hindsight, and we did it well, but there was pain in, in hindsight, I think explaining that upfront, we're giving you more now, but as we grow, we're going to have to dilute this because you're going to have volume, you're going to have leverage, you're going to get time back, but it can't all be on me to cover all of that. So I don't know, I just dumped on you seven different thoughts, but

Speaker 2 (19:21):
You can sort that out. I'll hit four of them really quickly. That was awesome, by the way. Thank you. So first is maybe listen to that voice in your head when you're thinking, is it time, am I willing and able to do this? Can I actually set down production? I think there's a fear of can I afford to set down production producing so much myself? I heard two people instead of one in part because they can learn to share, and I think it precludes maybe some of the scarcity mindset a little bit. I also heard the idea of hybrid agents instead of the most common or the most traditional route, which is to replace yourself with a listing agent because that's kind of the last role you kept to yourself. And then, gosh, I've now forgotten the last piece, but it was, oh, it was splits and this idea of casting a vision from the beginning that this is where we are today.

Speaker 2 (20:15):
This is my vision for where we're going to be in 24, 48 months. This is how we're going to get there, and this is what it means for you in the split, but this is the benefit to you and this is what we're all collectively paying for. This is my vision of what this team is. And I think it's probably hard because I think maybe the next generation of team leaders who's learning from folks like you, perhaps through channels like this show that we're doing here may be to have a clearer vision in advance, but I think this is all learning. That's a hundred percent. 2020 hindsight.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
Yeah. Yeah. And I've been blessed because the people that have been with me from the beginning are majority are still with me. And so building that trust that I'm always going to take their families and their livelihoods in consideration when we're making these changes. And I'm thankful that they've trusted me through some of those changes, but I really do, if anything, if I lose sleep over anything, it's just making sure that we're living up to what we've promised. But sometimes market conditions warrant changes and the team dynamics warrant changes occasionally. And if we've been together long enough now that we know we'll come out of it on the other side, but it's building that trust helps get you through all of that.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
And I think just the spirit behind and the mentality behind the words that you just shared with us are probably why you have so many folks that have been with you 5, 10, 12, 15 years. I would assume that that's relatively uncommon.

Speaker 3 (22:07):
Sort of like dog years in real estate, right? In Orlando, Florida, we're ground zero for every new real estate company, every new model, everybody's promising something. And so our agents are under attack on a daily basis and they say they're going down with the we mate ship. So I don't know, I'm just blessed that we, because I care so much about my people that I want to make sure that they're getting what they need out of this. For sure.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
And I know it's probably a little bit trite to some folks watching or listening, but that's something you just can't buy and that's something you can't pay for. It's something that you built that can't come undone any other way.

Speaker 3 (22:53):
Yeah, and I think it's important to note, I've built this over 20 years. This isn't something, I went in yesterday and bought a bunch of relationships and bought a bunch of, this is just something that has organically grown over 20 years and we've never tried to make it more than it is. We are just building on the opportunities that we have in front of us, and we're all achievers. We all want more, but we're not trying to triple our goals this year for no good reason. If our agents are happy where they're at, then they're happy, then it's time to hire another agent. We don't need everyone to be robots and strive for things that they don't necessarily want to strive for. Not everybody wants to be a superstar real estate agent on stages and blah, blah, blah. They just want to make a good living and have some work-life balance and be proud of what they're doing.

Speaker 2 (23:52):
Okay, yeah, and maybe coach a cheer team now and then. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (23:55):
Right, exactly. Be able to, and some of my top guys, they're young guys, well, guys and girls, young families, they have all the flexibility. They can go coach their kids, they can go away on the whatever, travel baseball weekends or travel football and they're enjoying it and they're crushing it in real estate, but that's because they feel in control. They don't feel like they're being controlled by the business.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
Yeah. How do you decide, you talked about leads earlier as the driver of agents, you've also talked about admin and perhaps being out ahead on the spend on support relative to what your agent team was producing at the time. What's your process for managing those various pieces? You also talked about the markets change and things like that, and sometimes you have to go through some painful transitions. Just in general, how do you manage some of those moving parts and pieces? Talk about maybe collective decision making. I mentioned your amazing team member and your COO Emily. I know that your husband has been involved in the business. I don't know what the state of that is, but how are you making these decisions? Do you have a brain trust and you're looking out ahead talk about that however you wish?

