Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh man, that's a good question. Ethan, you got to just start with a hard one. Oh good.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Yes, he's the CEO and owner of Big Block Realty North and of Best Sac Home Group, the number one team in Sacramento and a top team in California.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
You can't get to become a great leader and until you've been a shitty

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Leader, a co-founder of the Reside platform, Suneet actively coaches top teams and brokerages to profitable growth. He loves playing guitar, but he's restricted himself to playing on weekends only and among many other businesses he was involved in before Real estate is breeding American Bulldogs. Suneet, thank you so much for talking Team OS today.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Hey, nice to see you. Ethan.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Anything in there inaccurate in any way? Do you know

Speaker 1 (00:46):
What's sexier? This is follow-up boss. I used to run weed clubs, right?

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, totally. In the mortgage business you've got all kinds of stuff. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:55):
So do we say weed clubs instead of American Bulldogs? I always think about the approach, but yeah. Sounds good.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
We have one standard opener on this show and it is what is a must have characteristic of a high performing team

Speaker 1 (01:10):
Of a team.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Team or team leader.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
I mean a team leader has to have hustle. A team needs to have accountability, I think.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Cool. Is there any difference in your experience between a good team like I am? Man, they're good. It's rocking and they got it going on versus a great team.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
So I think about this a lot because so fortunate that I hang out with so many awesome team leaders, very successful rags to richest stories, so I always guess I'm fortunate I hang out with lots of great teams and I think the thing that makes the difference, oh man, that's a good question, Ethan, if you're going to just start with a hard one. Good. Yes. What makes a great team? I mean leadership is important and I think this has been my thought before I had a team is I would think to myself right around the same time that we started out was all just because this so-and-so agent in this office is trying to start a team. They're a semi-successful agent in our market, but they have no leadership skills because all they've, I mean sure they've led themselves and they've led their clients, but that's different. It's part of it, but it's different. And I was like, I've owned businesses, I could do this. So leadership, that's the difference, but it's also hard. You can't get to become a great leader until you've been a good, until you've been become, until you've been a good realtor. Excuse me. A good leader and until you've been a shitty leader.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean we all learn through experience. You can only read a book and get so far off that knowledge. It's the actual experience in the seat, but I think you call out a really important point that comes up a lot on this show actually. It usually comes up in the context of the shift from a high producing agent to being a team leader and they're completely different jobs, especially if when you shift out of production or if someone chooses to shift out of production and go into leadership full time, it is not the same job at all. I think there's also an illusion that because I'm a kickass realtor, I can just hire new realtors and teach them exactly what I did and there is a truth in that, but it's never as clean as people want. That comes down to leadership coaching and guidance.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah, I mean that's the thing for me, I look back often, you think back often and I was never some great realtor in Sacramento. My team started two and a half years after getting licensed. But I think what helped me in the beginning was I had lots of leadership experience and business experience and marketing. So yeah,

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Tell us that story a little bit. I mean you don't have to go into all the details, but give us the high points on what got you turned onto real estate. What was that first two and a half years and what motivated starting a team?

