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 Tiffany Zenni. A few fun facts before we get started. She began her career as a business and marketing leader in construction, chemical manufacturing, defense and space manufacturing and flowers. Her approach to real estate is one of being data-driven and she's a self-described data junkie. And in addition to leading her real estate team, she serves as realtor and residence at Follow-up boss. Thank you for talking team OS today. Tiffany.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Thanks for having me. Ethan.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, looking forward to the conversation and the goal here of course is to explore the team concept at a very high level and I want to start with a must have characteristic of a high performing team. When I offer that to you, what comes to mind? Tiffany?

Speaker 3 (01:04):
I would say first and foremost is I think the team leader has to have patience. So that's not necessarily a characteristic of the team itself, but the team leader has to have patience in the process and understand that every single day is a learning experience and it's okay to fail forward. It's okay to make changes and to tweak things. And you know what? It's also okay to just scratch the whole thing and start over again if it's not working because the business exists to serve the business owner. So if you're not happy with how things are going, you got to tweak it, you got to change it. And then I would say as far as a characteristic of the team overall is a good culture where everyone thrives together, where they can work together, they can trust each other, they enjoy each other's company. The culture piece is so important.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Awesome. Let's step into patience and culture a little bit separately. When I hear patience, I hear potentially, and I'm not assigning this to you Tiffany, but these are two things that I heard as you offered that. One is maybe patience for people doing things differently than you might or differently than you intended and seeing maybe how that plays out. Another aspect of patience that it made me think about was the idea of implementing a new system or a new process and giving it time to kind of settle in, get adopted in four results to start occurring. And maybe in setting it up you need to give yourself a reasonable timeline to say, okay, at this point then we're going to get serious about whether to kill, improve, optimize, whatever anything I offer there resonate with you.

Speaker 3 (02:49):
Absolutely, and I think that's where the, from the intro where I'm a little bit of a data junkie, so yes, patience in your system. I think a lot of times real estate agents that start teams are usually pretty dominant personalities. If you're familiar with the disc profile, a lot of us are ds, right? So we want to crash through the wall and make things happen, but not everybody operates that way. So that's something that's important to understand is that not everybody else, and usually the people that are going to join your team are not going to be the ones that are going to crash through the wall because if they were going to do that, then they would probably start their own team. So you have to be patient with people and in their skillset and in their process and how they move forward, how they might get caught up in a situation in a real estate transaction that naturally you as a team leader would just jump into problem solving mode and get through it, but they want to dwell in it for a little while.

Speaker 3 (03:59):
So you have to be patient with the process of each individual, but then also patient with your systems. Give them time to work, look at those numbers, pay attention to what is happening in your business. And that comes down to it's not all dollars and cents. There's a lot of data that happens before dollars and cents happen, and if you're paying attention to those things moving forward, then you don't have to lose a bunch of money to figure out whether or not something's working or not. And I mean honestly, that's one of the great values of follow-up boss. Sorry, I got to put that plug in there real quick. But that's one of the great values of follow-up boss is the ability to kind of get into that data, see what's happening, how are your leads working, how are your agents working? And then analyze is it improving over time and then turning into dollars, right? Because ultimately a business needs to be profitable, but you have to be patient with that process.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, absolutely. I also appreciate the subtext and what you offered there is perhaps as you're setting up a new system or a process, defining some of the leading indicators so that we're not looking down the line and figuring out what happened, that you can get a sense in some of what you're setting up from a patient perspective. You can make adjustments a little bit more on the fly. Speak a little bit to culture. I've thought about it a couple of different ways over the years. One of them is that we do have a responsibility and opportunity as leaders to set the culture. I think of that primarily as modeling, but at the same time I also have subscribed intermittently to the philosophy or the thought that the team ultimately owns the culture and all we can do is seek to influence it. I think the brand is a little bit the same way the consumers own the brand. All we can do is seek to influence it and influence the impression of it. Just maybe share a couple of high level tips or insights or hard learnings around team that you've picked up over the years.

Speaker 3 (05:59):
So I think that you're a hundred percent right, the team sets the culture and all we can do is help to influence it. And one of the kind of defining moments for us was sitting down as a core team and defining those core values together and then really making sure that those core values stay in front of us every single week. So we've deployed, we call 'em cultural nominations where we have a huddle every morning and it's kind of just a launch to the day. So it's a 15 minute zoom call in the morning with the whole team and at the end of that call, we always do cultural nominations, so that's just an opportunity for an agent to say, Hey, I see you over there. One of our core values is grit, right? Because you got to have a little grit to be in real estate.

