Speaker 1 (00:00):
About eight years ago, she got into real estate sales after years of experience in adjacent spaces. She serves as realtor and team leader of the Move me to Texas team in Houston. And unless Instagram has given me a false impression, she's got a really good collection of Nike's for insights into starting, growing and optimizing your real estate team. We're talking with Katie Day. Thank you so much for talking t os today, Katie.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hey, thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Yeah, Instagram doesn't deceive me, does it?

Speaker 2 (00:32):
No, I mean there's always room for improvement, right? Like constant growth. So I will continue to improve my shoe collection, but I appreciate the compliment.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Yeah, I love it. This constant pursuit of improvement. That's what we're doing on the show by the way. So I'm going to start with a question that I've asked literally every guest on the show, which is what for you, Katie, is a must have characteristic of a high performing team.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
And I mentioned this earlier, but I think that it rings true for any team is adaptability, especially in real estate. Things are constantly changing and evolving and interest rates go up, they go down. We have lots of things happening that impact the real estate world. And so for teams, I think that it's important for all team members to be able to adapt to changing priorities and different things that impact us.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
For you, was that a strength that you developed through hard learned lessons and things, or was this something that was always natural to you? And then I'd like to kind of go to the team dynamic as well. Is this something you seek in other people?

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Yeah, I wouldn't say that it's something that I've always had as an innate skill. It's probably something that has developed over time or it's definitely something that's developed over time just in lots of different things happening, challenges, people joining the team, leaving the team, things like that. And so looking back on my career, just post-college employment, I think that it's something that I've learned over time and I hope I'm better at today than I was 10 years ago or 20 years ago.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Really good. Whether it's with agents or staff that you've brought alongside you, is it something that you actively developed, maybe some inquiry around in interviews or things? Is it something you seek in other people?

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah, when I look at our team members that have been the most successful with the team, they've been the ones that have been with us as we build the plane, as we fly it, as I always like to say. And so they're the ones that perhaps were doing something one way today and then tomorrow we decide that we're going to do something different as a leader and as the team leader, I try to not do that too frequently. I try to keep things status quo and moving along on the same path, but sometimes things happen that we have to change the direction that we're going in. And so looking back on everyone that's been very successful, they normally are the ones that can roll with those punches. So I don't know, it's necessarily something that we interview to, but it's definitely something that as we add anyone new to the team, there are some key characteristics like adaptability that we do want to dig in deeper on.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Really good. Not really adaptability specific, but when I think about the team model, I think about it's built of two things really at once, which is the collective goal, which may exclusively be held by the team leader in some cases and all the individual goals. Sometimes the collective goal is just made up of here's what all 12 of us want to do for ourselves, and that becomes the collective goal. Do you think about that at all in a team situation?

Speaker 2 (03:36):
For sure. When I first got into real estate, had that moment where you hear other people talking about things and if Ethan's doing it, I think it's cool and now I want to do it too. And I got that a lot in coaching communities and brokerage communities and things like that. I would see other people doing things and so that may be selling a hundred homes or 200 homes or whatever the number is. I would very often hear you say something and I'd be like, oh, I want that goal too. You hear a lot of billion dollar teams and stuff like that. And so I'm like, oh, maybe that's a goal that I want. And then I would try to impart those goals on my team. And so a few years back I had one of those leadership lessons of talking to all of my team members about their goals and seeing, okay, if Ethan wants to sell 20 homes, I can't make you sell 50, right?

Speaker 2 (04:21):
If this is all you want to do and this is all you need to support your family, I'm not going to get you from 20 to 50. And so we basically took all of the team goals, added them up, and then figured out, okay, if all of the team's goals add to a hundred and we want to sell 200 homes, are we going to double the size of our sales staff to achieve those or are we going to adjust our goals? And so it's been a learning experience over the past few years, but we've focused in more for the past probably three-ish years on adding everyone's goals up to have a collective and something that we're all working toward

Speaker 1 (04:55):
Really good. We're going to double back into that shortly, but I would love to hear just a story arc as deeper as shallow as you want to go on how we even got here. How are you on a show about starting and growing real estate teams? When did you get into real estate and how?

