Speaker 1 (00:00:00):
When recruiting the right people into your real estate team, people who will thrive in the systems and environment that you've created, very often means going outside the industry and bringing on brand new agents. You obviously need fantastic onboarding and training. You need a lot of support and perhaps some virtual assistance. You need standard operating procedures, well-documented and tested and iterated upon. You'll learn about all of that and more here on episode 28 of Real Estate Team os an episode in which we're bringing you two guests in one episode. Something we haven't done since. Back on episode 10 with Ryan Roden back and Johnny McCarthy of Spyglass Realty in Austin, Texas. Here you've got the co-owners of a top 20 team in California Power Real Estate Group. You've got Jose Simo and Jeffrey McGonigal here in this one episode. They took completely different paths into the real estate industry but came together in a great partnership. You'll learn about that. You'll learn about how they develop standard operating procedures

Speaker 2 (00:00:57):
Because what's really important is making sure that the customer comes first and as a team leads, are we really doing that? If we aren't doing everything to make sure the agents that we're putting in front of the customers are the best agents. You'll

Speaker 1 (00:01:10):
Learn about the VA company that they run tips to work more effectively with VAs.

Speaker 2 (00:01:14):
We're big on SOPs, staying very dialed in, making sure that everyone can clearly understand what they're supposed to be doing.

Speaker 1 (00:01:21):
You'll learn about the way they develop what

Speaker 2 (00:01:23):
I like to call the agent advisory board at Power

Speaker 1 (00:01:26):
And the way that that agent advisory board informed their fantastic 30 day onboarding and 12 week training programs.

Speaker 2 (00:01:34):
I think our strength is really our training.

Speaker 1 (00:01:38):
Among other things you'll learn about the way they do collaborative call coaching and so much more in a collaborative fashion. Enjoy this conversation with Jose and Jeffrey.

Speaker 3 (00:01:48):
No matter where your business is today or where you want to take it, you'll get there faster and more profitably with an operating system. Welcome to Team Os, your guide to starting, growing and optimizing real estate team. Here's your host, Ethan Butte

Speaker 1 (00:02:04):
For insights into starting, growing and optimizing your real estate team. We're talking with Jose Samano and Jeffrey McGonigle. Quick background here before we get into it. Jose's the broker owner of Power Real Estate Group in Anaheim, California and he's been in the real estate industry for more than 20 years. Jeff's the co-owner and director of Agent Success and he's been in the business for about six years. Thank you so much for talking Team Os today. Guys,

Speaker 2 (00:02:28):
Thank you for having us, brother. Thank you for having us.

Speaker 1 (00:02:30):
Yeah, we haven't done a two guest episode since way back on episode 10 with Ryan and Johnny from Spy Glass, so it'll be fun to do again. And I guess to get us going, I'll direct this one, Jose, what is a must have characteristic of a high performing team?

Speaker 2 (00:02:46):
I would say grit is one of them that we really kind of focus on just because the tides change all the time in real estate. It's definitely a tough gig, especially now with some of the changes that are going and you need to muster up that energy and just that passion for really what you need to or you want to accomplish in the business.

Speaker 1 (00:03:10):
Love it. Great. Is the exact word that came up in the previous episode with Grant wise Jeffrey, do you want to add to that or offer maybe a different characteristic?

Speaker 2 (00:03:20):
Yeah, I think it comes down to grit but also falling in love with the fundamentals of it. Because yes, things are, we have to adapt continuously. Every time you log on, something new is happening, someone is doing this, this is working, that's working, but also getting down and maintaining what the foundation of the business is going to be and then continuing to pour into those foundations, continuing to role play, continuing to do a lot of the things that got you there.

Speaker 1 (00:03:51):
I've heard this language a lot of like we're moving back into a skills-based market and really this call to fundamentals that you made is dead on with that. And I know we're both basketball fans and it always flips me out when I see a guy go to the line or a woman go to the line shooting 62% from the free throw. And that's a fundamental, those are the things we should be able to do with 80% proficiency.

Speaker 2 (00:04:18):
Well, one of the things that I've been kind of telling a lot of the agents is we're shifting from a, I would like to say non-professional market into more of a professional market space and we believe we're professional sales athletes in our office. And so one of the mantras I guess you would like to say is Michael Jordan shot free throws until his last championship. Stephen Curry is still shooting free throws. And then so sometimes we practice scripts that we know really well, but I tell 'em, are you shooting at a 90%, 95% accuracy? Are you delivering that script with the enthusiasm, with every pause, with every single tonality point to be able to get your messaging across? Because if you're missing on that, you could do the script, but there's people that do the same script just a little bit better level.

Speaker 1 (00:05:09):
Love it. I love the way you tied in free throws too. Really well done. For the sake of speed and time, we've got a great topic that you all have kind of dialed into in your business that I want to break into multiple components of and that is getting the right people into the organization. But I want to tee it up a little bit by giving a little bit more background for folks. So maybe in two or three minutes, Jose, talk a little bit about your path into the industry and your path into this partnership in Power.

Speaker 2 (00:05:34):
Perfect. Yeah, so I got into the business at 18, got my broker's license, I got my real estate license at 19, got my broker's license at 23, opened up a mortgage company, ran two real estate companies, worked at Berkshire Hathaway, fell off, did some investing, and then I ended up at Max and that's where I got to meet Jeff. One of the things that I had established before 2013 was that online leads and Zillow was going to be the thing that was my must have when I went to Max. I said, Hey, you guys have to have Zillow or else I don't know how to generate leads any other way. And we started doing really well there and that led us to exp and now we're here at Real and we've been in the top 10 at all three of those companies. So we're super proud of being able to accomplish that.

Speaker 1 (00:06:28):
Awesome. What's your path?

