Speaker 1 (00:00:01):
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 (00:00:16):
For insights into starting, growing and optimizing a real estate team. We're talking with Ben Bloom, Lee Broker and owner of Seaport Real Estate. A few fun facts before we get started. He was born and raised in Pittsburgh, but he's called Georgia Home since 2007. He started his real estate career focused on bank owned properties, but now specializes in luxury listings and his original dream was not real estate, it was professional football. Thank you Ben for talking Team Os today.

Speaker 3 (00:00:43):
Yeah, thanks Ethan. I appreciate you having me on

Speaker 2 (00:00:45):
Just because it's the quintessential team sport or a quintessential team sport. Give me a quick go at football.

Speaker 3 (00:00:52):
It was everything to me. I mean since I started playing tackle football at the age of six and when you're from Western Pennsylvania, there's not much between that and the Steelers, the steel mill had closed down, so it is really football and football is everything. So for me, since the time I put a football in my hand, that's all I wanted to do legitimately. I really had a one streamlined focus and it was to make and play in the NFL and was fortunate enough to go to college, get a full scholarship, had a really good college career and got close, had two NFL tryouts, one with the Philadelphia Eagles and one with the Miami Dolphins. Unfortunately, hence sw, I'm on the podcast selling real estate. I did not make it as an NFL football player, but the things that I take back from it are just everything.

Speaker 3 (00:01:43):
I mean, the amount of carryover and stuff I hope we get to talk about is the carryover from having that sports mentality, football mentality, working with the team and the things that I took from football that carry over every single day. Really the worth ethic, the time, the involvement, the constant working at your craft kind of stuff that we'll talk about is instead of working out training and working on footwork, now I'm working on my brain, on my skills, on my sales skills. So there's a lot of really unique carryover to football from football to real estate.

Speaker 2 (00:02:20):
Yeah, I absolutely, I see it and especially with this team concept. And that leads me to my standard opener that I love to ask everybody is what for you Ben, is a must have characteristic of a high performing team?

Speaker 3 (00:02:33):
I would say a few things. I mean again, and I hope I don't keep talking about football, but it's a being. I would say for us, internal for us at Seaport is being coachable. We bring a lot. We do a lot of recruitment, a lot of new agents come over, we very little turnover. So coaching or being coachable I would say is a big one for me. That is consistency is probably the second. And the other thing that we really work on is accountability is probably the top three things that I would say that we focus on.

Speaker 2 (00:03:03):
When you're looking at agents and you're engaging with them, I'm sure you're kind of recruiting all the time, feel free to speak to that if you would like how do you probe or test or what are a couple signs of coachability? I get it, you want people that are, especially if you're bringing on more experienced agents, you still want some of that flexibility and coachability, but what do you look for? What's a sign of like, oh, I think I can really work with this person, be of value to them and then can be a value to us? What's a sign of coachability?

Speaker 3 (00:03:33):
I would say I see the stuff that sticks out to me is the appreciation. I think a lot of times we do, we always are constantly recruiting, but the good thing about the position that we're in just built this new brand new office that we're sitting in. We have a lot of agents that are now organically coming to us. So I think the initial thing when an agent sits down across from me at the table is more the small appreciation of what we have done. We've been in business since 2010, so I like to hear some agents talk about, Hey, I appreciate what you're doing. Hey, I saw the video content. I love that new listing video you put out there. So small appreciation of what that we put out kind of lets me feel that they're lacking something and they want some of the support that we have. And I think that's the stuff that kind of stands out to me, that thinks in my mind that man, I think these people are craving some of that creativity that we have and the support that we have and the marketing support that we offer. So that's probably something that stands out a lot to me.

Speaker 2 (00:04:32):
Awesome. It makes me think about too this idea that people are paying attention, right? It's a blend of paying attention, noticing some small things about what you're doing and being willing to engage with you on it. I agree. That's a sign of like,

Speaker 3 (00:04:44):
I don't want to

Speaker 2 (00:04:45):
Talk

Speaker 3 (00:04:45):
About this. Before we got on the podcast, you and I were talking, I watched what you're putting out there. If you are wanting to hone in on your craft, you should know your competitors. Just like in football coaching my kid's 6-year-old football team and it's like you should know your competition. You should know what they have. You read their plays, you study, you analyze their film. We do the same thing to an extent. I think it's a fine line in our business of, I tell a lot of agents don't be one of those agents that are waking up every morning and checking the stat sheets and seeing this agent just put this agent just this. You're the ninth out of the 10th company. You can do some, be aware of your surroundings, but focus on just you focus on your own craft, focus on your own business. If you spend 80% of your time focusing on others, you're just going to fail. There's only so much time in every day.

Speaker 2 (00:05:32):
So you offered coachability consistency and accountability off the top. We try to talk about accountability a lot because it's obviously critical to success, but I think it looks, I think when we say the word accountability, it maybe means different things to different people. So I'd love for you to give a go to it. I think it's art in science. I think it's a delicate balance and I think it probably varies by individual what accountability actually looks like. So when you say accountability as one of the top three things, speak to that a little bit in terms of how it's brought to life for you over the past dozen years or so.

Speaker 3 (00:06:09):
I think the most recent probably in the last two years was accountability for us, not only as the broker owner but our staff because I think for so much accountability was like, okay, we'll put out this training, we'll put this out. And then there was just this follow up and I think there was a lack of both. They have to be willing to be held accountable. I think that was the other thing you realize a lot of people out there don't want to be held accountable and that's not a good thing. So there was this give and take, but I think most recently, a lot for us was, man, we're putting on all this good content. I know we're doing good training, but there was a lot of lack of follow-up from within. And so I think that's the biggest change for us was really that we have to hold ourselves a lot more accountable. Me as the broker owner, the staff members that we have for the agents. So it was a good healthy balance of one, making sure the agents know that we are going to hold ourselves accountable. We're going to hold you accountable, but be open to it. Be open to us riding your butt a little bit.

Speaker 2 (00:07:03):
Yeah, because it's for everyone's collective benefit.

Speaker 3 (00:07:06):
A hundred percent. You have to be

Speaker 2 (00:07:08):
Characterize Ben, your team, however you like, size, structure. I mean you already mentioned that you opened up in 2010 in the structure. Characterize your culture, just characterize your team however you like.