Speaker 2 (05:11):
Okay, so you don't want me to go back to when I was born? You

Speaker 1 (05:13):
Can do it however you like. Sorry, that was the setups. Go as deep as you want or show if you want, whatever you want to do.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
So on June 28th? No. All right, so I'll go back to college. So I went to the University of Tampa. I majored in business and so I graduated with a business management degree. And when I was leaving college, I was interviewing for a lot of jobs at insurance agencies and law firms and being a paralegal. And my thought was do I go to grad school or law school or something else? And then I interviewed for a job with a multifamily property management company where they basically brought in college graduates as what they would call manager in training position, and they would train you so you were a leasing agent and they would train you on payroll and maintenance and how to do and run a apartment community. So I did that from college till about 2014 ish was kind of the timeframe for me. So I did that for a few years and really got a lot of knowledge about leadership, leadership mistakes, running a business, sales, just kind of a whole slew of skills. And then got in from multifamily into single family property management. And then in 2016 I got my license, and then in 2017 I went full-time into real estate.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
I feel like you're at a little bit of an advantage going into, and this is kind of the next step, building a team, first of all, running your own real estate business. I think you're already at an advantage for some of the leadership lessons you picked up along the way. And if there are any that stand out as you think about it, I love to hear those, but do you observe any advantages to having other industry adjacent background and leadership coming into a full-time sales role slash going into, Hey, let's start a team.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
For sure, for sure. I think for many people in real estate, it's not their first career. And so I think that a lot of people bring a lot of good background and things like that. And so for me, coming from, as you said, an adjacent industry or facet of the industry, it was helpful because I understood ish what real estate agents did and still have a lot to learn, but it was definitely something that I understood the general premise and idea of real estate. So it was something that I had enough interest to kind of jump into. It wasn't just like I like looking at homes and I think that flips are cool. I had some industry knowledge and then as far as leadership experiences and things like that, I was afforded the opportunity to manage my first apartment community at the age of 21.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
And when I look back at it now, I don't know how someone would give a 21-year-old little and me that much responsibility looking back on it now, if someone told me to hire a 21-year-old to manage my business, I probably wouldn't agree to it, but it gave me a lot of leadership experiences. It gave me a lot of having tough conversations. There was a lot of, I guess you could just say awkward situations where I'm a 21-year-old kid managing 30 and 40 and 50 year olds. And so they kind of look at me, who do you think you are? How are you going to tell me what to do? And so I think that it helped me in the real estate realm and also the running a team realm of having those tough conversations, being able to communicate hopefully somewhat effectively with different demographics and ages and people and things like that. So I'm super grateful for the experience, but still surprised that I had it.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
Awesome. When you were full-time, real estate sales, at what point in that journey did you start thinking about I need to or I want to bring some people alongside me? What was the original vision? Was it like this is just the next right step and so now I have a part-time, admin term, full-time admin alongside me, or was it, you know what? I think it would be the next right step for us collectively is to bring a few people around us. I've got this great agent, what was the spark for the team and what was kind of the early iteration of it?

Speaker 2 (09:30):
For sure. So the first thing that you said was that did you hire an admin and that was your right first hire and that is the right first hire. And of course that is not what I did. So I got in full-time 2017. My husband ended up quitting his job in the summer of 2017 and he got into real estate, but we both kind of did our own thing separately. And so through 2017 and through basically half of 2018, so he was in for almost a year, we both did our own thing. We sold a decent amount of homes. We were doing leases, we were basically doing anything we could to make money in real estate, but we had no life. We didn't see each other, we didn't hang out with our friends. We were working seven days a week and while we were making okay money, we knew that it wasn't sustainable for our friendships, relationship, marriage, all of the things, but we didn't know what the solution was.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
And so I went to a real estate seminar mastermind type thing and heard a coach speak and talk about time management and how if you hire the TC and the admin, the buyer's agent and all of these things, you can grow out this organization that then gives you back time you can make more money. And it's just that simple. And so I come home and I'm like, Hey, we are going to hire a coach and start a team. And my husband's like, well, why? And I'm like, for accountability? And he's like, okay, well if you want to accountability, I can hold you accountable. And I'm like, that's not going to work. We're not going to take it seriously. And so we kind of toyed with this for a while and then in August, September of 2018, we hired a coach and then kind of went down the path of starting a team, but our first hire was an agent, which I would recommend not doing that

Speaker 1 (11:05):
You'd recommend an admin. I love to start to that. I mean I appreciate all of it, but I love to start to that response too. That is what you should do. That's not what we did. That's great. So characterize however you wish your team as it is today, whether that's market size, structure, culture, just kind of give us a snapshot of what is the move me to Texas team right now?

Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah, for sure. So we're a small team. We are in Houston, Texas and we operate all throughout the greater Houston area. Houston's a pretty big market and we have agents that are kind of spread out throughout different geographic regions so that we're able to service 45 minutes outside of downtown or so. We've got eight agents plus my husband and I, so 10 total agents. We have two transaction coordinators that with buyers and listings respectively. And then we have two VAs that help with marketing and listing launches and some of the admin stuff like seller reports and just keeping us all organized.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
Awesome Culture. How important to you was kind of vision name values? I know that you have stated core values. Talk a little bit about that dynamic of it. What role does it play and was that just obvious to you? This is part of the foundation of what we're building here?