Speaker 2 (00:06:30):
Six years ago I came out here for a wedding, the bride and the groomer, you'd be great at real estate. I was at what I like to call the quarter life crisis, and at that point I was at the top of the job. I worked for George and we were opening stores and we were doing a lot of things like that, but I just wasn't happy anymore. Next thing you know went home, packed the car up, me and my fiance, we got in the car, we drove, and without really having a solid lockdown, it was like, Hey, it's Hollywood, let's just test it out. So we hopped into the real estate, been in real estate five years, started as an agent when an opportunity came by, which gave us an opportunity came by, which afforded me the ability to go back into management. I hopped right back into it and started to run our team at Max. And then from there, me and Jose have been just cranking it out. So a lot of training, a lot of process, a lot of systems, but falling in love with it. It's falling in love with you, find your purpose. So hopping in there and that's what real estate has afforded us to be able to do.

Speaker 1 (00:07:40):
That's awesome. You've already kind of characterized a little bit of the divisional labor between you guys, but you want to lay that out really explicitly. What makes this partnership between the two of you so powerful and what does each of you do?

Speaker 2 (00:07:54):
For us, at least for me, I think it is we allow each other to have our own space, which I think it's really kind of important. I mean obviously I hear his feedback, he tells me things he's doing, but just having him have his own space and be able to just make his own decisions and he knows that I got his back no matter what. I think that is super cool. We read the book Rocket Fuel, so I guess the visionary and the operator type of thing. I would say that is kind of our roles or those are our roles.

Speaker 1 (00:08:30):
Cool. And you bring a corporate background to the operator side of it?

Speaker 2 (00:08:36):
Yes. So everything, no, everything. We're big on SOPs, staying very dialed in, making sure that everyone can clearly understand what they're supposed to be doing. Right, because I think coming into real estate, I realized that most real estate brokers have only done real estate. So a lot of the things that they were doing, it was like, Hey, we're doing it because this is the way we've always done it. So a lot of the books that I read and a lot of the things that I try to implement come from outside of the real estate space and bringing that in it's, Hey, are we tracking everything? What do you mean we're not tracking that? What do we mean we're not tracking that sign and that phone number or that ad. How do we know if it's working? Oh, it's working. How do you know that that's working?

Speaker 2 (00:09:21):
The way we train, it's an assembly line. First you learn one thing and you move on through. We don't say you can't do something, we just make sure we're providing all the agents with the tools necessary to be able to accomplish something that's systematic. Because what's really important is making sure that the customer comes first and as a team leads, are we really doing that if we aren't doing everything to make sure that agents that we're putting in front of the customers are the best agents. And that's our process. Continue to elevate, continue to focus, continue to pour in everything from staff to our virtual assistants to management to the agents. Everyone knows what everyone should be doing, but also everybody knows where to find the SOPs and of what everyone should be doing just in case someone can't come in. We're a team. If you're a team, you're on offense or on defense. Someone misses a play, you can pick up for them. So that's what we do.

Speaker 1 (00:10:20):
You just communicated some of the spots we're going to go to very soon, but I want to do two things first. The first is to follow up on SOPs. We kind of do drive-bys on it all the time. I've never done good follow-ups on it on this show yet. I'd love for you just to go one step deeper. You mentioned multiple roles. I assume that there are multiple SOPs for each of those roles. You mentioned each that people have access to them. I'm sure that's part of maybe training and onboarding, no matter the position, Hey, just FYI, but where do they live? So how do you develop them? How often do you update them and where do they live? Are they in a Google drive? Just give us one practical approach to someone that wants to tighten up their approach to SOPs.

Speaker 2 (00:11:03):
You're already doing it honestly. So what you need to do is just record everything. You're doing something as simple as the scribe app or go on Zoom and just record it and talk through it. So a lot of times Jose does this as well. He's like, Hey, I want to work on this. He puts on his computer, he presses record and he records his screen and he records himself talking through the process. From there, through the help of our VAs and through the help of ai, we're able to then build out a step by step process for every single thing. And then how do you test it? You test it by giving it to someone and saying, Hey, can you do this? And when they do it, great, when they don't get it done or they start to ask a question, now you know what you need to go back to say, all right, cool. Let me tweak that because if they have a question, so will everybody else.

Speaker 2 (00:11:58):
So one of the things that I think happens, especially for somebody that's been in the business a long time and doesn't have that corporate background, it's like we get lost in all of that. And then so having Jeff or me has been one of those things that as far as a partnership goes, it allows us to implement a lot of the ideas and a lot of the things and actually have a systematic process to be able to accomplish that goal because everybody has great ideas, but it's like can you make it happen? And I think that's really what for us, it really kind of gels together. A lot of it, I mean obviously he comes up with a lot of great things, but every time I come up with something he's all like, do you have an SOP for it? If not, don't come and talk to me about it.

Speaker 2 (00:12:42):
It's because majority of the time he's not going to be the one doing it, right? Yeah. So if you're not going to be doing it, you need to be able to deliver it as clearly as possible. Kind of like when you're working with a client, let's go over these documents. Are you sure? Do you understand that? I like to tell the clients when we're working with them, it's like I want you to feel like you can do it by the end of this transaction. You can feel like you can do it. When people go and brag for you and not market, they go and brag for you about, Hey, how great of an agent. So it's the same thing on the running the team operation portion of it as well.

Speaker 1 (00:13:16):
I love how simple you made that by the way. It's like you're already doing it. You may not be consciously aware that you're doing it, but if you want to be able to scale your business in any meaningful way and welcome other people into it in a way that makes sense and allows people to do the things that you need them to do or things that you no longer want to do yourself, you need to document it at some point. And it can be as simple as a screen recording. Really good. Okay. I'd love for you, Jose, to characterize the power real estate group, however you'd like, market size, culture structure, just share a little bit about the team as it is today

Speaker 2 (00:13:49):
We're about 140 members. That includes ISAs, that includes our team or some of our new agents that we have. And it took a lot of newer agents that we're bringing into the team. So our avatar is actually newer agents that are coming into the industry. We feel like the industry is changing at a lot faster speed than what most people can feel. And it's again that non-professional to a professional agent. And I like to say that we're going back to the eighties. We're going back to a time where the brokers were in charge or basically needed to assist agents into having lower funnel lead and there was a lot of support systems. So that's really kind of how we characterize power real estate group. It's a ton of support to be able to help you have end of funnel leads and we want you practicing transacting and prospecting.