Speaker 3 (06:55):
You got to be able to just stick it out when other people want to give up. And so that's one of our core values and it's just so nice when another team member sees that somebody's working real hard. They might not be top of the leaderboard in transaction count, but they're really putting in the effort to get there and they're just grinding away at it. And just acknowledging that alignment with our culture keeps that culture in front of the team on a regular basis. Another thing that we do with that is we have a team meeting every week and we have a minute or two where each a team member takes turns, we rotate weeks, and they do their core value of the week and they talk about this is the core value that they want to talk about whatever they want and what it means to them or why it's significant to them at this very moment. So just kind of keeping that culture in front of you at all times I think is so important because it's very easy to create core values or a culture around core values and draw it up on a whiteboard and make a pretty poster and hang it on the wall and then just never talk about it again. And then do you really live that then? Is that really who you are? If that's what you're doing. So just staying in front of it all the time.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yeah, I love the co-creation aspect off the top. I love both of the examples you shared of ways that you keep it top of mind alive. I guess now I'm thinking about cultural a little bit as the way that values and some of these other things that we hold as fundamentals are actually lived. And it's one of the reasons we don't control it, we can just seek to influence it is that the lived expression is the culture itself. And so you just shared a couple of mechanisms we can put in place to make sure that they remain top of mind. It's interesting too, I think a lot of the high type personality sometimes doesn't have the patience for it, so it's an easy thing to set aside, especially if things are tough or we are not pacing where we want to get as a team in these types of things. And so I love the way that you're keeping that prioritized. Before we get too much farther, characterize your team a little bit any way you wish market. Talk a little bit about your market, size of the team, structure of it, culture history, anything you want to share just to characterize your real estate team a little bit, Tiffany?

Speaker 3 (09:15):
Yeah, sure. So we are a team of eight agents and we primarily work internet leads, so very systematic with how we're working things. That being said, we're not hard salespeople. We are very relationship driven, so we like to, whether somebody's going to buy a house today or three years from now, we just want to be the people that they call and that they trust. So very good at creating relationships and not selling people. I refer to us regularly as real estate consultants more so than salespeople because I mean really I think it's kind of difficult, almost impossible to sell somebody a house really. You consult them through the process. You can't force somebody to buy a house. I mean, not that you're necessarily forcing them if you're selling them, but that is I think a foundation of our team is that we are relationship driven and very community driven.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
We like to, a lot of people talk about giving back, but it is one of our foundational pieces of the ways that we keep in touch with our client base. We do fundraisers for, we have an annual fundraiser we do for a women's shelter. We have another annual fundraiser that we do for the local elementary school. So we really try to drive back into the community and my entire team is behind that process. That is just something that we all believe in. Other kind of just components of us. We're small and mighty I would say.

Speaker 3 (10:57):
We don't have dead weight, we don't have agents that don't sell. I've got agents that sell 35 houses a year and agents sell 15 houses a year, but I don't have any of those itself, four or three or none. We like to have those producing agents, that's our reputation and get agents into production as quickly as possible. I really believe in, I like to call it an apprenticeship model, so some people might call it a mentorship, but I really believe that to get an agent into production really quickly, it's best to have them aligned with an agent that's already in production. So a lot of our agents will bring in as a sales assistant or something along those lines before they go out and start selling on their own. So they're learning how to do lead generation alongside an experienced agent. They're learning how to do a home inspection, how to write contracts, and they jump into the business already being busy.

Speaker 3 (12:02):
So they're not sitting there going, oh, I've got to learn scripts and dialogues. They just learn from experience right away. And so that's been a really foundational part of how we've grown our business over the last couple of years. We've gone through some iterations of the team, and that kind of goes back to what I said earlier with be willing to fail forward, be willing to scratch it if it's not working. We've gone through the process of hire a bunch of agents and just see what sticks, and I just don't like that. I don't like that. That puts a lot of stress on me honestly. And I'm not saying that's the wrong way to do it. There's some team leaders that works really well, but that doesn't work well for me personally. So I've tried a lot of different things and the model that we operate under now where we are operating as leverage the team is the leverage for the agent, and that's just really thrived for us.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
Very good. And so the whole team is all agents?

Speaker 3 (13:06):
Yeah. Well no, I have two admin staff as well. Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
Cool. And what are their primary roles?