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Sure. So went to college, was doing door-to-door sales, not when I went to school for Chico. Stayed go wild cast, talked to some guys that I knew, got into mortgage during sub prime 2002 and I'm going to make this super quick, Ethan and then went on, become very successful in my first leadership role as a branch manager for my buddy's company. Great experience, great perspective. They lost my ass, literally everything and got out of that, got out of a mortgage, got into cannabis. We were one of the first legal dispensaries in California because I paid lobbyists to lobby the city of Sacramento. That's what we did. We lobbied cities and we would get a permit process done and then we would apply for the permit.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
That went in a whole different way in 20 13, 20 12. So I was sitting on my couch and once again, this dispensary experience was incredible leadership and incredible on the job. Training was very, I had 40 people that worked there. It was very unique. It was very unique. It was very unique. That went away and then we talked about I want to be a dog beater. I'm just going to take it easy. I don't need money, man, I'm good. Not that I was super rich, I just became super simple, right? My hippiness really came out back then I was, I'm just going to be chill. And then my mom wasn't really happy with that. She's a really high achiever. All my successful friends are all, dude, it's been a couple of years of you chilling. Go get your real estate license and fine. So I did. I don't need the fancy car, I just want a Honda. I had my dogs, I had chickens and goats. Go to my old Facebook post, you'll laughed her ass off.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
Had my animals for my first year as an agent. I was the rookie of the year for this region for Coldwell Banker. I was like, well, that was cool. And I was learning about leads and learning about sales, learning about marketing and learning about showing up. Then the very next year I said, well, this is cool when I'm making good money. I made like 80, 90 grand my first year, which was a great win, right? That's huge. 2014. And I was like, I really owning a business more. My girlfriend at the time who I met because I was a cool realtor now, and my girlfriend at the time who is now my wife, she was pregnant with our eldest kid. So I kind of want to be home more. This showing houses is hard.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
Maybe I'll go back and open the dispensary. So it was either do that or do this and the way that it shook out is I wasn't able to do the dispensary or the story would've been very different. I said, well, I'm going to go all fucking in. So I went to Keller. I moved to Keller and I got exposed to follow a bus. I got exposed to laugh code agents. I got exposed to the idea of coaching, the idea of personal development and I'm so grateful for Keller Williams for that. Thank you, thank you, thank you. For anyone who had any impact there. Tristan Ahumada was somebody who I immediately started DMing. I was the dorky guy in Sag D and Tristan, right? But he was really helpful to me, hooked me up with coaches with technology. Definitely one of my first mentors in real estate and he knows that and I say it every time I see him and every time a name comes up.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
So super grateful to lab code agents and then kept on growing. I said, I'm going to have to hire some agents, and I put the word out there and I had seven agents like that. I've only been a realtor now for maybe three years. Well, I better figure this shit out. What was your value prop? How did you land? Seven. I got got leads. Okay. Right. That's all is I went and bought all in one platform that wasn't followed. Boss. I went and got it all in one website, PPC leads. Oh, I got leads. I had little Zillow spend and then we started to convert some and then, I don't know, maybe through lab coats I started getting notoriety on a national scene, which kind of whatever this coaching or any of this is even being a guest on here and then I was, okay, well how can I do more? So maybe I should just go to a hundred percent brokerage so I can control more of my team. Well, now that I'm recruiting to the brokerage, I want those agents too, so I'll just open everything.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
So then we opened and things started to go really, really well. We had a hundred percent model through big block and the great team model through the best stock homes group. Not that there's a big difference and I doubt my wife knows the name of the team. It's all big block, right? But at least I know the difference. Damn it. But it just started growing and growing and then thanks to great partnerships linked up with John Shelac, totally changed my life, health, family, all that stuff. Business definitely helped that leadership and it just kind of took off.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
Yeah. So what do you think that was, I mean to be number one in the market and to my understanding, you have been for years. What were you doing differently or better or cleanly? What do you think? Because to be number one in the market, even if you have someone right on your heels, I don't know if that's the case or not and it doesn't matter, but what were you doing differently or better than the other groups in your market? I

Speaker 1 (10:20):
Remember talking to John, it was my office at the time. It was during Covid, but it was my younger daughter's nursery. So it was pink and there was a balloons and a crib and a chair to read in. She was a year old and I'm, well, dude, I would just like to be number one in Sacramento. I said, but by the way, I'm looking at it. I think we could be number one in the state, bro. What? I was like, yeah, let's see. And then we were number one in the state. I was a holy shit, and what did we do is we were getting the most opportunities. We had a ton of agents and the market was really, really good. The market was really, really good. Absolutely. Then the next year, same kind of thing happened. I was all, dude, this is kind of crazy, and now it's just like osmosis. I didn't think I would still be number one in Sacramento. I was recruiting last week, so I pulled the agent list of every agent in Sacramento and I looked at the end and it's my name still was. I'm still number one.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
Yeah,

Speaker 2 (11:27):
That's crazy. So it's talk a little bit about the early formation. So you have a bunch of leads, but I mean that doesn't lead to success or to be number one. What did you bring maybe from your past experience or what was some hard learning early on to figure out as you get this volume of leads, you mentioned the market is good, of course the market's good for everybody, but in general when the market's good, lead flow is more favorable. As that starts ramping up a little bit, I mean what were some of the pieces that you put into place early on or some practices that you put into place or people you put into place to compliment your weaknesses or whatever the case may be. As things started ramping up and you had this vision of I think we can be number one in the state. As you're putting that together, what were some of the key pieces that you either already had in place or knew that you need to implement to get there?