Speaker 2 (12:31):
So I think that as far as culture goes, I think that it's so significantly important, but it's difficult to characterize. It's normally when you realize that someone's not part of your culture, that it's an issue. And so for me it's always just been kind of the, and I hate this and everyone always says it, but it's like the would I go have a beer with you after work type thing? And so we want to make sure that we are continuing to add people to the team, that we still have that family feel and that we would all want to hang out and go grab lunch or grab a beer or grab coffee or whatever it may be, and truly care about each other and each other's wellbeing as far as values go and formulating them and then holding ourselves to them. When we first started the team or realized that we wanted to have a team, we kind of wanted to look at the things that were important to us, but more so we kind of inverse flipped it around a little bit and looked at what are the things that we don't want and what are the things in the industry that we get frustrated with as far as when we're dealing with another agent if they don't have integrity, if they're not trustworthy, if they're not thinking forward thinking and growing and learning and things like that.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
And so we kind of thought about all the things that we had dealt with over the few years that we had been in the industry and what did we want to ensure were things that our agents didn't do to figure out what those stated core values are.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
Really good. I appreciate that you twice in that short passage offered the idea of defining something by what it is not. I think that's an overlooked thing, but I found it to be incredibly useful in a wide variety of context throughout my personal and professional life. I can't tell you exactly what this is, but I can definitely tell you what it isn't.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
Yeah,

Speaker 1 (14:26):
For sure. Defining things by what they aren't. Okay, I have a lot of things I want to do, but I guess the way I want to walk into them is through something you and I talked about in a previous conversation, which is, and this has come up a couple of times, not always in our recorded episodes, but as I'm talking with team leaders, your own ambition for the team itself. It sounds like you're about 12 to 15 people. You could be 36 by the end of the year if that's what you set your heart and mind and plan to. And that could be the first step toward becoming a mega team of 120 agents that dominate four local markets. How has that process gone for you in terms of what are our goals, what are our ambition? What exactly are we trying to build here? Talk a little bit about even from the earliest days to the biggest your ambition ever got to where is it today?

Speaker 2 (15:26):
Yeah, and

Speaker 1 (15:27):
By the way, I'm sorry to qualify it around ambition. It is the right thing for you and your business. It's not a lack of ambition not to want to do some of this stuff.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
I feel like I'm ambitious, so I didn't feel like you were coming at my ambition. So all good. Appreciate that. I think that that's something that teams are glamorized a lot and you go to a conference and you hear kind of what I heard, right? Okay, if you hire agents and you hold them to standards and you have them sell 24 homes a year, you could just have 10 agents selling 24 homes a year and you sell 240 homes and they do the math and they show you if this is your average commission and you have this commission split with your agents, you're making seven figures and life is great, but they don't always dig into the, you have to have tough conversations and you have to let people go. And for every 10 agents you hire, three are going to leave and two will leave the industry and one's going to go to another team.

Speaker 2 (16:20):
And all of those things that happen along the way. So coming into it, I thought, okay, just doing the math, if I have 10 agents selling 24 homes, this is how many homes we'll sell. And I did all of the things and mapped it out and had this budget and people and money and it looked great. And so just from hearing people on podcasts like this and stuff like that, talk about their teams, it seemed very simple to me. And so I think starting out the ambition was like, okay, if we had a hundred people selling this many homes, how crazy would that be? We'd have so much money. And so over the years and having hiring and firing and people leaving and people that you thought were going to stay forever leave and stuff like that, my mindset I guess around all of having a team and what that looks like has definitely changed.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
And so for a while we were kind of on the path of we need to grow and scale and have probably 30 to 40 agents selling maybe 10 to 15 homes a year to make the money that we want to make and have that be where we want to be. But with that then comes where lead's coming from, what systems do we have? What support do we have? We probably need a sales manager if I'm still in production, I can't sell and manage 50 agents and all of these things that when we looked at our core group of agents in the homes that they were selling, we could probably make the same of money with eight agents as opposed to 30. And so we were at a crossroads where it was like, do we dig in and scale to 30 or 50 or whatever that may be and build out the infrastructure or do we pour into the people that we have? And so for me, the decision was to pour into the people that we have and really focus on that seal team of people that are all moving in the same direction and we just provide more service and things like that for the team that we have.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
The idea of where you are now, I assume you are profitable just

Speaker 2 (18:29):
Most days.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
I mean obviously current conditions are threatening to everyone in that way, but you don't have a ton of overhead is kind of what I'm hearing, agent count to staff ratio. You're still in production yourself, and I would assume that you're one of the more productive agents on the team if I'm assuming based on I am currently assuming based on what I've heard from a variety of people who've opted to start real estate teams. Is that about right for you as you were starting to do the math and I mean doing it knowing that it's flawed in some way, which again, I appreciate you being really clear about. It looks so easy when one person puts it up on a slide at a conference, this is what you do. Knowing what you've learned over the years, I'm sure you did some of that if we were at 30 or 50 agents, it probably had a little bit of that curve to it as you were putting the numbers together. Is it an issue of profitability when you get into that middle, really driven by cost of leads at some level and cost of admin and support?