Speaker 3 (13:14):
So I have a marketing admin and then I have an executive assistant and the two of them right now kind of chair in working our transaction coordination. That probably will change eventually, but that's kind of how we're doing it right now.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
Awesome. We'll maybe get a little bit into recruiting. I feel like you're probably at this point because of the iterations, I feel like you're probably attracting the right types of people. But before we get into that, something that we do in all of these conversations, I want to dwell a little bit and break down with you a decision point that was key in your team building journey and something that we talked about when we connected a week ago was a time when you were deciding whether to continue leading and building the team or perhaps going back to a solo agent. And so I'd love for you to start that story wherever you want to start it, and then we kind of break down how you thought about that decision. Obviously I think we know at this point the decision that you made, but maybe some of the near term intended and unintended consequences once you made that commitment to yourself. So walk us back a little bit. When was this in your career and what were some of the things going on that led you to this kind of decision point?

Speaker 3 (14:28):
So this was about three and a half years ago, really about three and a half years ago. And I was at a point in my career where, I want to back up for a second because I think one of the biggest challenges in running a team is going from being a high performing agent because most of the time a team leader starts as a high performing agent to a team leader and trying to balance being in production and running a business at the same time. And that's a hard transition. You're using two different sides of your brain. You need to be available for your agents, but you need to be available for your clients. You don't have time to get the system set up that you need set up or whatever it is. You're just kind of juggling a whole bunch of things. And it feels, a lot of times you just threw a bunch of stuff in the air and you're like, I'll catch whatever I can and whatever falls to the ground, I'll get to it later.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
But that's probably the most challenging time in building a team in my opinion. So that's where I was. I was at a place where I was the top producer on the team. I was looking at my numbers and I was really understanding that if it wasn't for my production, I wouldn't even be able to support my team that I was literally cash flowing. My team and I had about 10 agents on the team at the time, and I was lucky to get one transaction a month out of each. I mean, not even, I really wasn't even getting that. Most of my agents were four to six deals a year kind of agents. I had a couple that would do a little bit better than that, but it was really all me and I was having a really hard time figuring out how to get agents productive.

Speaker 3 (16:22):
So that was kind of where the problem, if we identify the problem first, the problem was how do I get these agents into production? I don't have time to hold 10 agents' hands. So it started coming down to what are the aspects of the business that I enjoy? What are the aspects of the business that I don't enjoy? And yes, I need to continue to make money and support my family, but I was also working a ton of hours all the time, constantly on the phone responding to this, doing that because I had to carry this load of this team. So at that point, I started thinking to myself, and I imagine I'm not alone here, but I started thinking to myself, so is it worth it to even do this if I'm literally the one out there beating the streets to pay the bills for this team, then I could have much fewer bills.

Speaker 3 (17:14):
My bills would be much lower if it was just me. I don't need the rest of these people if they don't want to actually work, if they don't want to show up. That was the biggest problem, was getting them to want to be there, finding that motivation behind them. For me, that was my biggest problem, and I'm very self-motivated, so it was hard for me to, how do I get somebody to want to do this if they don't naturally want to do this? So ultimately what I decided was my issues, the things I don't like in this business are that I can never have a break because I have to be constantly on the go and that I was kind of tired of babysitting agents. I didn't want to do that. So I made a decision. And the other thing that I identified as a problem in recruiting is real estate is probably the only industry, the only one that I know of that does not offer any kind of compensation to people that come to work for them as they're starting out.

Speaker 3 (18:24):
So we're hiring these agents and we're saying, Hey, come to work. I need you to work probably 40 to maybe 60 hours a week if you really want to be successful in this business and you want to get a really good jump, but you're not going to get paid for 90 days, maybe longer. So I hope that works out for you. So it's so hard to hire talent if you're trying to hire somebody that's a professional. And I had gone through several situations where I was recruiting somebody from another industry that I thought had amazing potential that was really interested in real estate, and then we kind of started digging in and talking about stuff and it wouldn't work out because they would say, well, I'm going to have to do it. And a lot of times when agents start out part-time again, in my experience, I know there's plenty of successful agents that have done this, but I would say the majority of people give up before they get successful because it's too hard.

Speaker 3 (19:18):
You're being pulled in multiple directions. So I came to a decision at that moment in time, and this is kind of how things have progressed over time, that the best thing that I could do to figure this out would be to hire a licensed agent to work alongside me basically as an apprentice, as a sales assistant, if you want to call it that. But I needed somebody that would provide leverage for me that I could train one-on-one to be able to do the job that I do. And honestly, I got really lucky and I found an amazing agent and brought her on, and I was able to greatly increased production in that year. And then the demonstration of her success allowed me to recruit other people as well because that really, it was what I needed to prove that it wasn't my leads, it wasn't my system, it wasn't me.