Speaker 1 (12:16):
Yeah. Well, I learned from modeling others for sure, but we got channel partners like Zillow and now I need a ton of managers because it was a big workload for that. It was a Zillow offer stuff which resulted in most of the top teams last few years here according to real trends and it's accurate. So we had to hire a bunch of people and we had to bring a bunch of agents. So I've been yelling that recruiting is important since I first opened any kind of organization. Most people do, but somebody dedicated to that. Somebody dedicated to agent training, and I know that that's easier said than done now because many teams have cut back on staff and increased those CEO's workload due to a 20% national dip in home sales. It's real. If you sold less last year I did, it's because that's the way that the math worked out. You got the same market share, but it's about having those people in for me, leveraging yourself, finding your weaknesses. I remember we did a big partnership in the dispensary back in the day with one of the first people from Oakland, one of the big, big players. They came in and I did a consulting agreement with them and I've never told this story, but they had me compartmentalize the whole business. So we had a manual for every department. How many dispensaries do you think had that Ethan right back then?

Speaker 1 (13:53):
2008.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
I mean you could substitute the word dispensaries with real or brokers.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
So then we compartmentalized a lot of that stuff and we still have are we the fancy at? No, but I mean I've seen what works. Also, something that I did really early was just a lot of organic marketing, not that I was good, but my first week as an agent, it was 2014, we would go on home tours with the brokerage and the new listings and I would take a little 15 second Instagram video because that's all that you could post back then in front of all the houses. Two weeks later, after doing that for two weeks, two weeks later, some of the agents from my very same office said, Hey, you have a lot of listings. I was all, no, I don't. So I just realized, I was like, Hey, that works. So those things like that, and I still post on Facebook a hundred times a day

Speaker 2 (15:01):
And so this is probably part of the osmosis that you referred to earlier, the presence, it's the availability, it's the awareness, and so when I'm in doubt or when I'm in question or when there's an opportunity, you go to the people who are top of mind

Speaker 2 (15:19):
And that's true of consumers and of agents. Any positions that you added when you mentioned surrounding yourself with managers to get the whole thing on track and probably to fill out the type of playbook that you had at the dispensary in terms of having operations really dialed in and documented any positions that you maybe added later on that you maybe wish you added sooner. I'm just thinking on behalf of someone who's got a little bit of what you had in those early days and aren't quite sure if I'm going to be adding fixed costs in a market like this, I'm not sure which ones they should be. And you can also go to your own coaching on this too, whether it's your own experience or whether it's other folks that you've had the opportunity to kind of get into their business with them. What are some of the early positions when you want to start adding this proper leadership layer or management layer inside the organization? What are a few key functions or roles or titles or whatever that come to mind?

Speaker 1 (16:20):
Everybody should have an admin, and that's not management, but everyone should have admin. Maybe they're virtual. I still have 20 some odd VAs Man and the guy who does everything for me. Joe Quin is a legend, right? Most dependable, hardworking, loyal person out there. So your admin should be covered and for me, the first in Sacramento person was someone to answer all the agent questions and help the agents and help with training and that person could also do a bulk of the recruiting. That's who I would hire. What do you want to call that person? A manager. You could do sales manager, you could do branch manager, but I like having that person who can do the agent training, do the G minutes. I don't have the answer. I said earlier, I'm not some incredible realtor to where I can name rattle something off from the contract. I like the sales and marketing stuff. That's why we go geek out. So sales manager with every branch manager, that's the key hire for me and I remember mine and she did great. She couldn't make it through the big growth so she got replaced, but I think you're just leveraging yourself. Something that's been helpful for is leveraged. I'm leveraged bro, and I like it. I get so much more done. I use task boards and Monday and just assign stuff across multiple businesses, multiple departments of businesses and it just really works.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
Yeah, really good. And that leverage approach, I mean is it this simple for someone, again on behalf of someone listening or watching, as you look at your day and as you look back at your week, you think, what was I doing that I don't want to do that I'm not good at or that I shouldn't be doing? That's not a good, you could do the cost benefit against your time. Is it really that simple? Look back at what you're doing or look at what's ahead and say, what should I not be doing or what do I because I either A, could be doing something more valuable or B, someone else could do it better. And then the other bucket being, I actually just hate doing this work, so I should get that assigned.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yeah, I mean yes, the cost benefit is definitely go down the list of everything it did last week, but how much it is per hour. Figure out what your worth is from how much you make, how you work and then these things you should pay yourself and these things you should do yourself and these things somebody else should do. Absolutely. I tell I coach to that a hundred percent. So thank you.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
Yeah, really good. Okay, so coaching teams in general high level, you go to a lot of events. You do a lot of one-on-one stuff. You're in a lot of rooms with a lot of different kinds of people at different stages of the journey. As we're recording this in early 2024, look back on maybe the last six months or so, what are some of the top concerns or challenges that people have? And I want to restrict it maybe to things that are within their control. I want to kind of set the market off on the side, although none of these observations or answered can be addressed or answered without the color or the context of the market. But besides that, what are people struggling with? What are they thinking about? What are they working on? I