Speaker 2 (00:14:47):
That's really all we want you doing. Everything else from design to video editing to posting to creating, any of that kind of stuff, listing coordinators, that's done by our team. That's not something that we want the agents to be doing, I feel like unless they want to. Unless they want to, it could be a hobby for them. But the main thing that we want them doing is prospecting, training and transacting. That's really the money making activities that we feel are going to make a difference because every agent that comes to our office, we feel like we have a duty to them to help them expand their business and build on their business. And so if we're not doing that, I don't feel like we're doing our job. Our agents are our clients. And I'm sure you've heard this quite a bit and I think that's something that resonates to you, a lot of the top teams in the country.

Speaker 1 (00:15:45):
Cool. Anything you'd like to add to that, Jeffrey?

Speaker 2 (00:15:47):
It really comes down to creating a system where, like Jose said, our agents are our clients. Every day we wake up and say, how can we make their lives better? What can we do? What can we implement? How can we add to our tech stack? What are we no longer utilizing? And then focusing on strategic training, right? Because I've seen a lot of agents be more comfortable doing activities that don't benefit the client. So it's like, Hey, you're hired for a job. This is your career. You're hired to actually help people. So everything that we do is to support them to be able to do that. So pretty much it,

Speaker 1 (00:16:31):
When I hear down funnel, of course I hear more ready to transact and we're trying to put you agent, whether you're new to the industry or you have some experience into a situation where you don't have to work and work and work and put a lot of time into something that may not pay off ever and certainly may not pay off soon. And I think part of that that you guys do uniquely is I feel like you have a robust ISA team A. Would you feel that way as you talk to other team leaders and team operators? Do you feel like your ISA function is robust and talk a little bit about that ISA function, did I characterize it right? Is that part of what they're doing? Helping vet and move down funnel opportunities so that agents are doing more dollar productive activity?

Speaker 2 (00:17:16):
We looked at our talk time not too long ago. I think we had 165 days of talk time year to date. And so we're four months into the year. And a lot of people say, well, how are you able to accomplish that? And it's a 300 monster. It's the agents prospecting, it's our team prospecting, it's our vendors prospecting, right? It's like everyone is hands on deck because that's how we get in front of opportunity. So the virtual assistants are probably one of the, not probably, they're the backbone of our office and what we do, we wouldn't be able to accomplish what we do without them. It's really super crucial to me in my eyes because we're moving in such a fast speed right now to be able to just give a little bit more opportunity. I mean, that's what Zillow does, that's what all these other companies do, and there's so much opportunity in our B and C leads that we just don't capitalize on that. Our ISA team does an amazing job being able to take care of that for us.

Speaker 1 (00:18:29):
Cool. So what I think I heard there too is that your ISAs are also VAs in a lot of cases.

Speaker 2 (00:18:36):
So our ISAs, they are virtual assistants and so they come from Philippines, Mexico all over really, right? And the goal is we train them, we work with them to be able to, everybody says they nurture, but it's more of a nature type of working with leads. It's like, oh, you're not ready, throw you to the woods. For us, it's like, no. All right, cool. You're six months. Well, here's the plan over the next six months. And the VAs and the ISAs that we work with are trained to be able to continue to follow up, continue to find, not just follow up, but based off of what Ethan is looking for. Hey, he's looking for something in here happening. Here's going on in that community, keeping them informed. And we kind of got the concept with, I first started investing with Robinhood, so how do they keep you informed?

Speaker 2 (00:19:30):
You get a notification early in the morning, say, Hey, the real stock just went up. Congratulations. You're like, all right, cool. So it's light touches that, continue to keep them engaged and once they are engaged, they link them with one of their professional partners, one of our real estate agents, and they hop in, get to work and continue from there. It's a total team effort and we look at them, they join our team meetings, they're a part of the family. When we celebrate birthdays in the office, we also celebrate theirs as well because we understand that everything works together. When you build a cohesive community,

Speaker 1 (00:20:10):
I'm definitely going to hit you up before we call it a session on more tips for working effectively with VAs, no matter, no matter what kind of opportunities and assignments they're fulfilling with your team. But I would love to dwell in for at least 20 minutes here, this idea of being careful about who becomes a member of the organization. This is something you guys worked through, realized and have made some moves on. Jose, do you want to set that story up a little bit and describe why does this matter? Is this consistent with the trend that you already spoke to, which is professionalization of the industry, kind of shaking out some of the hobbyists so to speak? How important is this? When did it come onto your radar? And then we'll move into some of the actions specifically recruiting, onboarding, training.

Speaker 2 (00:21:01):
Well, I mean I think we've been toying with that idea for since max days of, how long is that? Five years, six years now. We've been toying with that idea of, hey, wait a minute. The agents who are here every single day practicing role playing, taking online leads, taking a combination of personal leads, SOI leads, all of that are just doing way better. Then our call volume needed to be a hundred, 150 dials a day at that time, or else you couldn't get any new Zillow leads. We were on a sync platform. So we were able to do quite a bit of dials and we started realizing that the agents that were just running under their own CRM doing their own thing, we weren't really having a business. It wasn't something that was tangible. It's kind of like I tell people, it's like imagine if you worked at McDonald's and every single person had their own SOP and every single person created their own customer experience. That is what it's like to work at a real estate office. You praying you get a good burger. Yeah, you're praying, right? You're praying that you could sell it for $5

Speaker 1 (00:22:16):
Or that this person could even fulfill those menu items

Speaker 2 (00:22:20):
And then you could even charge $5 for it that the compensation in that you're going to get repeat customers. So that concept started coming about and then Jeff kind of honed that in a little bit and then we just really decided to create what we consider is a mega office or I think a team bridge is kind of what you guys call it, right? And so that concept really kind of resonated with us. It was at one of the Zillow events that they were really honing in on, hey, there's these mega teams, but above a mega teams is this right? And there's this structure where everyone lives in your CRM, everyone has the same process. Everyone is having that opportunity now they could choose to play in on some of our leads or not. They could do their own SOI business and we'll help them and we'll support them with a lot of the processes that we have because we don't want change somebody.