Speaker 3 (00:07:21):
The characteristics of the company is kind of funny. We're anti team, I'm anti team. I got started in this business. My cousin's in Atlanta, they didn't have any team concept. It was you wake up, you work seven days a week, 365 a year, and you just grinded it out. You did whatever you needed to do. And so when I started my company, it was just me 2010, I got in this business, as you mentioned, focused just in bank foreclosures. I didn't have any support staff. I didn't have any buyer's agents, listing agents. I did it all. I was everything. I was my accountant, I was my bookkeeper, I was my marketing company, I was everything. And then eventually I did hire a part-time assistant. But through those years I looked around in our market and I did see agents that had successful teams, but I also realized that they were selling maybe a third of what I was doing in volume and they had six or seven different assistants and I'm like, just go to work.

Speaker 3 (00:08:12):
How much are you actually taking home at the end of the day? And so I was just grown up that way and I grew up in this business of just having that side hustle. And so then throughout the time, and I think this really will lead into where we are as a company is in 2010, it was before I just had a girlfriend, now my wife, but it was no kids, no nothing. And so when I moved here in 2010, I moved from Atlanta and my girlfriend now wife stayed in Atlanta. She was very supportive, gave me all the confidence to come to this market, didn't have any friends, didn't go out at night, barely drank out, very did little. I didn't have any friends. And it was all about work. And I look back in that two and a half year window and had a lot of success, sold a lot of properties from 2010 to 2015.

Speaker 3 (00:09:02):
It took me about, call it five years in a market where I didn't know anybody, didn't know a friend of a friend of a friend, a family member. You think about how crazy that is. Legitimately, I did not know a single person. The closest person I knew in Savannah was four and a half hours away. So the challenges that I had was I had to overcome a lot of certain things, but in five and a half years I became the number one real estate broker, sold 142 homes, whoopy do, won the awards and all that stuff. But as I progressed through that period, I start looking at like, man, this is not sustainable. This is not sustainable. And then all of a sudden I get married, now I have three kids. And the shift and the curation of the team that we have now is completely opposite of what it was in 2010.

Speaker 3 (00:09:47):
That 2010 broker was, all you need to do is sacrifice everything. That was what I thought was success, sacrifice, everything, time, friends, family, relationships. Potentially I could have lost my relationship with my now wife because two and a half years I lived here and I drove every other week. So I would see her on the weekends and that was it. But even when I was there, I was really not there. I was still working. I didn't have any assistance. So to speed this along, what I realized was how much failure I actually had in my business in those first five to seven years. And so what I realized was that I don't need to and I'm not going to be able to grow. It's not sustainable. I need to accept delegation, I need to work out and I need support. And so what I created from 15 to 17 to 18 was that I created this really cool support staff to support me and my business.

Speaker 3 (00:10:42):
And through that I start growing and I start being able to do video content and I start doing all these different things that created all kind of attraction to us. And that has now brought us to where we're at today is again anti team. And so I don't want an agent to come over and think that they need to do what I did and face those challenges and sacrifice all those things. I want an agent to come over, learn from so many mistakes that I had and have a team behind them. So the realm of Seaport, the concept design of Seaport in 2023 is that we are all about individuality and brand building of an individual agent. You don't need to have all the support staff because Seaport now will create the team behind you. So we have the internal staff that literally down to our agents don't write their own offers.

Speaker 3 (00:11:29):
The agents, we write their offers for them, we coordinate all their closings, we provide all the technology including follow-up boss, our number one that we've been on for eight years would not live and die without it. We do all their marketing, we input all their listings for them. We do all their social media. We have a seaport studio is what we call. So we have a full-blown production studio inside our seaport house. We call it the Seaport House. So we have our in-house production studio for podcasting, for film production, social media, short form, long form, whatever the case is. And so bringing it all together, that is what Seaport is today, is we are the team for your team.

Speaker 2 (00:12:09):
When you say anti team, what I think you mean, and I think it's important because I-Team is very clear, strong language. It's a

Speaker 3 (00:12:17):
Strong word. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:12:19):
I feel like you're setting up an operation to let each individual agent shine in a way that allows them to be more successful and to have a better lifestyle than you had back when you sold 140 some homes on your own with a part-time assistant.

Speaker 3 (00:12:34):
Very part-time. And that's exactly right. So that was the shift in my business was that I looked around, I'm like the sustainability was not there, but I looked and I said there's a better way to do it. So in all the times and all the failures that I had, which led to a lot of successes, but I was able to look back and say, okay, that's not what I want. And I honestly think there's a better way to do it. So the focus that we have and when we talk about agents is that I will help and support you and create you to be the best individual agent you have, but I want you to become a better person. The support, support staff, the team behind you is going to allow you to be a better husband, a better wife, a better boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever the case may be.

Speaker 3 (00:13:14):
Better father, better mother at home. Because if you're writing offers at eight, nine o'clock at night, if you're doing certain things on the weekend, you're failing your business because that's what I did. I worked around the clock, I was up to midnight, one o'clock, back up at 5:00 AM didn't go out on the weekends. And I'm like, no. My downtime, my break is like I want to work and I want to structure my day. I want to delegate certain things so that when at Friday at five 30, I'm at home every day. I leave here at five 30, I'm at bedtime, I've got three kids under eight, I'm at home for dinner, I'm putting kids to bed. Every agent in our office, every staff knows from six to eight 30, I don't have my phone. So these are certain things that I think that we focus on and we provide that team concept because I want people to truly, and this is not like a sales pitch. It's like I want them to have what I have now. You can be uber successful in this business and you don't have to work seven days a week, 365 like I did for so many years up in the front part of my business.

Speaker 2 (00:14:10):
One of the things that's been so fun about getting this show up and going and having these conversations is that I feel like at first I thought it was going to be primarily for team leaders, people that were at some stage of building their team. But what I keep hearing over and over is really something that I feel like more agents should hear because I feel like there are probably tens of thousands of agents out there who want to, maybe they don't want to sell 140 some homes, maybe they want to sell 75, but even that with a part-time assistant or no support, they're doing all the things you said someone doesn't have to do to achieve that level of success. And so for me, I feel like teams should be growing because more agents should be joining them. But for you, when you think about the team model and you're talking with some of your peers who are operating organizations, what is the team conversation mean? Is it versus a traditional brokerage model?

Speaker 3 (00:15:10):
Find out what you're good at. So these are the things like when I bring these agents and they come to Seaport, it's like I want them to know what they're good at. And every agent in our office is good at one thing. They're at selling houses. So that's the thing for me is separate what you're good at and what you're not good with. We're really good at what we became known as in the entire southeast is that we are marketing company first, real estate company second. So marketing company first. And so what I try to tell people is, I don't need you to be doing these social media posting. You're not good at it, you're good at it, but we're great at what we do. So those are little things and you don't have to do a lot of the clerical work. So for us, it's what I was saying, the adaptability or coachability to say, you don't need to be writing your offers.