Speaker 1 (20:03):
Think a lot of people felt beat up a little bit agents, leaders and good because freaking part of it, bro, you're supposed to feel beat up how that you're doing it and then people want to get in their own ways. So many people say, well hey Suneet, I want to recruit. What are you doing? Oh, I posted on Facebook, I was all like, what is everything that you're doing for recruiting? Are you doing it all? Why aren't you going to do it and why? Well, I don't have time. Let me look at your fucking calendar bro. You don't have enough time. Okay, I see a lot of white space. Oh, I'm trying to save that. No bro, get it in there, right? Let me tell you something, it's in my fucking calendar.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
So people just not doing it. It's the same thing and maybe that's exacerbated by feeling a little beat up, people wanting to lick their wounds a little bit, but you're going to lick your wounds right into going out of business unless you get out there and recruit and I actually sat down, I did this for a one-on-one coaching call and I wrote out, okay, let's talk about every single way that you can recruit. Okay, there's like 40, 29 ways I think is what we bolded down to now and I want that list to be higher so I can do more shit. Are you leveraging each of these things more? Yeah, so that I think I've been trained well by Che bro recruiting, it's like fixes every problem.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
The way that you're talking about it makes me think back to your initial response of hustle in general. It's like just do the work and I'll layer in your observation about your early Instagram videos. They weren't great. I was just doing it and it was creating this impression. So I think there is even among strong-willed and even successful people, I think you can feel a little bit paralyzed or something in the moment. I think this bias toward action is the thing that solves everything.

Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yes. See the bias towards you put that really well, brother bias towards action. That's a Twitter post right there. X yeah, but it solves everything. There's no mystery. People still think there's a mystery. It's just work works dude, to be cliche, right?

Speaker 2 (22:44):
Yeah. You know what works right now is doing work. Okay, I want to go into a specific topic that I'm sure you're speaking to experienced yourself and you're probably coaching people on as well, which is you all growth is not good growth. What we're looking for is profitable growth two layers here and you can take either or both. You can take them in any order you want, but two zones I'm curious about specifically around profitability. One is the team model versus a traditional brokerage. What have you observed about that? And then the other one is splits versus services. I know there are a lot of different ways to run splits. One of the attractive things about a team I feel like right now is that it tends to provide some of the services that brokerages may be stopped providing or cut back on average. So I know that's a little bit messy, it's a little bit big, but speak about profitability in a team model versus a traditional brokerage. Thoughts, observations there and then we'll maybe get into splits and services and any thoughts and observations you have there.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
Great question. I don't get asked this enough dude. So thoughtful. Thank you. Good. So thoughtful. It's been my experience that when a traditional potential franchise type model, usually old school franchise model, let's say I went and signed up with any of those couple guys, we don't need to say any names, but we all know let's, let's say I go signed up and I'm going to pop open a franchise. I'm going to be paying them something for mediocre software. If anything mediocre, super templated, scalable agent websites where you get to change your phone number and your freaking profile picture and probably not the level of support initially that you want. You still have to worry about the compliance and worry about these things. So I think starting those brokerages franchise model, starting one today probably wouldn't advise against it in most cases. Now I know when there's some nuances where you operate like a team, I'm saying a traditional brokerage, not a team rich, not that you're giving leads, but if we're doing a team model or a team ridge model where now you're talking leads, now you're talking about the major investment into the business.

Speaker 1 (25:20):
Now you're talking about getting the best software, not some boilerplate bullshit. You're talking about getting follow boss. Isn't that what all the top teams use? Last time I checked it was, but you talk about getting follow boss. Maybe you talk about ISAs now. You talk about training and talk about massive stuff that you need to do to convert and it's easy to make a profit when the market's super hot and it always catches people with their pants down. Always, always, always. No matter how many times you still get, there's still something that you could have canceled a little bit earlier. And we were a victim of that too. For example, we were going fairly hard on billboards in Sacramento as the only agent when the market tanked, I said I'll still go hard. After about a year of that I was like, it's not getting any better and I was just really painful, so I'm just going to stop. Which wouldn't have happened. I wouldn't have looked at the profitability still clause on that one and the one avenue, if we were having great months every month like terrific 20, 21 months.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
What a team leader has to really realize is especially if they want to be out of production, which I think people do and they always have always for the wrong reason. I just want to get out of a production. It's like a merit badge. And the reason I can talk shit about that was me two and a half years into being a realtor, oh, I need to get out, I'm out. You should really work on the team and take splits like an agent on your team until that money is, until you don't have to do that. That's how you stay really profitable. What's your profit margin? What's your cost of good solds? And many teams out there don't know their cost of good sold and I had a traditional bookkeeper forever and not to toot my own horn, but our bookkeeper at Reside really opened the light about a lot of this stuff because you just get the checks from the brokerage. They're not counting cost of goods sold but ours do and where's your profit margin? Have you thought about that? No, I just don't want to sell any more houses.