Speaker 3 (20:21):
I just didn't have the right people yet, and that's what I needed to prove to myself. And then I've been able to duplicate that. And I mean, not every agent comes in on salary. Some agents come in with a book of business that's enough to support them, or they come in and they've got enough in savings to be on a wait three months for a paycheck. There's plenty of agents that are fully capable of doing that, but having a model that's built out now that gives somebody with talent, the opportunity to transition into being a fully 10 99 independent agent has been a game changer for us.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
That's fantastic. I really appreciate your awareness of how much you are carrying. Part of what I heard in that was this struggle of I can't commit to lead a team and coach and build these people up. I maybe don't have the patience because I don't have the right people to do that anyway perhaps. And I can't afford to do that full on, and I can't afford to set down any of the activity that I'm doing from a production perspective, what's keeping all of the lights on, and we need to honor that. And so I appreciate the solution that you found out of that. And I feel like you referred to a sales assistant earlier, so I feel like this mentorship model is part of just how you operate now. Did I hear that correctly and is that something that you still have in place today?

Speaker 3 (21:54):
Yes, it is. And I have some agents that are very well established that just have decided to still, the compensation plan that we have, I call it my base plus model. And so there's a base salary very similar to a lot of the mortgage brokers or our loan officers. So there's a base salary and then there's a bonus that's paid as an upside as a percentage of their gross commission income. And there's a number of different ways to do this. I'm not saying the way I did it is right, but we definitely spent a lot of time figuring out how you, there's a combination of giving somebody enough money to where they feel like they're comfortable and incentivizing them to want to do more. And there's a level of accountability on both parts with that too. So that's another thing that was kind of like a foundational change with this space plus model is there's a mutual responsibility.

Speaker 3 (22:50):
The agent is getting a paycheck, they have a job, they owe you work just like any other job. So there's that feeling of I need to do this because it's my job. If I have a shift at Starbucks, I show up to my shift. But then at the same time, there's a responsibility from the business, which is me or staff or systems or whatever, but there's a responsibility from the business to make sure that the agents are being held accountable for what it is that they need to accomplish. So there's a mutual responsibility there. That really was a fundamental change in the business as well versus kind of the attitude that I had caught myself having and maybe not the right attitude, but I caught myself. I would catch myself having this attitude of, well, if they're not going to show up, I'm not chasing 'em down.

Speaker 3 (23:39):
This is exhausting. Do you want to do this or do you not want to do this? It's not my fault. You're not successful, you're not doing what I said to do. But it just kind of changed the conversation. But yes, we do still have the model in place. And actually what's interesting is kind of seeing the evolution. So the original agent that I hired on salary, we ended up hiring a sales assistant underneath her about two years later. And now that agent is an independent agent and doing very well on the team, but it's that year of working side by side with somebody helping another agent manage their pipeline, helping another agent lead generate going to inspections, going on listing appointments, doing walkthroughs, all of those things that are part of our job that I think so many times, especially when a team leader is heavy in production, they just say, oh, well, all you got to do is take this form and go to the walkthrough and fill it out with client and you'll be fine, but you're not really talking through how to do it because you don't have time.

Speaker 3 (24:47):
But doing it side by side, knowing that if you take a step back and take that time, okay, we're going to do this together and then next time we're going to do it together, and then the next time I'm going to watch you do it, and then the next time you're going to do it on your own. And that process of this is how we're going to learn. And then it's not just, oh, you're learning from some video, you're learning from some class. You hear it once or twice, you're experiencing it and when to raise your hand and ask questions. And then the client gets a more consistent experience.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
So many really good things in there. I just want to extend onto where you just left off, which is you have that realtime feedback as well, right? I'm going to do it and you're going to watch me. I'm going to do it. You're going to watch me. Then we're going to kind of do it together and then you're going to do it and I'm going to watch you do it. But that live feedback, that interaction, but then also what makes all of that possible and makes people capable of hearing the feedback they need to hear so often in so many contexts, not just the one that we're talking in now, is the relationship that's built. That is where the care, the understanding, I know your personality type a little bit. I know how you're going to receive this properly and I know how I want to say it, but I know that's not going to work best.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
All those relationship dynamics are right in there too. I also appreciate this idea that it's a living means of carrying on another really, really big challenge that everyone in your seat has faced at some point, which is, how do I repeat how I know I want the customer experience to go? And that's kind of baked into this process as well. Before we go too much farther ahead, I want to double back a little bit and make sure that the solution in this situation, it sounds like it solved all the problems that you've broke down. Was there anything unexpected negatively in the choice that you made? And I assume by the way that some of those 10 agents just kind of scattered, disappeared.