Speaker 3 (00:15:50):
I want you to go show a house, call the offer into Taylor. She writes the offer. It's in your inbox, in your client's inbox so that when time you get home, you're present with your husband or your wife or your children versus going home and spending 25 minutes to write the offer. And so the biggest thing about the teams or even some throughout the country, focus on what you're good at and delegate out. That's the biggest thing I'm with is just figure out what you're really, really good at and focus on that. And if you're 70% good at this or whatever the case was, delegate that out.

Speaker 2 (00:16:20):
Love it. I want to get into this marketing and branding conversation specific to individual agents a little bit more. But what I want to do to get there is to go back because I think you have a pretty interesting and compelling thing here, and we've talked about it a little bit, but I would love to go deeper on it and especially in this recorded setting for other people's benefit as well. Again, you started your career in bank owned properties and I forget some of the language that you used to describe the nature of these properties, but it wasn't pretty. And here you are now years later with a very clear luxury brand in your local market very strongly. So was there a crux moment in that journey? Because obviously just again, going to your strengths, you probably knew a lot about bank owned, you probably knew a lot about where to find inventory, how to move it, and you probably learned a lot in those years of doing that, but at some point you woke up one day and said, you know what? I want to do something different. I'd love for you to share that story a little bit, especially any of the key moments in the transition from this is what I'm familiar with and I found some success with to this is what I really want to be. How do I get there?

Speaker 3 (00:17:29):
My journey was definitely different because you think about this, I got in the business in 2007, okay, beginning of 2007, I got in this in the market was still popping really well, but there was some whispers out there, something's not right. So I got in this business and I would call it three months into my business journey in the real estate space, the market crashed. So the crash of oh eight happened and the entire world shut down. But it was different for us because literally when I worked for my cousins, we did not sell one retail property, not one traditional property at all we did was bank foreclosure. So that's all I knew. I didn't know anything else. I didn't know how to do a listing appointment. I didn't know how to do any type of marketing because all I knew how to do was talk to bank executives, wall Street firms, hedge funds, it didn't matter.

Speaker 3 (00:18:11):
But that's what we did. And my job was to focus. If you had a mortgage in the state of Georgia, I was going to find you. I was going to hunt you down and I was going to be your listing agent. So we would manage market and sell a bank foreclosures. And the sad part is you're talking one of the worst times in US history and we had to do some really unfortunate things. And I always said that it was a sad thing, but people always say, well, at least you're doing it right, at least that you guys have compassion. So we would go out there and you're meeting with people that have just lost everything. And so I always said that if someone was going to do it, at least we were doing it. We were doing it the right way. But there was some really unfortunate things and we would had to help with the evictions, we would help with the trash outs, renovations, repairs, but that's all we did.

Speaker 3 (00:18:57):
So when I left my cousin's company and I came here in 2010, there was zero intent. There was zero talks that, okay, I'm going to go out and I'm going to talk to Ethan and I'm going to do these podcasting and I'm going to do all the stuff that we're doing now. And it was no, I did the same exact thing. I was focusing on bank foreclosures because at that time in 10 11, 2012, that's all there was. So I still had a really cool niche and I didn't need to because I was doing probably 20, 25 a month in this small little market of strictly bank foreclosures. But what I did realize was that it had to come to an end, right? There's eventual, it had to stop at some point. So I think in that 2013, I start getting a lot of calls from a lot of the agents who I was progressively getting to meet over the time because I was putting up my green seaport signs all over Savannah.

Speaker 3 (00:19:43):
And so I start getting a lot of these moments where agents were just talking, learning about my business, but also I realized that I was getting so many buyer calls and I didn't have any buyer's agents. I didn't have any assistance. So I'm listing the properties, like I said, doing everything, but I was thrown away hundreds and hundreds of buyer calls. I could not field them. And so eventually I was just referring 'em out, and then I started thinking to myself, this is kind of silly. I'm just referring 'em out. And I had no check and balance because honestly, I'm like, if they send me a referral check, it's great. But there was no accountability. There was no, Hey, I sent you 38 referrals in the last two months. Any luck. So I probably lost thousands of dollars in that. But the progression was they start getting a lot of interest from other agents. They're like, Hey, I would love to come work with you, because I kept growing and growing in my listing count. And then as it kind of got slower, I realized that there has to be something else.

Speaker 3 (00:20:38):
And I think one of the pivotal moments was that I had, in one subdivision, I probably had three or four signs and a homeowner called me and it was like the first time I actually got organic seller lead. And it was really funny. I walk in there and she's just like, Hey, I want to set up time to sell my house, this and that. And I do my whole listing presentation, and I didn't even know what it was. I think I probably googled literally listing presentation called my cousin. She's like, I don't know. I mean, just go get a listing, get a listing agreement just like you do with a bank. And so I really just kind of googled it and figured it out. But what I did in that moment was say, okay, well golly, I sold almost every house in the subdivision. Now I realize, wait a minute.

Speaker 3 (00:21:18):
And then I start looking around and all these other communities. And that was my breaking moment when she's like, well, Ben, I've seen your sign. You sold literally all these other houses. And truly what? They didn't really care. That person really didn't ask, oh, did you sell Bob's house or Susie's house? It was, they just saw my signs in the success that I was having in that community. So they really didn't care whether it was a foreclosure home or a short sale or whatever the case was. That homeowner right there was the pivotal moment knowing that I just know you've had success. I don't care if it's, and then all of a sudden I start realizing, well, actually the foreclosures are sometimes a little harder to sell. My competitor Martha May have a house, but it looks great. It photographs well. This foreclosure has 48 holes in the wall.

Speaker 3 (00:22:04):
It has no doorknobs. The copper was ripped out, it has no HVAC system. And that was kind of the shift. And I was like, you're right. If I could market and I could put a spin on a property and get someone to buy this house that literally has, I'm telling you and graffiti, and I mean, I could probably go into some other horrible things that I saw in these houses, but I was like, she's right. She probably saw something in me, if you can sell that house, you can surely sell my house. That is literally perfect. I just painted it. I got new appliances, I'm like, let house didn't even have appliances. And then to get it appraised, we had a shove, a stove in there. That's literally what we used to do. It needed a stove. And that was kind of the moment that I said, wow, let's leverage these sales, because I was selling a hundred plus homes a year.