Speaker 2 (19:36):
A hundred percent. I mean, that was definitely the thought because the issue that you run into and what a lot of people run into is they'll scale the team, but they haven't yet scaled the leads or the support. And so you have all these agents come that you promise them the world and then you don't actually have the things that the leads to provide or the opportunity or whatever it may be, and then they leave. And so you're in a losing battle. And so for us, where we stand, the majority of our leads are more organic. So from social media, from past client and sphere referrals, agent to agent referrals and things like that that don't cost us money upfront per se. And so then trying to figure out what partners we're going to try to generate more leads from or how we're going to do different things wasn't something that we felt was the best move for us and our team,

Speaker 1 (20:31):
I think at some level, and playing to your strengths, for example, some of the very large teams that we've dived into were early in their market, really good at SEO and started dominating local search traffic when that was still a huge driver. And that gives you this foundation that you can build a lot on versus we want to build through who we are and the relationships that we have, partnerships that we build, agent referrals, and that's not you're going to come over and we're going to give you 27 leads a month on average. It is just a different thing. It's like a self-awareness, strength and preference dynamic. I think what the reason I even went onto that little monologue was that what I thought I heard you say in that last offering, so correct me or add to it if you like, is the way we were generating business. If we were to go this other route of let's triple agent count, we would've had to do new different things that aren't really that interesting or in our immediate skillset.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
Yeah, no, that's completely right. If we would've gone to a Zillow or realtor or some sort of online lead, that's not what we'd been training to. And so I think that there would've been a pretty steep learning curve. So yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
Very good. So let's speak to this SEAL team that you described. What was your original value prop to bring some of these people alongside you at that time and what did training look like for some of those folks? What was the type of person that has stuck around and been a really good fit for you and your team?

Speaker 2 (22:14):
So we have had basically kind of two agent avatars. One would be brand new agents, which obviously have their pros and cons, but brand new agents or would be agents that had been in the business for maybe six to 18 months and they potentially were coming up on a license renewal or had been in the business long enough to have shown some homes, potentially written a few contracts, maybe closed a few deals and understood that they potentially needed more support and needed someone that they could go to on a more regular basis. Accountability and for coaching and things like that. And so what we have done in the past and what we still have kind of set up is we do a three week training program where we bring agents through that and they basically do kind sales marketing and ops training and how we do things from A to Z, how we get offers accepted, the things that we're doing when we're setting up tours, what a contract looks like, things to consider when you're writing contracts and different stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
And so we take agents through that and it's a good opportunity for them to see how we operate as a team, how we do things may be particular at times, but we know that if you do things this way, you can get offers accepted and stuff like that. And then if they make it through that three week training program, then at the end of the three weeks we come to a mutual decision on if it is a good fit for them to be on the team or not. And so for agents that went through it, if they're brand new, then they didn't know any better. But if they had been in the business for a little while, then often we had heard that they didn't receive that type of hands-on training because most brokerages since agents are 10 90 nines and they're not going to tell you how to do things, they're just going to give you a bunch of ideas and then you have to go implement them. But we're like, Hey, if you do A, B, C to Z, then you'll be successful. You just have to do it and then we're going to hold you accountable to that. And so that's where agents that really excelled in that training program and then can hit the ground running with the momentum from that we saw a lot of success with and are still here today, a lot of them.

Speaker 1 (24:12):
That's great. I feel like there's also with the 10 99 dynamic, a little bit of a hedge knowing the inherent churn rate in people who raise their hand and say, I want to get involved in this industry, so I'm definitely not going to overinvest. Talk about the development of this program. How much of it was in-house? Did you bring in any third party materials? How did you put this together knowing that as this was happening, you are probably also putting houses under contract yourself, you are probably maybe having some recruiting conversations. You're probably dealing with a new complex wrinkle for this 18 month agent who had never encountered this thing before. Yet where I'm at is it's really difficult for a lot of team leaders to build the foundation that they need for sustainable success, specifically a three week training program that helps people decide whether they're going to be a good fit for your organization. How did that fit into your life? How long was that in development? I assume it's being iterated on some kind of cadence, but how did that get built in the first place amid all the other challenges and demands on your time and attention?

Speaker 2 (25:25):
Honestly, I'm having to think back, back in time. It's like how did all of this happen? So effectively in 2020, we knew we needed to grow the team, we had turnover and things like that. And so we were four agents and we'd grow by one, and then one would leave and we'd grow by one and then two would leave. And so we were around that three to five agent mark. And so what happened in 2019 was that we basically had three to four agents that came on board with us and we train them one-on-one individually. And so Ethan, if you came on the team, we would probably spend 30 or 40 hours over a month with you and then if you decided on the next day that you didn't want to actually do real estate or you didn't want to do it with us, I just poured 40 hours into working with you.