Speaker 3 (26:44):
They pretty much self-selected. We made some decisions, we changed some systems or rules and how we would do business. We created more standards of care and what we're going to do. And what I have found is when you hold people accountable and you have a higher standard than what they want to do, they will and the people that want to rise to the top will rise to the top and they'll take on that challenge. Yeah, I mean actually it's funny, I guess one of those 10 agents, she ended up leaving because of really the other agents. She felt like she wasn't in the right tribe, and that goes back to that culture thing and now she's back on my team. So it's kind of the right people will come back when it's time for them to if it's the right place. So that's evolved and that evolution was really fun and interesting when she came back because it was okay, now I want to be here, but I didn't want to be here before because it wasn't the right place.

Speaker 3 (27:59):
So that's been really fun, negative things. What happened? So I would say the one downside of this model, and what I love about this model is you do have to be really careful with your hiring process. You have to make sure that you have the right people and you have to be really quick to act if they're not the right people, because now it takes money out of your bank account if they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing. So you're taking a risk. I would say the one thing that I did that was a regret and I did fix it was I tried to scale it a little bit faster than I think than this model will allow. So that's the downside of this model is you've got to have enough people that could use the apprentice, the sales assistant. You've got to have enough of those people that can carry this model forward.

Speaker 3 (29:05):
So I did try to scale it too fast, and actually I had three people that I brought on with this model at the same time, and that didn't work. So we've become a little bit more selective, a little bit slower in growth, but it's also given us the opportunity to refine our systems in what we're doing and to bring on people that are more productive agents. So instead of recruiting the new agents, now we have systems and tools in place to provide, and I can show a path to an agent that I could have a conversation with an agent now that is a pretty high producer for a solo agent and show them why a team environment might be beneficial to them when they wouldn't. First of all, I probably wouldn't have felt like, oh, they'll never want to join a team. They sell too many houses. No, now I know what a leveraged model really can do for somebody. Do you want to double your production but not double the time at work? Then let me show you how to do it. I know how to do it. I've done it myself. So that was a benefit. But I would say the downside, the one downside was probably trying to scale faster than the model would allow.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
Yeah, very good. So I hear you say that you're hiring fully productive agents probably as often or more often now than you are the assistant dynamic?

Speaker 3 (30:33):
Yeah, it's a little bit of both. I would say one of the things that I am the least skilled at is recruiting. I don't like it. And you know what they say about doing things that you don't like. You don't tend to do them very well. So I don't think I'm very good recruiter. I tend to go the slow route of recruiting and building relationships and more of an attraction model, and does this make sense? Is what I'm doing going to be able to help you do better at what you are doing? And just trying to put myself in the right seats to be able to meet those people. But we've definitely, I could probably use another five agents right now with our leads and our process and everything else. I could definitely use more agents, but I'm not very good at going to find them. So that's something I need to improve as a team leader or outsource.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
Yeah. Well, a couple things. One, do you feel like the levers are, so you could use more agents, it seems like in general, I know that I'm grossly oversimplifying this, but I feel like the levers are when you have the leads, you need more agents. And when you have the agents, then you maybe need some admin repeat and you're constantly trying to balance those. Are those about the right main levers and factors?

Speaker 3 (32:06):
Yeah, I think so. And I think that the more agents you have, you add some other systems that you need, some more accountability systems, perhaps maybe more automations, greater efficiencies. Definitely the admin side of things. It just kind of depends on what you've got going on and how you run your business too. I mean, I know teams that sell a lot more transactions than my team does, and they don't have two admin, so it just kind of depends on what you want to leverage out. But yeah, levers definitely are leads, agents, and then systems really.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
Yeah, I like systems perhaps as a replacement because systems could be, and that's kind of where I wanted to hear from you because of your business background, because of your data oriented approach. I wanted to hear a little bit more on that anyway, and you just walked me right up to it, which is I think when a lot of folks hear automation, certainly that does apply to technology, but when they hear efficiency in some of these other words that you used, they think, what is the technology solution? But I'm going to guess that you might also temper that a little bit with documentation flow accountability, which isn't always that you can use technology to support that, but it's not always a technology solution per se. Talk about that tension a little bit between, so when you say operations or when you say systems, it doesn't always mean technology. A lot of it is just maybe technology enabled or technology supported. Break that down a little bit for someone who isn't maybe as process oriented as you are.