Speaker 2 (00:23:17):
We want to enhance them in a way is what I like to say. So I would say about five years ago, and another thing that happened that was kind of funny is a lot of the seasoned agents that were at that office were a little bit intimidated by Jeff because he was doing 35 transactions his first year, something like that. So they were like, wait a minute, this Zillow thing works or these online lead things work. What do you mean you're calling all day and making appointments and showing houses and that works? And it's like all of these things started jelling together. And naturally some of these individuals unfortunately started leaving our office space because opening up one deal versus somebody opening up five or three or four, especially being so new, and this was across the board with a lot of the new agents that were coming into the office. We were starting to create that culture of this is a team that shows up every single day at eight o'clock in the morning, eight 30, we're role playing until nine 30. By nine 30 we're on the phones, we're calling, we're following up. And it really created, this mini culture started with maybe three or four people and it just grew to about 20. The office at that time was about 40 people and it ended up being only 20 people because the rest of the people had to leave. They didn't really kind of feel comfortable

Speaker 1 (00:24:44):
Pick up on that and where we are today, Jeffrey, with recruiting, talk a little bit about pace and process. What are you looking for when you're actually engaging with a potential person to join the team? What percentage of the time are you actually vetting them versus selling the opportunity to them? Just run through a little bit your philosophy approach and maybe a couple tips on how you're recruiting consistent with this idea of getting the right people in.

Speaker 2 (00:25:12):
I think it comes right down to the fact that we want to attract the right people. Our number one recruiters are the agents in our office so they know who's going to be a good fit based off of personality. Majority of our office is here by eight 30. Role play starts at nine. They hit it from nine till 10, then they understand that they have a workday and they work on this and next thing they've had an accomplished day. We try to build in little wins throughout. Hey, did you follow up with all your submitting offers people? Did you follow up with all your hot people who you've already met with? So the agent is our number one recruiter. Then they go and find like-minded hungry individuals like sports. You got to have that grit. You got to have that hunger. You want to be able to work this.

Speaker 2 (00:26:11):
They know that to be able to do this successfully on our team, you got to be full time. And what do we learn by that? Why? It's also to be kind. What do I mean by be kind? It's not fair to bring someone into our team and into our environment knowing that they can't or won't move at the pace. What's going to happen is they're going to be measuring themselves and comparing on themselves, and they're going to get really, we've seen it. They get really depressed. So for us it was like, is it fair to just, hey, get in here, 200 agents deep, 300 agents deep? No, let's take our time and let it be a great relationship, a relationship between us as the coaches and the agents coming together and actually systematically attacking our goals. So the agents that we're looking for, like Jose said, not necessarily you don't have to be a new agent, but you do have to be willing to take on new ideas.

Speaker 2 (00:27:08):
You have to be willing to also give your feedback on what we can do better. We'd be lying if we told you we came up with everything before any changes happen. We go through what I like to call the agent advisory board at Power. It's 10 agents who are at different phases and different groups within the office, and we just asked them, what do you think about this? How can we improve that? And across the board, they wanted to build a team where it was productivity first. They didn't want to be lot of, we fell short and we fell into being popular and we wanted everyone. And now it's like we don't want everyone, we sounds a little Jeff here. It's not that we want everyone, we just want all the good ones. We want the ones that fit, the ones that are going to embrace our office culture, the ones that are going to enhance and jump in and dive in and really go through it.

Speaker 2 (00:28:11):
We have a 12 week program, a lot of people do, and that 12 week program, 10 agents will start and four will get through. We have a scrimmage program, which is our onboarding program, and it's a 30 day program before your phone starts to ring from an online lead source and 10 agents will start and four will get through. But you know what? The agents that get through both of those are averaging 12, 13, 15, 25, 30 transactions. And why do we do it? At the end of the day, the North Star has to be the client. We're confident that the agents that are going to get in front of the next Ethan or the next Jose or next Jim or Sally is an agent that is prepared and they continuously push each other. They continuously work and collaborate. Oh, you don't know how to do that. Well, come on in.

Speaker 2 (00:29:07):
It gets a little taxing on everyone when that agent who doesn't show up, doesn't really want to pour in and they want your success, but don't want to follow your process, it slows everyone down. And honestly, it was a vote of the agents every move, every big thing we've ever done, it got unanimous votes from our agents and be like, nah, let's change that. Let's do something different. Well, we're showing up. Why can't they? I have kids. We have an agent. She has four kids. She's a single mother and she's one of the top producers here. So her question is why not? Why not do it? Why not buy in? Why not give it your all? Yeah, and I would say even just them chasing, just understanding the SOP, just the way that we open escrow, right? Our process, we think it's extremely simple, extreme, but if you've never done it and you've never been here and you've never been a part of it, you just break it and we're like, whatcha doing? Come on back. Come on back. Let's go through here. Step one. All right, step two, no worries. It's okay to mess up, but it's not okay to just stay in the way. Correct. I keep making the same mistake over and over. Stay in your ways, I should say.

Speaker 2 (00:30:23):
And I think our strength is really our training and the amount of time and effort that we put into that. Because like Jeff said, even just, it's just 30 days initially when you onboard. So it's not even a one day thing, it's a one day, it's just for systems and then every single day you're getting better, whether you're a seasoned agent. I could tell you I've been in the business 20, 22 years now. I started at 16 with my first job as a receptionist. I don't count those years, but I told Jeff one day, I went into one of his classes and I was like, this is the best class I've ever had. And it's like, what? I'm like, yes, I was reading the listing agreement word by word and interpreting it amongst other agents, and I've been a part of a lot of brokerages. I've never really kind of gone into it in that detail, gone through it in that way. And we are, I feel producing some of the best agents around our community, and that is our goal to produce an agent who's going to be at a top tier level that's going to benefit a client, that's going to do the right thing for them, that's going to be honest, that's going to have integrity. And I think that's a part of what we do as power. And that's the one thing I could say we are super proud of.