Speaker 2 (26:12):
And so as you said earlier, churn, especially with 10 90 nines, we're like, okay, we need to do something different because spending 40 hours with Ethan, although it's fun isn't the best use of time. So we knew we needed to bring people on in groups and we knew we needed to have a better system for our training as opposed to just being like, Hey, every Tuesday after our team meeting, we're going to sit here and just go over stuff with you. So we wrote down basically all of the things that we wanted people to know. So lead follow up script, practice, how frequently you should be contacting leads door, knocking scripts, scripts for talking to your sphere, asking for referrals, all of those things, marketing and social media and content. I'm trying to think of what else. All of these different things, disc profiles, open houses, contracts, whatever.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
So we wrote all of them down and then we started to chunk them together. And so we came up with like, okay, these are all sales things, these are all marketing things, and these are all ops things. And then what makes the most sense, and this has been multiple iterations, but what makes the most sense on if you had never sold a home before or never had a conversation about a home, where should you start and how should we teach you these things so that you can start to have conversations at open houses, you can start to have conversations with your sphere and people that to start to try to generate business so that we can get you opportunity within that first three weeks and hopefully a contract within your first 30 to 60 days with us. And so it definitely changed a lot from 2020 to now 20 23, 20 24, but it is just a constant like, oh, hey, this worked, this didn't, these people wanted more of this or we're missing that type of thing. And just taking that feedback and continuing to evolve it as time goes on,

Speaker 1 (27:57):
It's awesome. So you're essentially inventorying all the things someone we need to know, sequencing it, and then documenting how we do it around here and delivering it in some way that people can interact with and absorb.

Speaker 2 (28:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
Cool. How obviously in a model where you are, the size that you are staying in sales production makes the most sense based on profitability and at some level it's also, it's manageable from a lifestyle perspective. How else have you thought about that? I mean, I already love everything I've heard from you about, well, there's a lot of hype about this or people talk about it this way, but it's a lot dirtier or messier more complicated. I feel like leaving sales production is one of those topics. Well yeah, of course that's what everyone is supposed to do. How have you thought about it? Because I expect you've maybe gone through a couple different thoughts or feelings about it. What's your relationship been with that concept?

Speaker 2 (29:04):
Yeah, as you said, a lot of people talk about it and how great it is. And again, the math seems very simple, but realistically for if you do 30 deals a year, you probably need 90 deals from team agents depending on what your split is. But 60 to 90 deals from your team agents to make up that amount of money that you made on your deals. If you pay yourself, like most team leaders pay themselves. And so for me, it was something that I was striving toward for a while and that was kind of the, okay, let's scale a team and let's grow it. And then as time has gone on, I think last year I sold 30 homes and we're in Texas, so we have to sell a lot of homes not in San Diego or somewhere.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
So for me, that's a manageable amount of properties to sell per year. It's pretty much all listings for me at this point. And so it, it's a lot more manageable than going out and showing 15 homes to a buyer. And so it's something that I like to continue to sell homes, to understand what's happening in the market, to understand what's working and not working and getting offers accepted to be able to coach my agents. I think that as time goes on, I'll probably sell fewer and fewer homes just to provide more opportunity to the team just from a bandwidth perspective myself. But I think that that 20 to 30 homes is a doable amount for me generally speaking right now. So we'll see if that changes.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
Yeah, I'm surprised it did not include in the tee up to that the how do I stay in touch with exactly what's going on in the market so I can be of more value in a variety of different ways to the agents on my team, especially if we're bringing on new agents as one of our avatars.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
For sure. And I think that especially in 2022 and 2023, as the market shifted from the frenetic market that we had in 2020 and 2021, I saw a lot of mega team leaders step back into production. People that I knew that weren't selling homes and hadn't sold homes in four or five years, they were like, okay, if my closing ratio on a listing appointment 75% and my agents are at 50 or 25%, I just need to go on listing appointments. And then once they sign, leave the house and then my agent can go measure and do all the other things and I'll pay 'em whatever percentage. And so I saw a lot of people with 50 to a hundred person teams stepping back in and doing the things to set the example and to show their agents what hard work looks like and to better train their agents and things like that. In looking to a lot of friends that have a lot more agents and are selling a lot more homes than I was like, okay, this makes sense and I should probably keep doing it for the foreseeable future.

Speaker 1 (31:49):
I'm going to directly quote one of our previous guests, Phil. Now he said it for a different reason, but he said, when I got back into production, my agents got back into production. It was more of this kind of the modeling message that you had there as opposed to the we need to crank some business. And that was also a self-awareness. This is just my strength, that's my interest, it's what I'm good at, it's what I want to do. And there were a lot of other benefits to my agents, part of it being modeled behavior. When you think about what's ahead, what is your planning process? We we're now fully a month into, as we record this, the new calendar year, what does planning for you look like? How much of that is personal in your own goal setting? Do you include some subsection of your team or is it you and your husband kind of doing the planning and then bouncing it off for feedback off some of your top agents? What does planning look like for you all as you kind of look to not just this year ahead, but the next three years or something?