Speaker 3 (00:22:49):
And then from there we started doing some mailers and just because the REO foreclosure business was slowing down, and that was one of the most pivotal moments where she just didn't care. She's like, you've sold, you've had success, have success with selling my house. And so from there, really just start figuring out, start recruiting some agents here and there. But again, it was more organic. It was just they saw my success. They wanted to have the same success. And agents at that time were also, they were hurting. I was in a niche little market. There wasn't a lot of agents that were seeing this kind of scale. Everyone else was going down trying to figure out what to do with their lives. That was a good thing for me. It was just leveraging the success I had in one market into another one. And it's the same business, and I didn't overthink it too much. All real estate.

Speaker 2 (00:23:39):
Yeah, it is super powerful. The idea that you have the signs in the yards, and that's enough for someone to feel like, well, I should probably just call that person because it is interesting. At some level, it's an unwitting farming strategy a little bit.

Speaker 3 (00:23:55):
And they truly didn't care because I knew it and I knew the price per square foot, I knew the subdivisions. And with bank foreclosures, you've got to do BPOs. And that was a really neat thing is broker price opinions that I had to do. And I was doing, call it 40 a month. And so the other thing I realized was that I've got a really cool niche right now, and it's like I'm analyzing these markets. And it wasn't just maybe one of the downtown markets, it was all over Savannah, because with foreclosures, you don't really pick and choose. It's like, Hey, I've got this mobile home here. I've got this property here. You just took whatever, you just engulfed them all. But with every property, I had to do a really detailed multi-page broker price opinion, which was three comps. It's like an appraisal, three comps, three solds.

Speaker 3 (00:24:36):
And it allowed me to, in a very accelerated rate for me not being from Savannah in a short window, have to really dig into this market. So I knew almost every city, every pocket, every community, how many homes were in there, average price per square foot, average days on market, all these really integral parts to get to an evaluation of a house. That was how I really took it from there, because then all of a sudden, if I was selling your house, Ethan in 15, I confidently walked into that house knowing that maybe I didn't have the best listing presentation. Maybe I didn't have the fanciest marketing availability, but I could walk in and I could know for a fact because one, I had the sales to prove it. It was very simple. I just sold that house and just sold that house. I just sold this house. But I also know the square footage. I have buyer agents lining up because I have six buyers that wanted that house. They lost out on it. But that was really the most pivotable point where I said, I don't think it really was, I have to leverage this business. I think it kind of organically happened, and that was my willingness to adapt because it just kind of happened.

Speaker 2 (00:25:40):
Yeah. Talk about the role of marketing in this transition. You talked a little bit about some of the content approach that you're taking. You talked a little bit about making sure that you're making consistent high quality decisions on behalf of and with your agents. Talk about how important marketing is in really accelerating the public perception of the Seaport brand.

Speaker 3 (00:26:07):
It's a really cool time because that was what I was telling you about how my organic listing appointments happened. I started about eight years ago, a thing called Port Talk. Port Talk was a television show that I kind of created from on YouTube, other social channels, but I would do a lot of social media. So if you think about it, eight years ago, Facebook was good, but it was really great if you were doing video content. I try to say that to a lot of people. Eight years ago, nobody was doing video content. Now it's very hard to get those impression rates up and those click rates because everybody is doing video. So what I start doing was going, every community that I had a foreclosure, I took the BPO, the analysis that I did, and I would do a Port Talk episode of that community and I would say, Hey, this is Ben Blooming.

Speaker 3 (00:26:51):
We're out here at X, Y, Z subdivision right now. There's 12 active listings. There is an average price per square foot of 2 58 a foot. The run rate, our days on market is 67 days on market. This is where I would give the statistical data that I was pulling for the BPOs, and I would do it in a video content and then we would advertise it in that community. And then I said, okay, let's take it one other step. Then we would do a postcard in that community. So the validation for me became this TV spokesperson through Port Talk, but I knew that no one else, one was doing the video content and then two, how do I get my name out there where my competition savannah's very old school. So a lot of it's very generational family members. And so it's really hard when you come from an outside market and you don't know anybody.

Speaker 3 (00:27:39):
And so I had to do something that was outlandish. I had to do something that stood out differently than anyone else. And that's what I realized. And in my market, I looked around, I studied and I analyzed all the other agents. No one was doing video content, no one was doing information content. So for me, I thought, okay, if I give really good free information, and that's what it was, I kind of saw Zillow kind of doing it there, given the Zillow's estimates and stuff like that. Let me go and I start doing every community leftover every week. I was putting out a new informational free info. This is where your subdivision's at, this is the price per square foot. And I would say in a two year span, it was amazing how much attention that got me

Speaker 2 (00:28:21):
Probably from agents as well as consumers, a

Speaker 3 (00:28:24):
Hundred percent. Because then all these agents are like, wow, this guy actually knows what he's talking about. He wasn't just selling bank foreclosures. He's educated and he's also doing something different. And that's what the biggest thing that got me attention. I said, okay, this got me attention. Now I've got a listing. I looked around, not one agent in our market eight years ago was doing the listing video. I said, okay, well let's do a listing video. And back then it was kind of funny, and I'm not really every day I'll put jackets on things like that, but I'm not a suit wearer. So I go back, if you look at eight years and it'd be funny, I'll show you after this, I'll send it out. I used to do scripted port talks, and I would do it on a listing video, and I would put my suit and tie on and I would say, hi, this has Ben Blooming, welcome to this house.

Speaker 3 (00:29:09):
And it was rarely scripted. And I would study it and I would literally rehearse it in my house the week leading up. And it was so just methodical and just rehearsed out. But at the time, I was more worried about production and it was very high production. It looked great. Whether I was speaking eloquently or not, I was reading off of iPad. But again, it didn't matter because no one else was doing it. And that's the big thing I think that caught me the most attention, that it led me to a lot of agent growth and also business growth in my personal business and the was that they looked around and like, wow, Savannah's an old school town. Everyone else was just doing print material, newspaper ads, and it was just not fun to me. And I just looked around and I'm like, no one's doing this. I think that's a big tip for a lot of agents that watch this is now everyone's doing video content, but you'd be shocked when you actually look around in your market, in your MSA. When I look around, I'm still shocked, to be honest, of how many people are not doing what we're doing. People are still trying to do what we're doing, but it's funny, but they're not doing it consistently. That's another thing we'll talk about is the consistency behind it.

Speaker 2 (00:30:19):
Yeah. Talk about how you've scaled this across your agents. It sounds like you've set up and equipped your agents to do a lot of this stuff via your resources. Talk a little bit about that. What is, let's just say an agent who joined you two years ago, they've hit their stride, they're really leveraging what you're providing. What are some of these marketing assets look like for them?