Speaker 3 (25:10):
I wish there was some brilliant answer to this. The reality is my husband is the broker. He's kind of like the backend with his CFO, and then Emily and I are kind of like the front of the house, leadership visionaries, marketing kind of stuff, and people all of a sudden, I don't know this is going to sound airy fairy, but all of a sudden we'll start to get clues. It's like this person's complaining about this, this, and somebody else is complaining about something else, but it is related. And I'm like, we're really on a ceiling here and we are going to hit this ceiling very soon. What are we going to do? We got to start thinking through how are we going to manage that. For example, right now we do lead shifts on our team where our agents get three hours at a time, whatever comes in during those three hours into our lead bucket, which is a lot, they have to manage those or refer it or whatever.

Speaker 3 (26:19):
Well, there's only so many three hour shifts in a month. And so eventually we're getting to the point where we're going to be maxed out with numbers of agents that want shifts and shifts available. And so we're brainstorming around what is our next step on that and how do we manage that? How do we make sure that everyone is getting what they need in their fair share? And so it's sort of like we kind of lead like we're a cruise ship, we're slow to make changes and slow to turn. I think it's difficult when you're a jet ski leader and you're constantly making changes and changing tech and the newest and the latest and people can't keep up. So as long as we're making slow decisions, but not keeping our head in the sand and realizing we have a problem here. This is coming like a freight train. I see it coming. We're just actively in dialogue, but there's no formal process unfortunately.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
No, that's not unfortunate.

Speaker 3 (27:33):
I appreciate psychics and so I'm just kidding.

Speaker 2 (27:36):
Yeah, we read the leaves. I really appreciate that. I mean, I didn't expect some magic answer or something. I guess I did describe a brain trust conference room table scenario or something. But when you started that with the reality is, and that's all we're looking for here, I really appreciate that very much. I assumed that it was a pretty big decision because you talked about how much value Keller Williams had been to you throughout your career. I know that in a previous conversation you and I had, you said, Hey, when it's the right thing, I send agents to Keller Williams all the time. You went independent about six and a half-ish years ago. Share anything about that process. I know several people that we have lined up to talk with on the show have made a similar move, but I also know that a number of people are still with the original brokerage that they started their team with years or even decades ago. So how did that go for you? What was the motivation? What was the process like? And with six and a half years hindsight, what would you say to someone who's on the precipice of a similar decision?

Speaker 3 (28:40):
Yeah, it was a very difficult decision. You can probably tell by the way I've talked to him, a very loyal person to our relationships. And so I helped build that office. I had blood, sweat and tears in that office. I had a little bit of ownership in the office, so we didn't want to leave. We really didn't. But we got to a point, I think we were about 45 people strong at that point. We were going to have to go to an outside location. We were really building our own culture within the culture. We were paying for all of the different tech stacks than what KW was offering. And so when we were getting ready to go do that, it just didn't make sense to keep sending two $300,000 back to Keller Williams basically for the brand because we were using all of our own stuff.

Speaker 3 (29:40):
So that hurt. We explored everything we could possibly explore within those models. I just wasn't really interested in being an in that environment. And at the time, they were doing all the expansion and I was like, listen, I've got less than 1% market share in Orlando. Even with our 850 homes we're going to sell or whatever, I can go get 99% more here. I don't need to go to another state or whatever. So I just wasn't interested in that at times. So the option really for us was just to pick up, drop in and keep on doing exactly what we were doing. So we were the Weimer group, now we're Weimer Group Realty, and we just kept on trucking. We just had to remove the KW logo. We have stayed close with all of our KW friends, and like I said, we don't hire very often and we don't hire everyone.

Speaker 3 (30:40):
And so newer agents we send back to kw, and this is where you really want to start if you want to be your own agent. And it's worked out well. And so would I recommend to a small team to go be a broker? Not at all. You don't have enough value proposition. And a couple of the big ahas are one, you're a ghost as a broker, even though we have a very, very strong reputation in our marketplace, the experienced agents know who we are. But new agents in the market who's weer realty, they're calling Coldwell Banker or Max the names. So recruiting is not as easy as you think it is, and it becomes a full-time job if you even plan to do that. And then two, it's all on you. So we have to train our agents, we have to have the modules. I mean we can use some outside stuff, but we have to have a plan.