Speaker 2 (32:55):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great question. So we probably three-ish years ago started doing monthly one-on-ones with our agents. And so that's something that we are continuing to do this year just to check in on goals, both personal investing, savings, professional goals, all that, and make sure people are on track for those things. And then this year, my husband and I are doing a monthly meeting where we're doing the same thing with the business, but then also with our personal life as well, so vacations and savings and investments and stuff like that. Just because I feel like especially over the past few years with how busy the market was, we kind of just took businesses that came and we're just going to keep selling houses and put our head down and work. And I think that as great as that was, and hey, we sold more homes than we did last year type stuff. I would rather sell a few less homes, but go on vacation and have fun outings with a team and do different things for both professional and personal enrichment. So that's been high on my list for the years, just making sure that we stick to those both personally and professionally.

Speaker 1 (34:08):
It's really good. I hear that often, not all the time, but what I'm hearing is what are we doing this for? Is it so we can say, fill in the blank, some amazing claim about who we are and what we did, or are we doing this because we're people living lives and this is something that enables lots of other things in our lives. So I appreciate the health in that approach, in that balance, which kind of brings me to something we haven't really talked about yet. I've come to the thesis in talking with dozens and dozens of team leaders that there are probably tens of thousands of agents, if not a hundred thousand or more in North America who might be better off in a team model. And I kind of heard that in one of your avatars, which is someone who's been with another structure, another team or another situation, another environment, but they came here and because of the way that we do things, it really clicked for them more training, more support, and it kind of unlocked their productivity, et cetera. A, do you buy that as a concept? And B, what type of agent is the team for? And maybe what type of agent is the team not for?

Speaker 2 (35:20):
So I definitely buy into changing of environment can sometimes help you to unlock things that you didn't know you could do or unlock things inside of you and things like that. But I think that too frequently agents say, oh, well I didn't sell enough homes this year, so I'm going to change brokerages or I'm going to whatever it may be, insert brokerage team, whatever here because this brokerage isn't the right fit for me, but that one probably is, right? And so you see agents a lot of times at the end of the year and the beginning of the year hop to a new brokerage and then the next year they hop to a new one and the next year they hop to a new one. And so I think that you have to take an introspective look if maybe you're not seeing the results that you want in real estate today of what are my goals?

Speaker 2 (36:05):
Why am I not reaching them, and what are the things that are getting in my way and is it me, right? And so if I had more accountability, if I had more training, if I had more people around me that were high performers, would I sell more homes or teams all have different levels of accountability and how often they meet and the things that they do. We're a pretty high accountability team. So I think you just have to take that look inside yourself to know if that's something that you work well with or not. And then if joining a team is the right fit, I think that as far as agents to join a team, depending on what the team structure is, generally speaking, you need to be coachable. And I think that you need to not have an ego, which is difficult in the real estate space. So I think that those are two of the biggest things is just being coachable and then just being humble and knowing that especially if you're on a team, we're all working towards a bigger goal. It's not just all about me kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
Talk a little bit about that humility, why does that matter? And what I want you to do is kind of settle into more of the reality around it where I think when some people hear that, they think, oh, I need to subvert myself specifically. It's not about my brand, it's about someone else's brand. I'm not building anything for myself here. So I want anyone who heard what you just said and maybe overreacted to it, she's love for you to speak into this ego and humility dynamic just for another minute.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
I mean, I think that all teams are different, right? There are many teams that is very much so like the Katie Day show and there's agents there, but no one cares what's happening with them because it's my show and it's my way or the highway type thing. So I think that if you just heard what I said a minute ago right before Ethan asked another question, depending on what teams you've experienced or encountered, it very much could be, there's a lot of ego involved and I don't want your ego, my ego is too big. I at least just want to acknowledge that before I move on. But I think on the flip side, in joining a team, often you're able to lean in on team experiences and the collective of the team in order to build yourself up more. And so when my agents go into a listing appointment and they can say, Hey, we sold 200 homes last year.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
If they were on their own, they wouldn't be able to do that. And so also as an individual agent, maybe you have five or six listings, but if eight agents on a team have five listings, there's 40 listings out in the marketplace. So if this logo is on a sign, you're seeing the logo far more frequently than just seeing your individual name. And so I think that obviously of the collective experience that you can lean in on and things like that, you also have the ability to have like-minded people. And so again, depending on what your experience with teams are, that may not have always been the case. It may have not been as collaborative, but I know for my team, they constantly are checking in with each other on their goals. They're checking in with each other on like, Hey, I need someone to come with me on a listing appointment.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
Hey, this is in your neighborhood. I know you live there. Let's go on this together. And so there's a lot of lending, a helping hand and collaborating to ensure that we get the listing and it may be Ethan's listing, it may be Katie's listing it, maybe listing, but if I can help you to get that listing by going on the appointment with you, I would love to be there. And that's where I feel as if where our team stands today, everyone wants to give that helping hand to each other. So I think that sometimes the setting aside of the ego and being like, oh, well, if I went to the brokerage on my own, I could be at an 85 15 split with a low cap versus I'm on a 50 50 or whatever split here. If you're able to make 150 K not having any expenses, having videographer paid for having your TC coordination done and different things like that, oftentimes the team route in my mind is a better route. But of course, I'm a team leader, so obviously I think that