Speaker 2 (27:56):
Yeah, so there's a couple things in there. Getting a better handle on the business in general, not just, this is another reason that we can easily say something like GCI, doesn't matter. It's like what are you actually taking home that's the rolled up version of it across a green bridge or a brokerage, but keeping a better eye on the business period is one aspect of that. And then the other one too is I think being clear in your own mind what you will never cut back, what you will cut back at some circumstance and what should always be kind of on a, I don't know, a gas pedal where you could pull back really quickly and you notice the difference right away. I'm thinking about your billboard scenario. So we need to be responsive to the market, but we don't want to be over-responsive, right? We don't want to shut everything off and turn off all our software and turn off all our ads just because a slowdown in the market. So I think there's, you just need some clarity within yourself. What are your biggest costs? Which ones are going to stay no matter what's going on in the market and you need to maybe have some financial cushion

Speaker 1 (29:03):
To

Speaker 2 (29:03):
Breeze through that and then what can you throttle back on or even eliminate people? Are that clear? I think those decisions are made emotionally and urgently probably more often than they should be. As you said, everyone gets caught with their pants down,

Speaker 1 (29:20):
Dude, turn off the brand awareness and go harder on direct response. That's what you should do.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
Go into that a little bit more for folks that aren't super clear on the difference.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
Sorry. Yeah, where do John, right, so there's this author and coach and speaker. His name is Dan Kennedy. So he has a book called Magnetic Marketing, so don't take it from me. I'm going to do my best to hack my way through this. Brand awareness is putting your stuff out there and hoping that somebody will do something but brand, it's like a billboard. Hopefully they see my billboard enough times whereas direct Response is asking them to fill in their home address right now so I get their information. So if you're going to cut back on something, it's advisable in my opinion to cut back on the brand awareness and maybe spend that budget on the direct response. At least you're guaranteeing something with some type of metrics and KPIs

Speaker 2 (30:29):
Really good. And I will add one thing there and I think you'll agree with me, but feel I'll stop as soon as I say it and then you could add whatever you want or correct it. But I feel like when you slow down on that brand spend, whether you put it back in your pocket or whether you devote it to more direct response when you cut back on that brand, spend some of the communication you might've done around that brand spend as a follow-up, just devote it to your own database. Turn back to the people you already know you could already communicate

Speaker 1 (30:55):
With. Totally. So right now I've been very, very focused on just more email engagement. I just did eight weeks with the top digital marketing email coach. I have on meetings every day about it, at least three hours a week. That's what I see what the big opportunity is. I have 115,000 people in my follow boss account, Ethan and only 9,500 are regularly getting emails and it's driving me bonkers, right? So that's an example. Those people spoke to you once you still got 'em, get 'em back,

Speaker 2 (31:37):
Or at least look at that big gap between I think you said one 15 and 9,500. I mean let's take that other 110,000 people and at least do the work to further qualify or disqualify like, oh, I'll never talk to this person again or reengage the people that are there. Okay, two other kind of zones I definitely want to hit before I let you go back into the rest of your afternoon splits and services, anything you have to offer at a high level there. What have you seen that never works or what have you seen that's super functional? I know that because that's the lever in this profitability zone. It's like that's a big piece of it.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
If you want to pay agents in your organization more money, you better be bringing in twice as many new agents. So any of these discussions are a mechanism of you're not fucking recruiting. So outside of that, I mean what's your profit margin? What's your cost of good sold? You got to get really clear on that because all the numbers add up. Your expenses cannot be 95% of what your net is and then you want a 20% profit margin. Unless you sell more houses and go sell more houses, then sounds like you're going to need more agents. So that's all a mechanism of the recruiting not happening. I mean that's how I feel like it just comes down to dollars and cents man is if you want massive growth, you're going to spend money on it. Do you have the money? Yeah,

Speaker 2 (33:30):
So I am putting myself into the seat of someone receiving that question direct practically, and my thought goes immediately to I need to stay small and nimble. I still need to crank. I'm a great agent, I've got some people around me. I'm going to stay small, I'm going to maybe bank what I can and then at some point decide to kind of step on the gas pedal and try to blow through kind of that hard zone of challenging growth. I think you can run a pretty profitable business at 5, 6, 7, 8 people, but there's a zone past that where you're constantly struggling with, again the fixed costs of hiring staff and support and before you can get to the volume play,

Speaker 1 (34:18):
I tell people, man, just recruit.