Speaker 3 (33:45):
So it could also mean structure. A process or a system can mean some kind of structure. So one piece is one piece that we implemented back when I had more, my agents weren't as much in production now, maybe not as independent. They needed a lot of input on different things. We had actually recently switched our CRM system at this point in time, and we started having, we called it office hours because what I found was I was the one that had to answer all the questions and I was constantly getting, Hey, you got a minute, you got a minute, you got a minute. And then the next thing I knew I could never get anything done because it was constantly, you got a minute. So that's just a structure thing where you say, Hey, I'm going to have office hours every day from 10 to 11.

Speaker 3 (34:38):
I'm going to jump on a zoom call. You don't have to come to the office. I will be present on the zoom call if no one shows up. No one shows up. But if you show up, you'll learn something, come with a question and then standing by your office hours because the point of it is to give you as a team leader to free up some of your time because that distraction, I think it was a Harvard business study, it says something, it takes 23 minutes, I think to get back onto a project. If you're pulled off of one, that's huge. That is a lot of time. And you think of how many distractions we get on a regular basis anyway with phones going off and email and Facebook and all the other things. So having that structure in place and then standing by it where if an agent says, Hey, you got a minute, I got a question.

Speaker 3 (35:28):
The answer is, is it a contract you're trying to ratify today? No. Okay, then sounds like it would be great for you to office hours tomorrow. And that's how you can kind of train people and you say it in a nice way If you have this question, I'm sure other people do too. And most of my agents would show up just to hear what other people were asking to learn. It was almost like a daily training session more so than office hours, but it was impromptu. So we're not doing that right now because my agents are very busy and they need that hour a day. And so now I think, and we've kind of been, I have more agents that are higher producing to where if somebody asks a question, we use our Slack channel and they get an answer or three or four or they tag me if they're like, this is what I think, but I think Tiffany should chime in here.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
So now we've kind of systemized that with a Slack channel versus sending a text to one person or picking up the phone and calling the team leader. But that's an example of a process that's not technology at all. But there's so many things you can do with technology to take things off your plate. And the first step with that is to first of all, audit your day. So really write down every single thing that you do. And I mean, whenever you switch a task, I checked my email, this is one thing that was, and I do this periodically just to see where am I spending my time? I have the same amount of time in a day that everybody else has. Where is this time going? And one thing I found is I was checking my email just out of habit three times an hour.

Speaker 3 (37:11):
What's going to happen in email three times in an hour? That's that important. Nothing is the answer to that, but figure out where your time is going and then take that opportunity to look at those tasks and say, should I be doing this? Should somebody else be doing this? Or more importantly, is there a way that I can create a shortcut? Is this something that I do redundant over and over again? Can I create a template? Can I create, if it's a question I'm asked on a regular basis, can I create a video or a standard operating procedure behind it? How can we make this more efficient? And whether that's through some piece of technology or just through another piece of leverage or training, but figure out what those things are that constantly are coming up. Take that five minutes to eliminate that from your future schedule.

Speaker 2 (38:08):
Yeah, really good. And so is it whenever it breaks into your conscious awareness, oh, here we are again. Oh, I need to button this thing up, and you just keep stacking them over time.

Speaker 3 (38:19):
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think that's also how you can figure out when is it time to hire somebody else? If you have enough tasks that create a job description, then maybe that's time to hire somebody. And that's one of the reason I have two admin and not one is because I leverage out a lot of stuff. My executive assistant makes my dentist appointment because it's worth it for me not to have to do that. And that's important to free up some of my time

Speaker 2 (38:49):
And it probably aligns with a lot of the other responsibilities that you've given this person as well. I mean, your schedule is probably a big part of that. And thank you again for making time for this in your schedule. I know you have a lot of responsibilities. I want you to double back for everyone listening either from a recruiting perspective. My hope is that agents who are kind of in some of these zones that you described earlier, I started a team, but I don't know if I made the right decision or I'm a high producing agent. Do I have what it takes to lead a team? I know it's a different job, et cetera. So my hope is that there's either an agent listening right now at this moment in this conversation, or there's a team leader who has maybe tried a couple of different messages, and when you speak again to where you were maybe 10 or 15 minutes ago, which was a high producing agent, where your initial gut reaction was, I don't know what I'm going to tell this person to come onto my team because they're already an incredible producer. But then obviously you have a lot of layers of arguments and ideas and probably lines of inquiry to test and probe with this person so they can discover whether or not a team is right for them. So the question is what type of agent is operating right now solo, who would probably be better off or should at least out of respect for themselves and their future, consider whether they would be better off inside a team? Kind of break that down a little bit.