Speaker 1 (00:31:49):
Nice. Really well done. I want to get into a little bit more detail on the first 30 days and then that 12 week program. I want to know what produces such a great session that you'd walk in and be like, I've been doing this for 20 years, by the way, I do count the receptionist. There's so much to be learned just being around people, period. I think it's one of the reasons it's so important that you have people physically in the office by eight every day or eight 30 every day before I let this thing go. I want to learn a little bit more about this agent advisory board inside the organization. I think a lot of people seek agent feedback before they make important decisions, but I think some share of that is just ad hoc, like, whoa, whoa, wait, let's just ask a couple people. But the fact, Jeffrey, that you said 10 agents, I feel like this might be a semi-formal or even formal thing. Talk a little bit about how the agents advise some of your decision making. How buttoned up is that? Do you meet with 'em regularly or do you only go to them when you have a specific decision to make? I think this is a really important layer, and I would love to know how you guys do it.

Speaker 2 (00:32:51):
Yeah, it starts by picking those 10 agents, right? This is formal. So they know who they are, they know that they're respected, they know that their opinions count and they know that everything that we do is to pour into them and to pour into others. So those 10 agents have different personalities. So those agents, some are going to be more like me, which is it on the paper? What does it say? It doesn't make sense. Others going to be Jose super creative. Looking at it from a different angle because in our positions, the one decision that we make impacts the lives of 140 different families, not people, but families and friends. And when you're this size, everything you do is kind of like staring a ship. If you move by one degree too far, you might end up on a whole nother continent. So we like to go in there and write out the SOPs, test it, and bring AB test like literally, hey, a new lead source or a new this or Hey, what do you guys think about implementing this type of training?

Speaker 2 (00:34:06):
And a lot of the things that we get come from actually sitting down, we do one-on-ones with everybody, but these 10 people, what are you seeing in the industry? Because majority of the day we're in here, right? So what are you seeing? What are you going through? What are you overcoming? One of the very first thing we did to build out that scrimmage team was we took a pilot team, and that's the same 10 agents that we selected and said, Hey guys, or we really want to improve the way we train. We wrote out an SOP of all of the things that we think that you should know within your first 30 days before your phone rings. So it's little bit of, Hey, can you go to your zip forms and go to Glide or Sky Slope or whatever you're utilizing? Can you access these?

Speaker 2 (00:34:57):
Do you know how to run comps? Do you know how to do a lot of the little things that can actually you should be able to do before you meet someone? And we took them through that and they understand that they are going to have to go through more things than everybody else, but it's for the overall good. So when we're going through it, we are learning together. For instance, this morning with those same people, we are done with the NIR, we got that Jesse B was telling us four years ago that this was coming. Come on guys. So we're here, what we're focusing on. All right, cool. That means listings. And we're focused on listings. We are going through and answering simple objections such as, Hey, what are the top 10 most things that you're getting? And then we all come together and we learn it and we build it, and then we take those things that we're working on with our agents and distribute it to the other 130 people so they understand that they show up because they show up and they're winning.

Speaker 2 (00:36:01):
Everyone else shows up and they start to win as well. So the culture starts with me and Jose doing what we know we are supposed to do. Then everybody else will also come in and start to fall in line. I tell people, whether you want to or not, you're going to become a leader. If you do the right things and you win, you are going to be a leader. Charles Barkley had it wrong. No matter what, the kids are going to look up to you. So as new people come in, it's utilizing that advisory board to also spread the benefits of why we're doing what we're doing. Because from the DoorDash days, I went from being, Hey, welcome to us Polo. My name is Jeff Mcgon. I go, alright, hey, welcome to us Polo. And telling them about the sale or hey, pose are two for one to, alright, cool. We're opening a new store. When you get to the new store and you're the one that's opening it, no one tells you truly what's going on. I hate this. Oh, Jeff, yeah, this is amazing. The advisory board to come back and Jeff, it is not working. Pull the plug. We have to do an adjustment to it. So letting them know that their thoughts and ideas are respected and we count and need that really helps us grow and maintain a cohesive team that is going in the right direction.

Speaker 1 (00:37:22):
Really good. I'll never forget the first time when I was leading a team of people that I truly understood because someone who was really close to me on the team shared with me. No, they would never tell you that. Oh no, they would never bring that to you. No, I think I'm friendly and approachable, but it's so true. I really appreciate that. You also gave a glimpse into one of the questions I wanted to ask around this kind of 30 day, 12th week split. Draw that out a little bit. And that question was going to be like how do you determine the sequence, essentially the sequence and packaging of the stuff. But I mean you just offered it a little bit, what do people need to know in the first 30 days? You already have some ideas on that yourself, but I'm sure the agent advisory board probably helped you with what needs to be packaged in the first 30 versus what goes in week three versus what goes in week nine of the 30 day, 12 week situation. But A, did I characterize that approximately correctly in terms of their insight and advice and guidance and support of what you're doing? And then B, just walk through both of those a little bit. I think one of you told me that you wind up making a thousand calls in the first 30 days or something like that. Characterize what's going on in the first 30 days and a little bit about, because this is part of the vetting process as well, making sure the right people stick around, but break those two programs down a little bit.

Speaker 2 (00:38:43):
So it all started with a idea of 75 day hard, what we wanted to call it, a 90 day hard real estate edition. And that was the premise of it. And then we went into, well, 90 days is a little too long for any sort of agent to actually become proficient in real estate. We need to get these people in quick and going and general quick win. Yeah, it was the Alex Hermo thing, which is he talks about how look, if you're going to go to a great gym, you got to lose weight right away or else it's not really kind of working. And so we utilized that kind of thought process. And so the one thing that we knew we needed to focus on was contracts was something that was super crucial. And the second thing that was crucial was skills training. And the last thing is practice actually putting all of those things into practice and getting a feel for it.