Speaker 3 (00:30:47):
Well, it's kind of funny. So in about three years, and we have a really cool statistic is that when we've recruited agents over, the biggest thing I talk about is being coachable. And I think being adaptable because agents have come over from other companies, national companies, small companies, but there's not one firm in our market that provides the level of support. So the agents that have come over, very successful agents and their other previous businesses, other brokerages, but when we sit them down and we do this very thorough onboarding process, it's always really cool to see these agents that are so protective, the mama bears of their business that say, Ben, I know it sounds good for someone to write my offer. I can't do it. I can't have someone do it. I have to be able to type it out. So there's this, these months and months, and it's like you have to, if you don't start delegating, you are going to get stuck at this, say whatever their market is, maybe 10 million in gross sales, and that's kind of our market, seven to 10 million in our market.

Speaker 3 (00:31:42):
You can get there successfully with a single agent without having support. But if you want to grow to 15 million, 20 million, you're going to eventually have to hire some sort of staff member, part-time, assistant buyer, whatever the case may be. So we explained to them that we will look at their statistical data, but the ones that we have had good success with, the ones that finally said, okay, take it. Show me the way. In three years we have had over 80% of the agents we brought over have doubled their business. And then roughly 30% of that 80 have more than tripled their business. And those are the ones that we're able to fully adapt, fully let go, and just seriously just focus on their sale business. So for us, it's a really cool onboarding process that we focus, we go into the staff members, we go in my role, what my role is, and we go into each agent's support staff. So we make that very clear of what seaport is, what our brand is, and what our support team is behind them if they really adapt and they allow it for us to take it off their plate. Those are the ones that have big success.

Speaker 2 (00:32:45):
Such an interesting challenge. I mean, there's the letting go of control, which for an entrepreneur's got to be pretty hard in general, no matter what the industry or the business is an entrepreneur letting go is probably pretty challenging in general. And I'm sure there are a lot of failure stories inside and outside of real estate related to entrepreneurs not being willing to let go. There's a trust issue. I think at this point you're probably past that at some level. It sounds like you've got plenty of social proof where you've got just talk to Jim or Mary or Jennifer and they'll tell you what it means to let go and double or triple your business. So I mean, how do you suss that out from the get,

Speaker 3 (00:33:24):
Sorry, that's what it was prior to three years ago. Every time I sat down an agent, I would be like, listen, this is what we're going to do for you. This is what we're going to do. You got to trust me. You got to trust me and trust in the process. And I always felt that I was pitching the agents. And so nowadays, it's great because I now have the statistical data, I have the agent's proof of concept, and I tell 'em, I'm like, listen, it may not be the best thing. It may not be the best way to do it. I'm sure there's so many better ways. There's agents that are going to watch this and say, ah, that's not the right way to do it. But it is a very successful way that we have curated here in this market alone that we've been able to prove success.

Speaker 3 (00:34:01):
So I tell 'em, it may or may not be the way, and you may have a better way to do it, but inside this office, we have been able to statistically prove if you want to grow and compound your business, we have come up with a really good way. And our agents truly have become better people, better family members. And if I stay in my core focus of that's the agent I want, I want someone that says, I want more out of my life. I want to be super successful. I want to know what I want to have. I know the money I want to make, but I want to be there and be more present. And it's like I always brag our number one agent this past year, number one agent this year, this guy has two kids. He picks up his kids every day. He golfs multiple times throughout the week, has a very healthy balance. And he trusts in our process, he delegates through the high heavens of everything he wants. And it's like, guys talk to John, his name's John. It's like, talk to him. That's what I want. I want people, I want to see him at the golf club. I want to see him golf, and I want to have that healthy balance. And I think that having that focus of that will never change for me. I know I was down in the dirts.

Speaker 2 (00:35:03):
Yeah. Okay. So there are two directions I wanted to go, but you really just with where you left off there really sent me in one of those two directions. What is it for you? I can get why you would want this for yourself? You probably, I don't know what down in the dirt means. I'm happy to hear about that and then maybe carry on from there. What's so exciting for you about doing it for other people or facilitating it for other people, or even just turning on the lighthouse for people to orient themselves this way? Because I'm sure some of the people you're talking to, this sounds like, I don't think this is possible or whatever. Correct.

Speaker 3 (00:35:51):
I didn't think it was What's just

Speaker 2 (00:35:52):
About for you personally.

Speaker 3 (00:35:54):
Yeah, it is super personal. Down in the dirts was probably the wrong thing. I kind of met, I was down in the trenches for years. I probably was actually. Yeah, trenches

Speaker 2 (00:36:03):
Are generally dirt, so yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:36:05):
Well, dirt and fleas. So a lot of people, if you've not done foreclosure properties, it's not dirt, but it's really the fleas because in Savannah, these properties were vacant for years sometimes. And you would go in there and so I would have a full blown bug spray suit. I'd have high boots, but I really was down in the dirts with fleas. That was the worst. I would go home. It's a funny story. Literally the majority of time I'd go home to our new house that we still live in, and my wife would meet me outside, I would strip, and we live in a dead end street, so it was good. But picture this, I would get in my truck, get home, and I would strip down pretty much naked in my driveway, leave everything out because I'd be covered in fleas. That's how nasty it was.

Speaker 3 (00:36:44):
So nuts. She hosed me off. It was disgusting. But the personal side, to get more serious, it is, it's super personal for me. So when I was in college, when I was 21, I lost my mom. So she had passed away to a LS. And so for my whole four years I was in college, she struggled and she died of a LS when I was 21. So for me, there was a lot of certain things with football and the tide and wanting to get in the NFL was always really just for her. I always told her I would do it for her. And so there was a big passion for me in that. So I think for me, when she passed, that was a major moment in my life. Everything changed for me. It was like, what the hell do I want to do now?

Speaker 3 (00:37:29):
But it was understanding how short life is. She passed away at 52. So for me, I'm now 39, I'm married, I got three kids. No one knows. No one knows what tomorrow's going to bring. And so those were the things when I kind of realized, again, I was so just focused in my business and I'm like, tomorrow it's not promised to me. So for me, it's like I know that we can have a really cool and successful business if we do it the right way. So it was one of you talk about pivotal moments and things like that. That was the thing that goes back. I just realized how much I sacrificed, how much time away from my now wife, my friends in Atlanta that I'll never get back. I don't regret it. I don't regret it one minute because we're obviously here, there's no way to go back.

Speaker 3 (00:38:14):
But that's the focus always that I stick on is that I want every other, I want every agent, I want every staff member to be successful, but I have this really good balance. Even when she was sick working in college, we had no money. We were middle to lower class, whatever you want to call it. I'm not really sure. We grew up in Pittsburgh, but we didn't go on bougie vacations or anything. But even to the months leading up to her work and she was figuring out ways to work and she could barely walk, just provide for us. And so I always say, I don't want anyone to go through what we went through. So I want everyone to enjoy every day. So that's a big part of who I am, is to make sure that I am always present. My dad, they were always there for me. So it's like that's kind of my core. That changed me forever.