Speaker 1 (40:14):
Yeah, really good. I appreciate a lot of the ground that you covered there, and I would just layer in as you were talking about vacations earlier, the idea that you could actually take a vacation and whoever is stepping in is the person you stepped in for eight weeks earlier and they went through the same training of this kind of collective mindset and the idea that we're all kind of on the same page from our training to our culture to our scripting, to the way that we deal with certain situations. So many benefits there. How about for someone who is in the early stages or thinking about starting a team? I remember one of the things you shared with me is that one of the first hires you tried to make from a staff perspective was some kind of magical, all-in-one person who could literally do marketing and transaction coordination and client, the idea of not expecting too much out of maybe your first staff hire or something, but any other lessons that you've picked up or as you're interacting with different people in their different phases of their own real estate journey that people have found helpful from your own experience in the early days or early stages of starting a team

Speaker 2 (41:22):
Team? I think that it's important to understand what you need. And as you said, my first hire, I was like, okay, this is what you're doing. And it was basically just everything that I was doing in an admin sense I was trying to put onto this person. And so often what people will say is, for a week or two weeks or however long of a time period it may be, write down everything you do in 15 or 30 minute increments and then start to highlight them of things you like, things you don't like. But I would kind of go a step further and categorize them into what are your admin tasks specifically in the CRM? What are your maintenance of your listing tasks? What are your listing launch tasks? And kind of start to see what common themes there are. And from that, then you can start to create job descriptions. Again, mine was kind of just like, Hey, I'm building this thing. I have this big vision and I would love for you to be a part of it. I like you, but I didn't dig deeper into the like, is this your skillset? Are these things you enjoy doing? Will you be good at it?

Speaker 1 (42:18):
To these even make sense together?

Speaker 2 (42:20):
Yeah, no, they didn't. They didn't. And so for me, that was something that it took some hiring, some firing, some quitting, moving people into different positions and things like that. And so now if we hire people in an admin task, if it's licensed, I want to make sure that they don't want to sell homes because a lot of times people will go get an assistant job to then go sell homes a month or two or three months later once they have some money under their belt. So I think having the tasks laid out of what you need help with. And then I think really digging deeper on what people are saying when you're interviewing to understand what your goals are and how I can be a part of helping you to achieve those goals. And sometimes it aligns and sometimes it doesn't, but if you ask one or two questions deeper than just where do you want to be next year? What's your income goal? And things like that, I think that you can find people either aren't going to work out or hopefully will be a really good fit.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
I want to blend two of the things you shared there as a caution to people who have not done a lot of hiring. I think what happens very often, and the first thing I'm going to share is I really like you and I want you to be a part of this thing that we're doing. You seem like I like you and you're competent. I feel like if you have not done a lot of hiring, you tend to look to validate what you think about the person. And so when you get that initial response, you're like, oh yeah, that checks the box. That's what I hoped and expected to hear as opposed to being really present in the moment and trying to actually evaluate not to tear it apart or to dramatically scrutinize it, but to really what am I actually hearing here and can or should I go a layer deeper and setting aside any of your own hopes or expectations for this person and really committing to do the work to make sure that you make a good hire. I mean, you've mentioned it a few times throughout our conversation, I know how difficult it is to hire fire and have people leave. So the more we can get it right the first time, the better.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 (44:32):
Okay, I don't want to run too long, but I would love to hear, because you seem very present to me on social, you mentioned social as one of the channels where you're generating conversations that result in buyers and sellers. Are you just showing up on social because it's something that you enjoy doing, you're good at, it seems to be producing good conversations with other agents and people in the industry as well as people in your local community. And oh, by the way, we turn some of these conversations into sales. Is it that, is it like this kind of natural or organic thing or is it like, what is social about for you? Because I think a lot of people say, well, you can't generate money on social, or people think that you have to do Facebook ad campaigns and retargeting to generate money off social, but I think it can be a lot more natural than that. And how is it for you? Yeah,

Speaker 2 (45:23):
Yeah. So I got into real estate 2017 and all of the coaches say Go post on Facebook, social media, video, all the things. And so I knew it was something that I had to do in order to build a brand, but I am very coachable in that if you tell me to do something, I'm going to go do it. And so in all the years I've had coaches and things like that, I have my to-do lists, and I just work on getting those things done generally, not as quickly as they want me to do them, but I get them done. And so social media was one of those things for me. And so until we started to generate conversations and relationships, which then transitioned into business, I didn't really fully, I guess get it. It was just something that I was doing. I was told I needed to do it.