Speaker 3 (40:16):
Yeah, so I mean, the first thing I would tell them to do is to really evaluate the parts of the business that they enjoy. If they really enjoy selling real estate and being client facing and they don't enjoy figuring out what the best lead sources are or looking at how to increase efficiency on a transaction to close process, I mean, there's so many other things, but if they enjoy the actual sales function, the client facing part, then they're probably a good candidate to be on a team, let somebody else. This is why there's these different businesses are popping up that are literally just support the backend. They're taking care of your accounting, they're taking care of your transaction coordination. They're taking care of what CRM should you have, what website, all of those questions that we as team leaders or as a high producing agent, rather, you don't have time to do it or you do it halfheartedly and maybe you make a decision that's not the right one, and then you never go back and look at it again, and maybe you've been spending a thousand dollars a month on something that you're not even using or whatever it is because you just click that button and said, okay, this is done.

Speaker 3 (41:39):
It'll work. But you don't have that system, that business structure in place that is so important. So if running a business is not what you want to do and selling houses is what you want to do, then I would look at a team. Then the other piece is I would say if you are going to look at a team as a high performing agent, you have to be willing to put your ego aside a little bit because you have to understand the principles of economy is scale, why you're joining a team, you're joining a team for access to more resources at, honestly, if you added it up line by line, a better price, probably even at a 50 50 split, if that's whatever the split is for the team. But if you really add up the resources that you get, if you join the right team and you know what the resources are, then you're probably getting access to more things at a better cost and no upfront risk, but you also have to be able to play by the rules of what that team is because that team probably has vendor partners that they're working with.

Speaker 3 (42:50):
You're not going to be the one that's making the decision on which platform we are. Now, I have a very collaborative team, so I do want their input. That's how I make decisions because they're the ones using things I need to know, is this working? Is it not working? Is this vendor partner doing what they're supposed to? If they're not, do I need to have a conversation or do we need to replace them? Whatever that case may be. So I love that input and I always want to take that input, but ultimately the decision is not theirs. So somebody has to be able to put their ego aside to handle that and be a team player if they want to be on a team. But I think there can be some really great synergy between somebody that just wants to sell real estate and not worry about the rest of the stuff.

Speaker 2 (43:38):
Yeah, I feel like you also mentioned, I would assume a big stumbling block for a lot of people mentally. Another mental hurdle. It's not ego per se, but I think the shift in the split is something a lot of people struggle to get their head around it. In my mind, when I think about that, I'm like, okay, let's just say you're on a 95 5 or a 90 10 or something like that, and you're at X, and you shift to just to keep it simple, a 50 50, and you could be at two and a quarter X is so much obviously better, which is say nothing of all the lifestyle factors as well. I really feel like it makes sense for more agents than fewer, honestly.

Speaker 3 (44:16):
I think so too. And I think what a lot of people would discover is if they truly understood their p and l, like their profit and loss, if they really knew where their money was, and I think that a lot of times they just don't pay attention to that unfortunately. So where is your money going? What are you spending money on, and could you be doing more business in less time if you plugged into something that was already established instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, instead of trying to think of, okay, I need this marketing newsletter. I'm thinking of things that I constantly hear agents talk about. Do you have any ideas on this? Yeah, I mean, I got all kinds of ideas, but what are you trying to do with it? Why do you want it? So instead of spending their time trying to think of how do I get more business, plugging yourself into somebody that's going to do that for you, and again, finding the right team that is going to give you the resources that you need, and what are those resources?

Speaker 3 (45:13):
If you sell a lot of houses, maybe it's access to showing partners so you can take a stinking weekend off, whatever that is. There's value there. There's value there in not having to figure that out yourself. But the first step in that is you need to understand your GCI doesn't mean anything. What's actually staying in your bank account that paycheck actually look like? So figure that out and then figure out what's a split, what are you getting for that money and is it valuable to you? I mean, it's like you can buy a purse at Walmart or you can buy a Gucci bag, what do you want?