Speaker 3 (31:48):
We have have to do it all. We have to carry the liability. They always make the liability piece, the scary piece. It's not really, but since we've done it, we've been to a couple arbitrations, we've been threatened with lawsuits. It's no fun. So would I do it with a small team? No, because it's almost impossible to grow. And I miss being able to be part of something bigger where we often have too many leads or not enough people to do open houses or something in a kw. I could stick my head out the door and say to the newer agents, Hey, do you want to work this 150,000 lead? Do you want to do an open house and build an extended relationships? And I miss that. If we can't service a lead, we can't service a lead and I end up giving 'em back to KW anyway, but it's still like I didn't realize what we were leaving until we were gone From that perspective, and the team leaders, if you have a relationship with the team leaders, they're helping you recruit, you're rescuing some of their new agents as a team leader because they can't get off the ground, but you could get 'em off the ground and it's a win-win as long as you keep it a win-win and don't try to steal out of the broker's pocket all the time.

Speaker 3 (33:09):
So those are my kind of observations about going as a broker, we were big enough that we could pull it off and we had enough stability with people that we felt comfortable, but I don't know if I would do it again if I was smaller

Speaker 2 (33:25):
And I know I'm asking for the impossible, first of all, thank you for sharing that. That was fantastic, especially a couple of the key decisions or key consideration factors. I'm sure that's going to be helpful for a lot of people. You referred a couple of times if I was smaller and I am asking for a magic number, but I'm really not. It sounds like I'm asking for a magic number just in general for context, when you say small versus big, and I know there are a number of dynamics. It's not just agent count, it's not just production, it's not just transaction sides. It's probably a variety of these factors, difference between small and large, but how do you define when do you have enough market presence or agent count or production that this is potentially a viable thing for people to consider?

Speaker 3 (34:16):
Yeah, I don't really have, I know it's

Speaker 2 (34:18):
Highly very,

Speaker 3 (34:19):
Yeah, I don't have the metrics, but I would say when I'm giving advice, I'll say to them, if you going to, you're going to stay in the field as a lead agent and have an assistant, maybe a couple of showing agents, and you're going to be your own brokerage, by all means that is going to be highly profitable and that is the most profitable model right there. If you're going to stay in the field, if you intend to come out of the field and become a recruiting machine and just be broker and agents and not a team model, I would highly suggest skipping that and just joining one of the recruiting companies and get rev share and not have to carry all the liability and the training and all that.

Speaker 3 (35:04):
It's the middle when you're growing from a small team like that perfect pod and you start adding a bunch of agents and you're working yourself out, and your goal is to be that Gary Keller's seventh level or working yourself out of the field, the middle is hard, and that's why you see very few teams make it at a high volume because it becomes, I mean, your profitability goes to nothing in the middle, especially because you have to invest to get leads and to build or people just are going to leave you. And especially if you go open your own brokerage and now you're carrying rents and you're carrying all of the things, it's like a black hole in the middle to get through. The money is on the out. It's either a small team or big volume, but you go from 60% profitable as a small team to 10% if you're lucky these days, the cost of leads these days, and that's a hard transition through the middle.

Speaker 3 (36:14):
And so most people don't make it. And so I wouldn't add opening your own brokerage to that expense in the middle. The challenge though, people run into, and it's what we ran into, is we needed our agents to be able to make more because they were getting to a ceiling where they needed to hire support admin, showing assistance. When you have nowadays with some of these brokerages, you have a broker, then they may have a place or live on or something on top of that, and then you have the team leader, then you have the split, and then you're still trying to pay a showing agent. There's nothing left. And so that was part of our decision. We needed to collapse some of that, one of the splits, and so we could give it back to the agent so they could grow. I don't really Interesting.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
No, no, no. That's really good. I feel like there are agents listening to this right now who are solo agents inside a brokerage. They're thinking, should I start a team? Should I join a team? Those are two very different things. I think probably the more aggressive, really driven people that are willing to sell 80 houses on their own or something with no admin support at all are probably the likeliest potential team leaders. But what would you say to either of those populations? What should they, especially someone who's probably perhaps suffering a little bit with lifestyle, suffering a little bit, playing to too many of their weakness areas and not enough to their strength areas because they're not, it's hard to be good at all these things including running your business. And so speak to either of those and maybe start with the agent who probably should open their mind and open some conversation about is it time to consider joining a team and what should I look for?