Speaker 2 (34:22):
Yeah,

Speaker 1 (34:23):
Just recruit.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
Okay, so another way to ask about splits and services in light of all the times recruiting has come up here in our time together, how much do you think this matters to the agent? What's the magic of recruiting agents? I feel like part of the value prop is somewhere in there. Well, you're going to get X for every self-generated and you're going to get X minus for every company generated opportunity that you convert and in order to support you, we do this for you, we do that for you. We have this whenever you need it or want it. I feel like it's part of the recruiting conversation or is the recruiting conversation even simpler than that?

Speaker 1 (35:08):
Well, the recruiting conversation is much simpler.

Speaker 2 (35:11):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (35:12):
Right, because what somebody's looking for, number one, I mean many people are a hundred percent financially motivated. Good, cheers to you guys. Me too. But you could always go somewhere else and get a better deal. Yeah, so keep on looking bro. Right? You could always go somewhere and get a better deal. I think people come for experience, for mentorship. Someone can always offer better leads, better tech, better marketing, better branding. So I never thought about it that much. I just recruited for myself and I'm sure many people think about that, but why would you join you? Do you have a compelling reason?

Speaker 2 (36:07):
Why would you join you? I love that as a question,

Speaker 1 (36:10):
Why would he join you? Okay. When I meet with somebody, that's the first thing I ask him. Okay, so why should I join your team?

Speaker 2 (36:23):
What I hear in here is that, and by the way, I align with it if what I'm hearing is correct and maybe that's why I'm overhearing it, but the transactional piece of it, kind of the details. There's some people that are numbers oriented, there's some people that are financially oriented, there's some people that really want to know the transactional component of it and that may or may not click for you and that person, they may or may not be the right fit. What I'm really hearing in this is that I don't want to sound too soft, but how you make people feel. Do you make them feel supported, encouraged, motivated? Do you make them feel at home? Do you make them feel like they can be their best self here and all of that transcends the transactional components of cost benefit?

Speaker 1 (37:13):
I mean, case in point, yes, case in point. I've been spending time this year recruiting more actively myself personally. As I mentioned earlier, and I'm really proud of myself that I could say that I'm no longer some coach a fucking white in an ivory tower, right? Like, oh yeah, I just do this. I've doing it. And I hired a guy last week, very seasoned agent, and we met and he signed or he asked for the contract was ready to sign without discussing money at all. He goes, okay, I am ready. The guy sold a couple hundred houses in his career. He didn't have the best last year, but it was because, Hey, how's it going? Tell me, what are you looking for? The next real estate organization that you join and let 'em go and they're going to tell you. And if someone says, I'm looking for leads, say great. It says how our lead program works. I ain't lying. I'm all Yeah, we have ISA said appointments we use follow-up boss. This is what I expect. Any questions about the leaves? No. Great. What else is important? Oh, tell me about the training. Well, we got our training person do this and at the end I'm all, any other questions? No, I think you explained it great. What do you think? Give me paperwork. Do you want to know about any of the money? No, I can just look it over. It's fine.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
So really just going back 10 or 15 minutes, I forget when we hit it, but it really is a simpler conversation. What are you looking for next? Awesome. We have that. And to the degree that someone wants something that you don't have or that you don't care about or that you don't prioritize.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
Yeah, I don't have that. Yeah, no, sorry.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
Yeah, give me a minute. On ISAs, what do they do? When did you add that layer as a function and what do they always do and what don't they do? And what I want there is do you have ISAs doing something that might surprise somebody? Because I think most people think of them as when new leads come in, they follow up. Do you have them doing other things besides that? So speak to the ISA function. When should someone be thinking about adding it to their organization and what are some of the zones of activities that they can cover on behalf of agents to keep agents more productive?