Speaker 2 (00:39:46):
And I feel what we ended up doing was we just allowed the actual natural real estate process to dictate how you would learn and how you would go about it. It wasn't like we changed it and we said, okay, this is going to be what you're going to learn today. It's like, no, we just wrote out the real estate process and literally went step by, step by step, jumping through every hurdle. And that's really kind of how we created the 30 day scrimmage team. And then we found out with scrimmage, we're getting agents that are brand new into the industry, somewhere between 35 and 50, maybe 60% proficient depending on how much attention they put in

Speaker 1 (00:40:28):
30 days

Speaker 2 (00:40:29):
In 30 days. Awesome. And then Jeff created a 12 week program, which is our real estate sales athletes program that ties into that and that closes the gap because that at 30 days they start receiving leads. So the training that he's on is now live and it feels real like it's there, no pun intended, or maybe it feels real. It's there. It's like this is what you're going through. You just went to meet this client and you're going over this agreement and you wrote this request for repair. And we do call listening, a lot of call listening. We do collaborative. It's not just, Hey, we're going to have a call night and we're just going to make phone calls. It's like, well before we tell you to make phone calls, why don't we teach you how to make phone calls? That way you might be a little bit better at it and not have to spend so much time spinning your wheels. It's sharpen the ax if you want to cut a forest down, right?

Speaker 1 (00:41:30):
Yeah, I like that call Jeffrey too collaborative. I feel like you guys do hands-on stuff like probably most people do, but I feel like the default these days is let's package it up, let's sequence it. Let's put it in some kind of lightweight or heavyweight learning management system and say, here you go. Here are all your modules and sequence. It sounds like you're listening to calls together, roleplaying together and these kinds of things because it's not just us in our own experience in that one-on-one, what we can learn by other people's questions, feedback on other people's work, seeing and hearing how other people are doing it. Did I characterize that correctly and also share a little bit about how that manifests throughout that 12 week program.

Speaker 2 (00:42:13):
Yeah, I think you did look at the call listening and look at that portion of what we do as remember we were talking about sports, right? Watching film. When you watch what you did yesterday and even if you guys still won, what could you have done better? Then we sit around the table and we press play and then, Hey, did you hear that? Did you hear that? Did you hear that? What do you think about that? A five minute call can go 45 minutes because diving deep into what are you doing and saying the things that are going to push the needle, right? Were you listening to the way or she said their objection or said where they wanted to move or said what the next steps were or what their concerns were, or were you just presenting? No one wants a presentation, they could Google that.

Speaker 2 (00:43:08):
So continuing to be personable in a transactional world is what we're really, really trying to focus on because no, yes, I can easily put the 12 week program together and say, Hey, go over here, click the link, buy it, go through it. Sold. No, that's not what we're doing. We're actually in the game with our agents. That's why we're coaching with them when they come back from appointment, I want to know how it went in that live feeling. For instance, George came, George got two listings signed yesterday and he got interviewed and they had a list of those 12 questions, or actually it was two days ago. So I told him, give me the 12 questions and we're going to solve them as a team. So when we go through, some of them are on the phone. And then overall, he wrote down the questions, objections, whatever you want to call them when he got there.

Speaker 2 (00:44:06):
Either way he won, but I knew he handled it, but I got 139 other people that we need to get prepared for because the market is coming. It's becoming a more professional market. The clients are doing their research. So when it comes down to that, it's taking it step by step. Our team, and we also put people where they're at. We look at it like driving in the highway in California. I'm from Florida where you might get I four might be, now it might be like five lanes, six lanes, no, in California there might be 9, 10, 11, 12 lanes. So you've got to have, based off of how fast someone is moving you, that's where you are coaching them. We are going in meeting them where they're at.

Speaker 2 (00:44:53):
That way we can give them the attention that they desperately need to move into the next lane and to move faster and to build the confidence. That's why we do it. It's building that confident agent because they've seen this so many times. I love it when someone gives them an objection or we're going back and listening and they give an objection that they practice and you can hear them smile. You can literally hear them smile on the phone and be able to say, all right, cool. Well here's what I would do to declutter your property. You told me to talk about decluttering. Of course, here's what I would do. I would love to come by your home, walk your home room by room and let's figure out what your wants versus your needs are. What do you need over the next 60 days as we sell this property?

Speaker 2 (00:45:38):
So it's just the little things that we practice that are going to get them there before all of that establishing that comes with treating agents the way that we wanted to be treated. So the scrimmage program and the 12 week program are literally mimicked off of what my experience was, what should I be doing? So alright, cool agents need a calendar, here's your suggested calendar, you should be here at this time, each hour, what you should work on. So we work with them through those hours. They move from me to Jose, to Reuben, to Maria, to Ozzy. That way we can still service the entire team. But as you're moving through different stages throughout your first 30 days, you're getting different angles on it. You're learning how to do follow-up boss the correct way. All of that compounds into a day where you get to test, we give you a property and we say run us all the way through on the buy side and they have to input it into follow-up boss.

Speaker 2 (00:46:36):
They have to go pull up the comps, they have to run the comps just like we're on a recording. They do a live recording explaining the entire process, and then we create that and hand that back to them at the very end saying, Hey, for reference, it's always there for you. Now let's start the 12 week program. And in that program we take an agent from, Hey, I got the fundamentals, I'm still going to practice. Every day we started was make sure you keep the fundamentals. But the 12 week program's like how do I learn listings? How do I learn how to do investor things? How do I learn how to do probate? So we go through, we kind of pick your lane, but it's a systematic 12 week training. So yeah, there's office leads, but how do you door knock open houses? And a portion of that is learning, get in the office, but also having the team leads in the office that are saying, Hey, Tuesdays, every Tuesday we teach door knocking.