Speaker 3 (38:14):
Sure. Yeah. I mean, from an agent perspective, it depends on the team leader. It depends on the value proposition as well. So not all teams are created equally, obviously, so it's kind of hard to answer that question. However, if for us, we're attracting experienced talent because we are sharing the cost of the admin over volume, they don't have to go pay for their own assistant, their own listing director. And so they get the benefit of having a leverage. They don't mind the split because it's fair, because they're not having to carry that employee salary and wake up every morning worried about keeping them busy and paying them. So that's attractive to experienced agents. They also want to be around other producers. Talent attracts talent and you want to work around people doing things at a high level. The new agents, it's always good for them to start on a team if they are team players, but they don't have to learn the a hundred things that a single agent has to do. They just have to learn eight and worry about the clients and how to write a good contract, and then they have a mentor. And so they only have to get focused on this and then they can learn the rest over time. So I don't know how a new agent starts in this market without being under somebody's wing or into a structure.

Speaker 3 (39:59):
So the new agent is kind of easy. We've had the most success with growing agents. So as much as I hate hiring new agents so hard and you have to, what's an appraisal? And they grow with you and they turn in to be superstars, but they buy into the team model, they feel like they've helped grow it and they don't feel like they have to leave because we're continuing to build around them. What do they need? What leverage do they need? And growing them as big as they want to grow. So it can be done. You can hire attract experienced agents, you just have to know your value proposition. They're not coming just for the leads, but they're coming for more of the leverage and not feel so lonely out there and to work around talent. I don't know if I answered your question, Ethan.

Speaker 2 (41:04):
No, you did. Absolutely. You spoke to the new and to the experienced agent. How about to the aspiring team leader advice for getting from one or two to six or 10? Yeah,

Speaker 3 (41:18):
So when I'm talking to agents now, I am telling them try to leverage yourself first. If they are active in the real estate market, I used to say, hire your transaction manager. You can do that by project or whatever. But now I'm saying keep the transaction management because that's the high touch points with the clients and leverage the marketing, the piece that goes away when you get busy and it's under fire, you take your foot off the gas on the lead generation. So I'm teaching for agents to hire that marketing first once they make their first hire and they have to wake up now and be responsible for somebody else. If they can get past that and they enjoy that, then they can probably build a team. But a lot of agents that I know and I'm one are like a DD, and they love that every day is different and they love the flexibility and they love to hide some days and not get out of bed and whatever.

Speaker 3 (42:31):
They may not make the best leaders or be able to get this thing off the ground because they don't have the diligence and consistency to do so or the want to lead people. So they have to know themselves, but they shouldn't just start a team because it's cool to start a team if you don't have something to offer. Besides coaching, that's not enough in my opinion. Anybody can hire a coach. Why would they give you 50% of the commission? So what is it that you offer? And so for a young agent or not an aspiring agent, they could kind of test it, get a few agents around them and start to give them a few of your overflow leads test to see if they're closing. And I used to call it my extended sales team, and it was almost like tryouts. And if we got a groove going, you're like, why don't we do this for real?

Speaker 3 (43:34):
And I will commit to making sure that you have enough to build a business. Don't. When you just are handing out a few leads to people, you don't feel the need to carry them, feed their family. It's just like, if it works for you and it works for me, that's great. And so try that on. Maybe leverage out maybe part-time marketing until you can bring that down full time and just start to test that and see how it goes for them. And then if you can get a foundation with a good strong admin, you actually have a value proposition now for agents to join your team because you have shared leverage and you should have leads, in my opinion, that you can share. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (44:27):
I really like that tryout scenario. It provides so many different benefits with a clear value to the other person, but kind of non-committal scenario for everybody. Really, really good advice You, I mean, I would assume that you're at a point in your career that you're probably holding onto within the context of the group, the pieces that you really feel like you want to do and that bring you to life the most. Is that accurate? And if so, I feel like I already know the answer to this a little bit, but what are the pieces that you choose to hold onto because you just really like them the best, and are you holding onto anything else that you would maybe like to give away? I would assume not.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
That's a good question. Well, maybe I haven't. They have systematically removed me from most things that require consistency, which is good. I hold on to relationships and I love to teach and mentor, so I'm probably holding onto that teaching role a little too long. But I love it, and I love to love to mentor our agents where tell me what they want. And I love to brainstorm with them what they can do to get it. And just, I guess coaching, I guess if you want to call it that. It's what I enjoy the most and really I'm just sort of like team mom at this point. I am a firefighter. I love to call me with the problem, please, all the way till 11 o'clock at night because put me in. I love that stuff. Let me solve your problem. And it gives you, I still got it. Yeah, right.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
Yeah. Well, and I think I left this out of the fun facts, but if I remember correctly, you started your career professionally as a teacher, like a school teacher.