Speaker 2 (00:39:06):
Yeah. I love that you've found a way not only to resolve some of that for yourself, but also again, build something that you can invite other people into, create that for themselves. And with that, it kind of goes, I'm going a little bit more operational here, but for you, when you think about the stages of building the infrastructure that allows and already successful agent to step into it, once they do release and they let go and they trust the system and they trust the process, several of them have doubled their business and beyond what are a few of the key elements of the structure, whether it's roles or whether it's systems, and I am sure it was an iterative process as well. So to the degree that it involved some stacking of things or a mistake along the way or whatever, feel free to step into that. But how did you build this structure? What I assume initially based on your own personal experience, and then probably blended with some of the initial feedback and results of some of the earlier agents that you brought into it. But talk about that process of building a structure that allows this to happen for people.

Speaker 3 (00:40:17):
And I think it was, it wasn't just for me. I think what I needed was different, but I think every time we added a new agent, I say this for team leaders out there, and you talk about being accountable, right? Being accountable, just listen. I think that was the biggest thing. Everything that we ever did, and you can go back to the first agent we hired who's still with us, Stephanie, she's our OG of Seaport. Every change that I've ever made at the company was never top down. It was always agent up. That is a hundred percent truth. So everything we changed from technology to offer staff to employees like, Hey, we need more staff. We need more help. Whatever the case was, it was always coming from the agent. And I will say that that's probably one of my biggest, not biggest, but probably greatest things that we've done, is just listen to the agents, always listen to the agents.

Speaker 3 (00:41:06):
So it was like, Hey God, I'm running home. I'm showing properties left. And I go home and I'm spending an hour and a half writing offers. And I was like, well, what if we did that for you? What if we just add another staff member that Excel did it to increase the volume intake so that you can go home? And again, I'm like, well, that's great then if you're home, you can truly be more present and all these little things just start adding up. And I was like, okay, what about closing coordination? I saw someone close. I'm like, it's hard for me to keep up. I was doing high volume. So for me, and none of the, it'd be really good to have a closing coordinator. Instead of having a third party, we brought someone in in-house. Then it was like, well, I start seeing these agents that we bring over and I'm like, wow, why aren't they doing the same level of marketing that I'm doing?

Speaker 3 (00:41:44):
Why aren't they doing the same content creation? I was like, mainly because I'm just using my person to do it. I was outsourcing it to a third party individual, and I was like, that's probably why. And they don't have the budgets to do it. And I was financially able to do that, and I was paying a lot of money each month to do it. And I was like, let's do that. And I asked. And so again, we would have team meetings, but every time I would ever make any change including follow-up boss, including we're big on CSU as another platform that we use for contract management. Every system that we've ever implemented, we would do demos with all the other agents in our office to say, is this something that would help and grow your business? So that was probably the biggest thing, is that before I made any change, it would be a presentation and then we'd almost take it to a vote. So I've never made a decision in the 13 plus years that I've been in business without getting the support of all the agents.

Speaker 2 (00:42:34):
I love it. And is this a standard meeting cadence? Well, yeah. I guess in terms of the flow of the business from a meeting or communication perspective, just characterize that a little bit. What is the group meetings, individual meetings? What's the flow there? Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:42:54):
There's probably three meetings that we have in our office, monthly meetings that we have and we flex it. It's either you could be on Zoom or if you don't want to be on Zoom, you can come to the office. We always promote that. You come to the office, it's really good. The connectivity, I'm big on it. And again, we just built this new office, so I'm like, someone come in, please. Secondly is every quarter myself and all of our staff internally without the agents, we shut the office down from nine to 12. We go up to our golf club once a quarter. So the beginning of every quarter we recap and then we forecast big on whiteboarding and we look across. So that's the second one that I think for anyone out there that has staff members, get 'em out of the office, don't have it inside, get 'em out of the office.

Speaker 3 (00:43:35):
We have just some coffee danishes. And then afterwards we have a lunch and it's just strictly business. We figure out what things each agent's working on, which staff members working on. I take votes with them like, Hey, is there any systems or anything that you can do to become more productive? Just like in the last quarter meeting, we had Skye, who's helped me with all this production and getting all set up here. She's head of all it, head of marketing. She was like, man, I feel like I need to get some creative juices to go. And she actually went out to Follow Boss, and that's where she met you. So it's again, listening to Sky and she wanted to go out and get more creative on that. So we sent her out her to LA for a wonderful conference with Follow-up boss. And we came back and we've implemented I think seven changes so far, which has been quite awesome in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (00:44:24):
So those are the next. And then the third is that every agent knows that with a quick notice. I'm always available. We've got 40 plus agents in our office just book one with Steven for next Tuesday at nine 30. But it's an open door policy. And I mean that every agent can call me seven days a week except six to eight. I'm putting kids to bed. But we always have internal meetings. And that's the other thing I kind of always shed in is I'm big in investment properties. This is a side note, but I've always tried to teach our agents of passive income, take the earned income, create passive income. So a lot of my one-on-one is always trying to figure out ways to create more time at home through passive income. So that's the three tier of meetings that we have. Individual meetings, internal staff meetings, and then monthly meetings with all the agents.

Speaker 2 (00:45:13):
Love it. Are you still listing properties yourself?

Speaker 3 (00:45:17):
Still do. And that's a great question because a lot of agents that come over always ask me like, Hey, they don't want to go to a firm that has a competing broker. They don't want to ever be competing with me and this and that, which I will never be, but I will promise you, I will always be active in some capacity. I think every year I've delegated a lot more different price points, maybe different areas. I don't want to be traveling so much more outside and I kind of stay focused maybe in certain markets, certain price points, so to speak. But I think it's important for any team owner, broker that you really take note of this. I think it's really important that you always stay active in some format. And I say this because it became more apparent during covid, COVID, the entire selling market, showings, selling properties, interactions, especially for us in Savannah, first time ever in Savannah's old history, we were exposed to the masses.

Speaker 3 (00:46:12):
We were officially exposed to everywhere in the world. And that was bringing a lot of Northerners, west coast, peoples foreigners all over the world were coming here and how you interact and how you negotiate. And so for me, a lot of the implications, a lot of the changes that I bring to light to the agents come from me dealing and constantly being in the know. And I think it's hard. I think it's agents when you go to look, making sure that your broker is active, and maybe I'm wrong or not, but I'm telling you that's the number one thing for me that keeps me on my toes, keeps me in the know, keeps me focused. And so I tell agents, right? There are agents that ask me that question in the interview process. I look right at 'em, I say, a hundred percent, and you should appreciate that I still sell.