Speaker 2 (45:54):
Yeah. Yeah. And it goes back to where you were a minute ago, which is this idea of if you don't want to run a business and you like the client side, I mean you just kind of walk all the way through that in a lot more detail. I really appreciate that. I assume that you're engaged with a wide variety of folks throughout your day-to-day, week to week, month to month. Do you have any advice, really high level for someone thinking about starting their own team? You shared a little bit because I asked who might think about joining a team, but there's also this personality somewhere in that zone where they're maybe holding out solo because they think they're going to start a team. What's something you wish you knew earlier on?

Speaker 3 (46:39):
So one of the things that I'm that person with that ego, by the way, so that's me. So one of the things that I regret, yeah, you were the

Speaker 2 (46:49):
Badass top performer,

Speaker 3 (46:51):
Right?

Speaker 2 (46:52):
Carrying a

Speaker 3 (46:53):
Squad. Yeah. So one of the things that I regret, and I can say that now in hindsight, is not being on a team myself before I started my own, and the whole thing for me was because I was caught up on the split. Why would I do that? I can do that myself, and I did eventually, and that's the person that should start a team is the one that's like, I want to run a business. I want to run a business, and I am going to do it differently, innovatively, whatever the case may be. That's the person that should start a team. But one of my biggest was not being on a team before I started one myself, because I think that that would've expedited my growth. I think that a lot of the learning curves that I had in the first three years, I could have avoided by being on a team and seeing how something works because I'm an innovator.

Speaker 3 (47:50):
So when I look at things, I see, oh, this is how they're doing things. Well, I wouldn't do it that way. I would do X, Y, and Z, but I'm also very collaborative, so I really like to be with a group of people where we can grow and build together. So I wish I had joined a team before, so I would say if you're a solo agent and you've never been on a team, you might consider being on one before starting one. You might find that once you're exposed to the inner workings of what a team is like that either A, you don't want to do it anymore because it's not what you thought it was or B, now you know how you would do it differently.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
Yeah, really good. There's so many things we didn't get to that I want to ask you about, including documenting processes so that not only can you teach them, but you could also optimize them going forward, and how do you balance your time and attention across those things. But for the sake of this conversation, I want to say thank you again, Tiffany and I like to wrap these up with a few pairs of questions. You only have to answer one of each of the pairs of questions. They're kind of fun, and you're just kind of right there at one. 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 (49:13):
Oh, that's hard. You know what? Shout out to Renee Funk, the Funk Collection, because I love her personality, how she runs her team, how her team loves them, and so I'm going to say the funk collection.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
Awesome. She will be a guest on this show. What is your most frivolous purchase, or what is a cheapskate habit you've held onto even though you don't need to?

Speaker 3 (49:45):
Oh my gosh. Okay, so I'm going to say my cheapskate habit, and this is almost a little bit embarrassing. I still do my own bookkeeping. As much as I talk about leverage, I still do my own stinking bookkeeping.

Speaker 2 (50:00):
Love it. So good. This one's just kind of a, well, what are some of the ways that you keep learning, growing, and developing? How do you invest your time there, or what does it look like for you, Tiffany, to rest, relax, and truly recharge?

Speaker 3 (50:17):
Ooh, I kind of want to answer both of those, but continuing, growing and developing. Surround yourself with people that are doing more, better, stronger than you. That whole saying of you're the product of the people in the room with you is so true, and get in the room with the right people. That proximity is key and learn from those people and grow from those people. But that's how I do it. I stay in communication and in relationship with people that are running a business at a higher level than I am, and I learn from them, and it might be, I don't necessarily rip off and duplicate. Maybe I do something completely the opposite, but just to know what's happening around me and have those relationships. So that is what I would say is what I do to continue learning and growing.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
That's awesome. I love it. It's not necessarily, again, the duplication, it's the spark or the inspiration, or maybe it's like you've had these two separate ideas and this new one comes in from somewhere and it all makes sense and why you were paying attention to those two things that didn't add up to anything in particular. That is creativity, that is innovation. This has been awesome. Tiffany. If people have enjoyed this, where can they learn more about you or your team? Where can people connect with you or follow you?

Speaker 3 (51:33):
So I'm a really easy person to find. If you google Tiffany Zenni, I am the only one that will show up, so Google me, it's easy. But I'm also on Facebook and Instagram. It's at Tiffany, and again, just Google my name.

Speaker 2 (51:51):
Awesome. Last name is spelled G-E-L-Z-I-N-I-S. We put those links adjacent to wherever you are watching or listening to this. Tiffany, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it so much and I wish you continued success.

Speaker 3 (52:05):
Thanks, Ethan.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
Thanks for checking out this episode of Team Os. For email exclusive insights every week, sign up@realestateteamos.com.