Speaker 2 (00:47:32):
Every Wednesday we teach open houses. Every Thursday we teach something else. And that way they can feel comfortable once they're going over that to go and meet that team lead where they're at and learn from them. And then all the fundamentals transferring into every single one of those aspects. We utilize, when we engage with clients, we utilize a lot of the same scripting and it goes into, you have the same form when you shoot a free throw, right? You wouldn't come up with a different free throw shot when you're trying to win the NBA or even I joke around with the agents, it's like, imagine Tiger Woods went to the T and today he decided to hit with his left hand, your right hand then. So I tell him, that's kind of what you guys do when you guys don't have a system in place to have certain conversations with people.

Speaker 2 (00:48:25):
And they actually get very surprised when they hear us. I still make some calls. And then so when they hear me and they're like, wait, you sounded just like the script. And I go, well, yeah, that's what it was meant for. It's to give you form. It's not for you to sound exact, but when you shoot a free throw, there's a certain way you want to go about it. You might bounce the ball twice. One person might bounce it once, one person might do the little spin. If you're Gianni, you're just going to sit there all day. Yeah, exactly. You might do it a little different, but at the end of the day you're still following through and you're still doing that. And then another thing that Jeff said, it's like you treat people like how you want to be treated. And I think that real estate is a direct reflection of how much you put into it. And I feel it follows the golden rule of treat real estate how you want it to treat you. And then so if you feel like you're a multimillion dollar business or producer, you got to treat it as such in order for it to pay you like that. So I think those are all things that are kind of important.

Speaker 1 (00:49:33):
Really good. It reminds me one of the truisms, the way that you're both kind of talking about how you're constantly building into and building with the team and the entire team, by the way, I was going to say agents, but it really is your entire team you've referred to bringing other people into this ongoing training indefinitely. Reminds me of truism. I picked up when I first started selling and serving into the real estate community myself, which is practice builds confidence. Confidence builds success, and you truly are practicing. And I love Jose that you're making calls and that other people can watch, learn, listen, engage, talk about it too.

Speaker 2 (00:50:07):
One of the questions that I ask agents that we're interviewing, especially seasoned agents as we was going through, because what we're telling them is we practice every day and I'll say, how many times a month do you practice your listing presentation? Usually the answer is zero. And so then I'll say, oh, okay, so you like to practice on your clients? And then that becomes a shocking statement for them. They're like, wait, I didn't realize that I was doing that. I said, look, some of the agents that we have here have already done 60 to 80 listing presentations year to date. That's with clients and without clients, somebody who's getting more at bat is getting more proficient. They're going to outpace you just because of the fact that they're actually going through the experience. And we are some of the hardest critics. We make it really hard.

Speaker 2 (00:50:58):
Sometimes I tell 'em, that's my job. My job is to like, Hey, I love you, so don't take this the wrong way, but we got to work on that. We got to really dive in there. And if you really care about someone, you understand that growth comes through struggle and you have to be honest with them. And honestly, let's work on that. And I know you had mentioned Jose topping back in and putting on different apps. I think that is one of the key things. Jose's able to, he's encouraged and pushed to be able to say, all right, cool. Hey, you know what? There's a new program. Let me hop in there. That way we can follow and see and be able to talk to the agents and understand what they're actually feeling out there. And then he can come back and put on a different hat.

Speaker 2 (00:51:47):
In sports, in real estate, sometimes you are the gm, sometimes you are the coach, sometimes you are the player. So a lot of times you are, they're cheerleader. You go, guys, you got this. So all of those things are what you have to do when you're running a team and a lot of people tend to forget or haven't built a process to where they can hop back in, put on a different hat and work on a different role to keep the hose in your business. Yeah, that's actually one of my favorite things to do to get back on the phone because it's kind of how you started. For me, it's in sales, so it's the chasing of the client, the creation of maybe certain steps. Even right now we're on solo seller program and some of the initial type of scripting that we had was something that we had worked on already, so we just went into it.

Speaker 2 (00:52:48):
And then a lot of the things that we do on the presentations, we do a lot of it through Loom. We've been doing that for five years, so we have preset presentations through Loom. We feel transparency is key, and so then all of that kind of stuff gets filtered out to the agents and then they bring in stuff and they're like, Hey, we should do this. And we're like, dude, I don't know everything. Let's bring that in. I think that's super cool. Giving credit when they do, that's important as well. Yeah, making sure you know that, hey, that was Sunny or that was Calvin, or that was this person so that they can feel the impact of their decisions and their input. Everybody needs that. And that's another big thing because a lot of times we try to come from a point where it's all about our agents and they're the ones that are really pushing. That's how we feel because without them, I don't think we would be here, and then they're allowing us to lead them and to do a lot of that. Obviously we're putting a lot of things together too, but for us, it's all about them and just them giving us the opportunity to be able to help them through this journey of real estate, which is kind of crazy.

Speaker 1 (00:53:58):
Yeah, man. This collaborative nature to what you're doing feels so not just important, but natural and fundamental to everything that you're doing. Okay, we're pushing up on an hour I promised probably 30 minutes ago. Just one tip from each of you. I would like one either. Definitely do this when you're working with VAs or selecting VAs or don't and never do this if you're selecting or working with VAs. One tip from each of you on working more effectively with VAs. Either something to avoid or something to always do.

Speaker 2 (00:54:37):
Something to always do is going to be sit with them every single day for 30 minutes, and I am guilty of not doing that. The only way they're going to get better is if you train them, help them get together with them as often as you can. They have to see what you're doing. If they're going to mimic, I think there was something that's like first I do, then we do, then you do, right? It is something that really kind of resonated to me and Jeff. I would always, Jeff would give me a VA and I would always just like, it wouldn't work out. Give me it back. Come on girl, I'm sorry. I dunno. I apologize. It's like, what do you think? This person's just going to read your mind? And I'm like, well, that's true. And so I had to start learning to be able to do that.