Speaker 3 (46:26):
Those are the things I love to problem solve and be the hero.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
Yeah, that is fantastic. I so appreciate the time that you've been willing to spend with me and everyone else who's watching and listening before I let you go. The way that we wrap these up is with a trio of pairs of questions, and you only have to answer one of them. And the first pair is, what is your very favorite team besides your own real estate team, or what is the best team you've ever been a part of besides your own real estate team?

Speaker 3 (46:56):
My favorite team that I aspire to is Russell Rhodes, especially when he was at Keller Williams. I was watching him organically build a business over time, and suddenly he was doing from 300 transactions to a thousand transactions. And I realized if I just keep doing the right things and taking care of people, I'm just right behind him a year or two. So I was watching him closely. He was very client focus. They did a lot of client parties and events and pies and all the things. So I used to just really watch his team and aspire to be them.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
Really cool. What is one of your most frivolous purchases, or what is a cheapskate habit you continue to hold on to, even though you probably don't need to?

Speaker 3 (47:49):
The chiefs case is way easier. So I am a Midwest girl and heart. I have the hardest time living in luxury, so we travel in luxury. I have no problem with that, but in real life, I am a thrift shopper. I will buy resale. I refuse to carry a purse with a bunch of letters on it if they're not paying me to be their influencer. Maybe my CPA husband has made me frugal, but we're frugal to a fault. But we are really proud of the investment portfolio we've built and setting up our kids in building generational wealth. I don't need a purse or red bottom shoes for everyone else to know. I have money and my husband is still, we've sold his car two years ago and he's just hasn't gotten around buying a new one because we had an extra wee mobile sitting around with my face on it, and he drives that stupid car every day. Talk about no ego. I mean, that's the next level for me. But there he is in a little car with my face on it every day back and forth to work. It's embarrass.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
It's so awesome. There's so many good pieces in there, and I can totally relate to all of it. My wife and I are not nearly a fraction as financially successful as you and your husband, but I'm still driving a car that I drove our 20-year-old son home from the hospital in, and the last time he and I were in Orlando and down in Tampa riding roller coasters. We hit a couple of Goodwills. We had a little bit of time before we had to get to the airport. So anyway, I can totally relate. Love that.

Speaker 3 (49:46):
It's fun. The hunt's fun.

Speaker 2 (49:48):
Yeah, well, that's the thing. That's the game. It's the hunt. Yeah, I think it's just deep in our DNA as human beings, and we really don't have that much to hunt for. I take that back, nevermind. This whole conversation has been about that. This is one of the reasons I love the real estate industry so much and professionals in the space, is that it is pure entrepreneurship. So anyway, I just withdrew my own statement. Last pair for you, and you can take of course, either one that you prefer. What are some of the ways you keep learning, growing and developing, or what are some of the ways you enjoy resting, relaxing, or recharging? I,

Speaker 3 (50:27):
I'm not much of a er. I'm either really busy or I'm a sloth, so I'm going to say my phone habits keeps me kind of in a learning mode. So I watch the groups. I'm connected to agents across the country. I'm constantly learning and looking for nuggets or new opportunities or connections for us as a whole. So I would say that's what I'm doing to learn. I watch podcasts or listen to podcasts and all of that, so I'm a learner at heart. I can't consume enough content, so I'll go with that because other than that, I'm face playing it on the couch. I'm a sloth or super, super wonderful.

Speaker 2 (51:24):
It's on 10 or it's off to zero. I love it. This has been great. Again, I really appreciate your time so much, and I would love to send people off who've made it to this point in the conversation to learn more about you or your team or your journey. Where would you send people that have enjoyed this conversation maybe want to connect or learn more?

Speaker 3 (51:43):
Yeah, thank goodness. My name is so unique. So if you just Google Jenny Wemert, you'll see anything I've ever done. But Wemert Group Realty is our website. We do, if you go to Weemer Group Realty and you go to the careers button, everything we've talked about as far as our model, our splits, our culture, we have a magazine posted. It's all very transparent. Anybody can see it. So I would recommend maybe checking that out. You can also see our buyer guides and our seller guides and everything else at Weer Realty. So weer group realty.com would be a good start or our Facebook page.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
Awesome. And that's W-E-M-E-R-T, weemer group realty.com. We'll put that immediately adjacent to wherever you are watching or listening to this. Jenny, thank you again so much and I hope you have an awesome rest of your day.

Speaker 3 (52:31):
Thank you for the opportunity.

Speaker 1 (52:32):
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.