Speaker 2 (00:46:55):
Yeah, as supposed to be threatened by it. I actually just had this conversation with another team leader and it was a little bit, the inverse is like if I hadn't listed or sold a property since Covid where you had 85 offers on every single listing, I couldn't really relate to and understand and meaningfully coach an agent in today's market that is a lot different than say 2021. And so there are a lot of really practical because there's a feel to it as well. It's one thing to look at the data, it's one thing to talk with your agents all the time about what's going on out there and try to turn that into meaningful coaching. But I think there's a different level of feel to actually being out there and having the conversations and things

Speaker 3 (00:47:40):
Just even now last 75 days internally, and this is also for my active, we were on our active listed properties. We are averaging seven days on market, roughly seven days or less, 70 days or less. Right now we are up to 62 days on market. Talk about a massive increase in general days on market. So for me, I feel that, so a lot of agents come to me and they're like, Hey, what do we do? This is stale. I'm like, I know it. I'm stale too. So it helps me, that engagement process of like, we all need to be doing something. And I think that's been the greatest shift just recently is trying to retrain the agents. Because I don't care where you were at during Covid, you put up a sign, you had 58 offers, easy peasy. It was easy money. Everyone now knows that, yes, during covid, but that time has shifted. FSBOs are going back down. They're having zero success because they're like, wow, you're right. I need those real estate agents back in the game because I need to market. I need to sell it. I need pricing. And so for now, it's also retraining all of us. The hustle has to come back.

Speaker 2 (00:48:40):
Yeah. Share a couple more questions that you get when agents are interviewing you and maybe make any of them that are specific to the team model, someone moving into a team model, and what do agents worry about and wonder about? I mean, obviously the split, we already talked a little bit about the level of control, but what are some of the other questions that you get that you really are like, oh man, I'm so glad you asked this.

Speaker 3 (00:49:06):
It used to be the things that worried me was what kind of leads do you provide? That's the stuff that worries me is like, what are you going to give me in, what are the splits? If that's the first couple things, they're out. I already know it's not a good fit. I want them to ask me of the value content and the value piece that we're going to offer you. And so it's the digging questions I ask is where you're at in your business? Where do you want to go? What do you want to make out of this business? What are you lacking in your current business? And that's the other thing. I know what we can do internally and I know the support that we're going to offer. So it's the reverse questions of why are you even here? Well, I'm horrible at marketing.

Speaker 3 (00:49:43):
I know that you're the number one marketing company in Savannah. Okay, good. That's good. We can provide that for you. I'm stuck in my business. I'm working my butt off and I feel like I'm stuck. Great. That's another way we can support you because you're lacking that delegation process that we've talked about and you need support. And so for us at our current commission rates, it's truly cheaper for an agent to come here because we out leverage all of our support staff. And for a single agent to hire someone that's going to do marketing, that's going to do contract, you're not going to get the same level of true support. Because I've got individual agents that are specifically social or staff that are doing social media, contract, contract, coordination, marketing, whatever the case may be. True

Speaker 2 (00:50:22):
Specialists.

Speaker 3 (00:50:24):
The specialists, exactly. Versus a general person that's going to handle it all. But leads are a good thing because I think back a while ago, we used to teach the process of how agents do get the business, but we've actually shifted in that I think the business, since the volume is back, and that's another thing of me being so active in the business during covid, you really didn't need to provide leads because it was like we needed to provide the marketing support. But now when the inventory is so low, we've actually shifted again. So that's the other thing is I think a tip for anyone watching this is you always have to, and I think it's a good question about your meetings. You have to constantly be in your business and you have to have multiple meetings throughout a year because it shifts. Every agent that's been in the business knows that it can shift like that.

Speaker 3 (00:51:11):
And so for say two and a half years ago, we weren't on a focus of providing leads, seller leads or buyer leads. We're on a crazy high focus right now, buyer leads and seller leads. I didn't think we would ever be like that. I was like, it's just silly. I want an agent who's going to be like me that's going to go out hustle and find their own business. I'm going to teach 'em. I'm going to provide 'em the right support. But I'm like, no, that's a new shift for us. And that just happened in the last six, seven months. We are hyper-focused on lead generation for our agents.

Speaker 2 (00:51:41):
Yeah, really good. I could talk to you for easily another hour, but I won't. I'll go nowhere. I'm super glad I connected with Sky in person. Great to connect with you here. Before I let you go, Ben, I've got a few pairs of questions and you only have to answer one of each pair. The first one is, what is your favorite team to root for besides the Seaport team or what is the best team you've ever been a member of besides your own team?

Speaker 3 (00:52:06):
Well, as you know, I've never been on a team, so to speak. So the only team is probably my football team. So legitimately I would say any of my football teams, my high school were college football team. Amazing memories with that. Times that I'll never forget, so any of my sport teams, but either high school or football, were both up there. I mean, guys that I still, I've got a group of 10 guys in high school, a group of 10 guys from college that I'm lifelong friends with. So I mean that would ideally be the best teams that I were ever on, probably were my high school and college football teams.

Speaker 2 (00:52:39):
That's amazing. To still be that tight with a group that large 20 years later, let's say. It just speaks to the power of the experience.

Speaker 3 (00:52:48):
So just a little shout out to my buddy Brandon. So actually one of the guys I played with in college, he's now the head coach of the LA Chargers.

Speaker 2 (00:52:55):
Oh, awesome.

Speaker 3 (00:52:56):
So that's all the guys from college. So that's my favorite team. If you want to know who I'm rooting for on Sundays is the Chargers. So we've had a little slow start to the season, but that's my favorite team right now is the LA Chargers.

Speaker 2 (00:53:06):
That's Brandon Staley.

Speaker 3 (00:53:07):
Brandon Sta, yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:53:08):
And you were on a high school team or a college team with him?

Speaker 3 (00:53:11):
Yeah, we played together in college in each other's weddings and just super tight. And so we actually just went out there two weeks ago, five group of guys from college just went out there but spent the weekend with 'em.

Speaker 2 (00:53:22):
That's wonderful. How about one of your most frivolous purchases or a cheapskate habit that you hold onto even though you probably don't need to?