Speaker 1 (39:36):
Great question. I was hoping you would come up another one of my favorite things. So we talked about recruiting emails and ISAs doing good, Ethan? Good, good. All my favorite stuff. So I brought in ISAs in 2021

Speaker 1 (40:00):
For the same reason that anybody really brings 'em in is because they get exhausted of chasing people to chasing independent contractors to do something, right? And that's called the leads. I'm sure everybody wants to, but people get distracted. That's the nature of being an independent contractor in a field like real estate. There's other ways to get around that. I was just, we were having a really great year, so why not do some growth? So I brought in two local ISAs and at the time I had some VAs and I brought in some VAs to help them out, follow up with the agents to update leads at this time to update premier agent manually because that was never happening and it was when Flex just first came out, we were the first flex team in NorCal, so it was when it just first came out, I really wanted to update the portal.

Speaker 1 (40:55):
I was asking the terrific agents on my team to update two sites. No one was fucking doing that. Come on, no matter what, no matter what strategy, everyone said, well, you just tell 'em this. No, no one's going to do that. Have 'em do it in one. Okay, problem solved. Anyhow, and really quickly I was all, well, let's just pour a lot of gas on this. So we grew it really big locally in the US and internationally. We grew it really big in the Philippines and really we hired three people. It's not really anything, but more than anybody else ever met three Egyptians, which was three Egyptian VAs, Mexico. We hired from there and the department got really big and as the market has slowed down, I really chop graded and a lot of people were checking off a box and a lot of people were busting their ass.

Speaker 1 (42:04):
So I got rid of the people. One of my managers got poached and that's okay. She's great and so is he. And I saw him at the F conference and he's a buddy, so all good. He didn't even know of course, right? Some headhunter that he paid all good. So she got poached and one of the managers was wasted at 11:00 AM one day, one of the managers send somebody, send an agent an inappropriate photo of a private part. So there's a lot of rogues in the ISA and now we're down to six in the Philippines who been with me for three years and one in Sacramento and the performance is very good. What do they do? They have opportunities on all new inbound leads. They follow up with agents, they follow up with other lists that I have. They call, for example, expired FSBOs. Any kind of data, basically any kind of list I can get, I send over to them to call, they'll call on follow up for my course stuff. So I just have a real good international phone sales team and leveraging the Philippines and just really good people there. It's lights out, I'm happy as hell.

Speaker 2 (43:33):
What are the characteristics? And we don't need to get super detailed. This is kind of like a one follow-up layer question, when does an ISA hand an opportunity off to an agent? When from the new lead perspective, what needs to happen in your system for an ISA to say, okay, I've done my job here, now I'm handing them over to an agent. Is it an appointment set? Do they do everything up to that moment or is what is the handoff point?

Speaker 1 (44:05):
I want the handoff point really early because it'll give us more opportunities. The friction always comes in that initial conversation. We do a lot of live transfers. They'll get somebody on the phone and see if they want to talk to an agent, then do a live transfer through the follow-up boss number, right? It works great. And a phone appointment in-person appointment. I mean I think our average met rate is 70 something, so it's taken out a lot of friction because otherwise I'd be waking up pissed, seeing leads come in and wondering if anybody's going to call it. I didn't want to do that anymore. We have plenty of teams in Reside and Preston also, they don't leverage that piece as much anymore. My piece is mostly overseas. They're highly trained and I'm very happy to go.

Speaker 2 (45:04):
Awesome. Thanks for all that. One last question here before we go to some of my fun closers for you. I'm super curious to hear your take on what would you say to an agent because in having these conversations, and I've done dozens of them now, but I'm still early in it, I'm not a practitioner like although I'm surveying the scene kind of to the degree that you're coaching and surveying the scene as well,

Speaker 1 (45:31):
I

Speaker 2 (45:31):
Moving it a lot longer. I've come to the observation that there are tens of thousands, if not maybe even a couple hundred thousand agents in North America who should be giving serious consideration to the team model at joining a team as an agent, not even starting a team, but the value prop is super compelling and they're getting hung up on a few key issues like splits or whose brand is it or some of these other types of things. How are you communicating or what would you say to an agent to provoke their curiosity in the team model? Or if you have someone that you've maybe attempted to recruit that's really getting hung up on this, how do you kind of coach them through that or kind of ask them questions to turn them on or open them up or to determine whether or not a team model is even right for them?