Speaker 2 (46:11):
And so if you go back to my first post on Instagram, all it was was just listed, just sold. But then as I like food, I like to work out. I like going to new bars and restaurants and stuff like that. And so as stuff open, I would highlight them. And so for a while it was just me taking pictures on my phone and it's evolved over time into hiring a videographer and doing different things like that. And so for me, I do enjoy doing it. Sometimes it does feel like a chore if I have a content day scheduled or something like that and I'm just tired and I don't really want to do it, it's one of those things sometimes it's just like, I have to do this today. I paid for it and it's happening. But I think that especially in today's market, you have to build some sort of brand. I'm going to Orlando in a few weeks and I'm already getting targeted posts because I booked a flight, so now I'm seeing restaurants in Orlando and stuff like that. So the same thing is happening to people that are thinking about selling their home. They're seeing content being served up to them, and if you're just shooting it on your phone and editing yourself, it's effectively free. And it's something that is, I think, imperative in today's market to build a brand and have a presence of some sort.

Speaker 1 (47:27):
Awesome. Thank you for sneaking that in. I guess I was trying to sneak it in here toward the end of the conversation. I appreciate what you shared there, and first of all, iterative approach as is the case with literally everything we talked about today. What you're doing today is better in a lot of ways than what you're doing before and you learned a lot between now and then. That speaks to the adaptability that you opened on. Before I let you go, Katie first, thank you so much. I really, really appreciate this. I'm really glad we could spend this time together and I appreciate you doing it. And second, I've got three pairs of questions that we'll close on, but you only need to answer one of each of the questions.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
All right. I'm nervous.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
Okay. What is your very favorite team to root for besides the move me to Texas team, or what is the best team you've ever been a member of? Besides the move me to Texas team

Speaker 2 (48:15):
In high school, a lot of my friends and I quit the school basketball team and we went and played rec league, and so we were people that should have been playing varsity basketball at our high school playing rec league basketball, and it was just so much fun because we could just joke around and we dominated the rec league. So my high school rec basketball team.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
What was the motivation? Was it just like we want to a looser environment where we can just kind of play and have fun?

Speaker 2 (48:41):
There was some coaching changes and drama and things like that, so a bunch of us just didn't try out one year and we played rec basketball and it was a blast because we all should have been playing varsity basketball.

Speaker 1 (48:52):
That's awesome. What is one of your most frivolous purchases, or what's a cheapskate habit you hold onto even though you probably don't need to?

Speaker 2 (49:04):
Well, so we won't dig into the sneakers just because in the off chance, my husband listens to this, but I have these little lip gloss things that Vaseline makes them, and instead of buying the new $2 one, I'll normally just refill it from a larger Vaseline case and I should just buy a new one.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
Yeah, that's pretty, unless they come in different flavors or types or something,

Speaker 2 (49:27):
You can buy all the different flavors in the store. It's just, I dunno, it's one of those things. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (49:32):
I'm a refill kind of guy too. What does it look like for you, Katie, to invest your time in learning, growing and developing, or what does it look like for you to invest time in resting, relaxing and recharging?

Speaker 2 (49:45):
I haven't done a great job on the resting and relaxation and recharging, so I'll take the learning and growing. And so for me, going to different real estate conferences and events has been something that it has been super helpful for me in learning, networking and the content is normally the highlight, but then the added bonus is normally the lobby conversations or the hallway conversations where we're just randomly talking as we're walking from roommate or room B, and I pick up something that we can implement in our business.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
So much good stuff about that in-person dynamic, including I'm walking there with someone I've known for three years, but I'm going to meet someone that they know who I've never met, and just all of those things, including bringing digital relationships to life. Okay. Last question for you. Where would you send someone who has gotten to this point in the conversation? I assume they enjoyed it because why else would you spend this amount of time with us? I don't know. Where would you send them to learn more about you and your team?

Speaker 2 (50:44):
Yeah. Best place to connect would be Instagram, and so it's move me to Texas, M-O-V-E-M-E-T-O-T-X,

Speaker 1 (50:52):
Move me to TX on Instagram. I'll link that up wherever you are watching, it's linked up right down. You're watching on YouTube because that's where it's, it's down below in the description. If you're listening in Apple Podcast, Spotify or another podcast app, it's right down below in the description. We also put these up@realestateteamos.com. There will be a link there too. Katie, you're awesome. I appreciate you and I hope you have a great rest of your day.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
Thanks, you too.

Speaker 3 (51:15):
Thanks for checking out this episode of Team Os. For email exclusive insights every week, sign up@realestateteamos.com.