Speaker 2 (00:55:35):
Understand your role. So we have a VA company and the company's called Sidekick because you're the superhero, you're Batman without what's robbing without Batman. So a lot of people they, Hey, I have a problem, I'm just going to give it to someone. And they don't write out what they should be doing. You're not showing them, you're not following up. And a lot of times they're left lost and it's not because you can't work in a broken system. So the system is broken. So a lot of times I like to sit down with people and actually, let's work on your S SOPs, let's work on your system. That way, whoever we put in here can be on a path to success. So before we bring on a va, just like everything else that we do in here, we document it. We have the correct expectations, we write out how we're going to hold them accountable.

Speaker 2 (00:56:35):
We communicate that with them. We test for proficiency. And like Jose said, we continuously check in and pour into them. And because we've been able to do that with five to seven ISAs, we're able to create an extra systematically pulling from our database, an extra 60, 70 transactions a year when it comes down to helping our TC department run not only our office TC for our office, but our TCS for other brokerage. We have one person with three VAs doing 6, 7, 800 transactions some years. And it's because it's everybody understands what they need to do. And if everybody does their job correctly, including the person who brought on the VA of training, implementing and holding them accountable, then the world's going to move around. It's going to go good. Everything's going to be all right. So that's the very first step. Document what you're doing, when are you going to have time to check in? How are you going to hold them accountable and how are you going to reward them for really, really being there? Everyone's screaming for, Hey, Robin, help me. But they don't know how to fight because you didn't teach 'em.

Speaker 1 (00:57:49):
I love the way you wrap that one up. That's really good. I also like that you stepped out of the sports metaphors, which do work really, really well for that last one. That was great. Okay. For the sake of time, I need to call this a session with you guys. I've really enjoyed it. I know I opened up what could have been a second hour of conversation with that last question, but I didn't want to miss it while I have you guys here. Not that we can't do it again. So I'm going to go one and then the other with my favorite three pairs of closing questions. And I'll start with you, Jeffrey. What is your very favorite team to root for besides Power Real Estate group, or what is the best team you've ever been a member of

Speaker 2 (00:58:25):
Orlando Magic all day, but overall, people will tell you I'm pretty locked in here. I'm always zoning in. I love everything. And the guys are doing locally e homes and their crews crushing it, followed EE for years. Gary Ashton, I can name a lot. Overall I study and I've told them I'm studying what you're doing. I know their numbers just probably just as good as they know theirs. So for me it's studying and understanding what are their problems, what do they have to overcome so that I don't have to do that, but also where are they winning and what can we implement here to be of a benefit to our team.

Speaker 1 (00:59:12):
Awesome. Well done. I've had every one of those people on except Elmer at E Homes. I've not had him on yet, although I have reached out to him on it. So we will get that thing closed down, but that's what we're trying to do on real estate team os is to open some of that stuff up. Of course, connecting directly is the real deal, but we're trying to do a precursor to that. Jose, what is one of your most frivolous purchases, or what's a cheap skate habit that you hold onto even though you probably don't need to?

Speaker 2 (00:59:43):
I mean, I'm kind of funny about that. I like to, yeah, no, but frivolous. I overspend on tech. I would like to say, I like to find moments for my wife that I kind of have a joy of finding the most inexpensive but best experience that I can find. And I could say right now we have a candle lit dinner. I think it was like $39 in LA and it's a violinist playing and doing a tribute to Adele and it's all candle lit and it's in this, I forget what the place is, but I found it online. I found this company called Gold Star, and so I tend to just try to find the cheapest thing. I think we went to a barbecue event, but it was like seven bucks. We went to Lobster Fest, it was like $12. So I like to go to all of those small little venues, support local places and just kind of get lost in that space. So I think that's kind of cool for me. I don't get out much, man. So for me, anything outside these walls, I'm like, oh my God, this is crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
That's awesome. I just love that you're so devoted to, I mean, it's still a constant build mode for you that just zoned into what you're doing. Last one, Jeffrey, how do you invest your time in learning, growing and developing, or how do you invest your time in resting, relaxing and recharging?

Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
Plane rides have become the recharging and learning. I get a lot done on those. I've been traveling a lot last few years. You

Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
A wifi guy or a no wifi guy?

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
I'm a wifi guy. I got to get it. And the reason because I'll see a word and I got to know what it means and how to use it in different ways. So that's where it really came in. But always, always staying in a book, right? Staying in a book that is going to pour into me, pour into the office, pour into the agents inside of a book. People have told you how to navigate life and navigate the problems and navigate the business, but are you, A lot of times we try to figure things out on our own and books have been really, really helpful on that. Those are some of the best teachers. Pour in and give back. And then also diving in and not being afraid to ask for help. I know the names that I named and I know some of them are local.

Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
I will call you. I'll like, alright, cool. Hey, how you doing that? How does that work? Hey, here's what we're doing. It's staying open to it and embracing it. So for me, I know where I'm trying to go and the books help us get there. And then the coaching and the collaborative, the same way we're collaborative within the office is the same way. We'll call just in time and be like, Hey bro, how do you do that? Or call the Perry group and be like, Mike, you're crushing it. What are you doing? Give me some feedback. I'm having this problem. I think that is one thing that we are super, super focused on because we're all in this together. No matter what the team name is, we're all trying to make real estate a better place. Mohaka Gandhi has a quote, be the change that you want to see in the world. And collaboration is one of the things that when I came into their industry, everybody was like, no, that's mine. I'm like, no, it's not. It doesn't belong to anybody. Give it to the people. Leave it behind. So books are a great example of that.

Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
Cool. I appreciate you both so much. I love what you're building. I love the collaborative approach that you're taking to it both inside and outside the team, the way that you're investing in each other, investing in the people around you. I appreciate you spending all of this time with me and of course with all the folks who watch and listen, I wish you continued success. I look forward to seeing you guys out and about somewhere in the world within this calendar year.

Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
Thank you, brother. We'll see you soon. Thank you. See you.

Speaker 3 (01:03:46):
Thanks for checking out this episode of Team Os. For email exclusive insights every week, sign up@realestateteamos.com.