Speaker 1 (46:24):
I believe it sounds you do that the team is the best option. You're not going to get as much support or resources in any, unless it's a team rich, right? Team option is the best. And let me ask any listeners, viewers who maybe get hung up with something, would you rather have, what is it a bite of a pea or a bite of a watermelon, right? Which one? So you're going to be getting so many more opportunities these from a team, any good team, and if you can't find a good one, look a little bit harder, right? Something that I'm very proud of myself about for doing early on it worked for me was I didn't call my team the Sydney Dagger wall team and I never had it that way. And I started it with SOI splits similar to traditional brokerages in my market. I was able to do that by having a hundred percent layer there and that helped our growth. So there's other teams like this team origins in your market, find somebody, make sure they're using follow box that they're probably doing it right then and just be, I mean it could be your career on the line and your stubbornness keeping you out of making money straight up.

Speaker 2 (47:55):
Yeah, really good. Appreciate that. And most importantly, the call here is interview some team leaders talk to some people and there's going to be a good fit and there's going to be some not great fits, but it's there to discover and it's not only more money. The other thing I hear a lot too is better lifestyle, better backup, more consistency, things like ISA teams to support you so that you can focus on the activities that you enjoy the most and they are most profitable for you.

Speaker 1 (48:25):
Yeah, I mean, money speaks to so many people. I just start there, what do you want to buy of dude? And they're all, well, you put it like that and then game over. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (48:37):
I mean I immediately thought, well, I'll say watermelon. This has been great. I look forward to the next time we connect in person. I was really glad we were able to connect in Austin just a couple of months ago. Let you go though. A few fun pairs of questions and you only need to answer one or the other. And the first one is, what is your very favorite team to root for besides your own real estate team or what is the best team you've ever been a member of?

Speaker 1 (49:04):
The best team I've ever been a part of. Okay. I know the answer. The best team I've been a part of so far is reside. Working with other great minds and super accomplished people is incredible.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
Awesome. And we'll link up reside in the, if you're watching this on YouTube, it's down below. If you're listening to your podcast player, it's down below in the description of the episode. And if you want to check it out@realestateteamos.com, we write up all these episodes, the link there will be there too. And it is a fantastic team. I love what you guys are doing. What is one of your most frivolous purchases or what's a cheapskate habit that you have held onto even though you probably don't need to

Speaker 1 (49:43):
Anymore? So this is frivolous. This was frivolous. I was with DJ in Nashville. We were hanging out with Gary that same later that day and I bought this. I'm going to even like this one. I like this one and this does not make me feel as bad as this. I'm oh shit, man. But yeah,

Speaker 2 (50:02):
It's awesome. For folks who are in your podcast app, he's got a bunch of guitars hanging on the wall and one of them he regards as frivolous. Last one here, Cindy, what does it look like for you to invest in learning, growing, and developing? What does that look like? What are you doing or what does it look like for you to rest, relax, and recharge?

Speaker 1 (50:25):
I am all on learning and coaching and I spend a bunch of energy a bunch of time, read a bunch of books, belong to a bunch of masterminds, take a bunch of courses, have a bunch of coaches. Did I say that already? So yes, I'm all in. And two, and I'll answer both is I recently got a PlayStation five and I love playing Diablo and slaying monsters. All my friends know I won't quit talking about it. It's very relaxing. Playing video games, dungeon crawl or video games.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
That's awesome. I do not know that one. I'm not like a big video gamer. I told myself this lie like years ago. I've outgrown that and I don't think I really have. I told

Speaker 1 (51:09):
Myself that too. Then I got a PS five and I went to Target looking for some toothpaste and bro

Speaker 2 (51:15):
Came out with, did you find everything you were looking for today? Yeah. Plus this PS five. It's funny, they, yeah, they always ask that question like, yeah, plus this

Speaker 1 (51:25):
Thing. Yeah, hurry up. Right? How am I going to tell my wife I brought home a video game system? She's all, what's this?

Speaker 2 (51:35):
Awesome. I appreciate you so much, Sunita, this was super fun. If folks have reached this point in the conversation, they may want to reach out to you, they might want to connect with you. Where are some places you'd send them?

Speaker 1 (51:43):
Yeah, Suneet Agarwal, S-U-N-E-E-T-A-G-A-R-W-A-L, Suneet agrawal.com. Suneet Agrawal 9 1 6 on Instagram. Yeah, hit me up. I got a bunch of free resources on my website and on my Instagram, so go out there and grab my free stuff.

Speaker 2 (52:06):
Awesome. As mentioned before, it's down below wherever you are watching or listening sine, I appreciate you and I hope you have a great rest of your afternoon.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
You too. Thank you so much man.

Speaker 3 (52:16):
Thanks for checking out this episode of Team Os. For email exclusive insights every week, sign up@realestateteamos.com.