Speaker 3 (00:53:30):
If you ask my dad or my wife, I'm probably one of the cheapest people you'll know. So everything in my life is pretty much cheap. My dad literally will tell a story today that Ben still holds onto his communion money. His Catholic holds on my, literally, I would never spend a penny. I am super cheap in all facets of my life. I don't think that will ever change. So with that, I don't really have any frivolous, but I'm sitting here thinking about that. I'm like, I never bought anything crazy. I never bought anything that didn't make any sense. I don't gamble. I'm tight with my money. But at our office, I will say this, I do like to, golf is good kind of part-time, and so in the back of our office you can't see it, but literally right behind me here, we did put on a three hole putting green with a little chipping green.

Speaker 3 (00:54:18):
That was probably the most frivolous thing that I bought. And I kind of laugh when I think about this. It's three holes, and I was thinking I'd just go on Amazon and buy this thousand dollars thing. I was way off. It was a seven day process, the amount of layering and silting and sand and gravel, literally, these guys were digging and leveling it out for six days. So the cost was a little more than I thought, but I think God was speaking to me because the day that they delivered the turf, we came back the next day. Some son of a gun stole all the turf from our parking lot. So the one time I tried to be a little non cheap, someone steals the turf and then we have to reordered again. So it costs me twice as much, but it is installed and we use it all the time. We have a lot of fun events out back, and that's the kind of culture that we have. Got a putting green, chipping green in the back and fire pit. We do all kind of fun events here now. But that would be the only thing I would think that I've ever liked. That really doesn't bring me any return investment wise.

Speaker 2 (00:55:20):
Yeah. Well, who knows. It is just less tangible. I really appreciate by the way, that it's not a piece of concrete with some felt over top of

Speaker 3 (00:55:28):
It. Let me assure you, if anyone's looking into it, they're more than welcome to call me on this because I almost had a heart attack when the guy gave me, I ended up getting three or four quotes. This is like, I'm getting taken here. There's no way that this and it is involved. It's got to be properly because of when it rains. Drainage, the drainage and things like that. And then he is like, let's talk about undulation and let's talk about if you're really getting into golf, we also can upgrade you to the chipping pad product where literally they now have, because God forbid I can't chip and it doesn't have the same softness of a real grass. So they added a chipping pad so that when the ball drops on it, of course it's got to be official. And then we have little seaport flags made. A marketing company just kept going and going. I was a little farther down that road that I wanted to be. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:56:18):
That payoff is coming and it will be intangible, but it's there. You hope

Speaker 3 (00:56:21):
So. Yeah, that would probably be it. That's probably the only crazy thing in my entire life that I've probably bought that. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:56:28):
That's really good. For you, when you think about learning, growing, and developing, or when you think about resting, relaxing, or recharging, pick one of those routes, what does that look like for you?

Speaker 3 (00:56:40):
Time with family? I think that goes back to everything that we talked about in this whole call was the core of it. I truly do. I love getting home with my kids. And that's another thing where in my day-to-Day business, which I try to tell people is I don't work the weekends anymore. I mean, it's crazy to me. I told someone, I told a friend the other day, and I don't mean this to brag in a way, but it's in my mindset that I'm at now. So hyper-focused on it. It doesn't excite me to show a house for 2 million bucks on the weekend. It sounds crazy. I mean, it really doesn't because it's like that's my time that I'm going on the boat. We fish with the kids. Our kids are really into fishing out back now. So the days that we sit at home and we sit on our dock and we fish for eight hours, that's my favorite day.

Speaker 3 (00:57:22):
That's really it. And I golf every Friday. But truly and wholeheartedly, that is my not working on the weekends and spending time with, that's the most rejuvenation thing for me, and it excites me. And I look forward to my Mondays, try not to grab my laptop. I try to be present, and of course I'm taking calls. I always try to explain to people, there's no way our business, I'm still going to take calls. I'm not going to sit here and lie to you. I shut off my phone. Like no. Every once in my wife knows I've got to send an amendment or do something or answer phone calls. But I do my best effort honestly, to sit back, relax, spend time with the kids, whether they're in the sports. But honestly, that's my biggest rejuvenation. And that's what, again, my whole core concept of this company is to allow every agent, every staff member, to have that same time. It is limited. We don't know we are all going to, all going to go upstairs one day and it's like, I want everyone to have a really enjoyable career in this business. It should be fun, but at the same time, you should have a really good life at the same time.

Speaker 2 (00:58:21):
Yeah, man, I appreciate your values and your priority around that. It's awesome. For folks who have spent now an hour with us, we're pretty close to it.

Speaker 3 (00:58:29):
Yeah, there

Speaker 2 (00:58:30):
They may want to go connect with you. They may want to check out some of the content that you're producing that we've talked about throughout the conversation. Check out the team. Where would you send people who want to follow up on this conversation?

Speaker 3 (00:58:41):
Go to seaport realestate.com, go to our YouTube channel at Seaport realestate. We always put out new cool content on there. Instagram, they can follow me at Ben Boly. They can follow the seaport page. But I genuinely would say this, I was just amped to get on this call with you to share kind of stuff. But I really do think we've been fortunate enough to come up with some really cool processes in our business. I hope people take that to heart, the people that are out there that watch this video to say, I don't want to be a grinder anymore. I want to spend more quality time. I will always be available. Honestly, any person that's in the business, not in the business. I've been very fortunate to be around some really good successful people that have put me in the right light. So I will be more than happy to take any calls, any emails, set up these calls as much as I can, because it's been a big passion of mine to not only grow this internal brand of Seaport with our agents, but also to help other people.

Speaker 3 (00:59:36):
I mean, I have these same conversations. It's not just for you, it's not for show. I have these same conversations with my friends that live in la, my buddy who's the head coach, the amount of sacrifice that he has every day, the sacrifice he has. So there's stuff that we talk about when I was out there two weeks ago. Everybody needs it, everyone wants to have that. But yeah, call me anytime, email, we'll provide that anywhere, my cell phone, but any of our social channels at Seaport Real Estate, we'd love to have you guys check it out. And again, connect with me anytime.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
Awesome. For folks watching or listening, wherever you are watching or listening, there are links immediately below your player. I have links to everything that he just mentioned there down below, so please take him up on that. I've hosted hundreds and hundreds of podcast episodes and I've guessed on hundreds as well. And when people make these offers, they are sincere. People don't say these things that don't mean it. So hit those links up. Easy to access him. He's Ben Bloom Lee, I am Ethan Butte. Ben, I appreciate you so much. Thanks for spending all this time with me and with all of us, and I hope you have a great rest of your day and a great rest of your week.

Speaker 3 (01:00:39):
Thanks, Ethan, I appreciate you. Appreciate follow boss for everything you guys do. And yeah, hopefully to see you soon.

Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
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.