Speaker 1 (00:00):
Helping agents have better, more specific and more productive conversations with buyers. In part, using AI training tools and resulting in more buyer agreements, generating more listings by developing skills and habits across your agents, across a wider array of activity areas and channels, and supporting your diversity of agents by adding more nuance to the splits and fees and services that you are offering them. If you're looking for specific things you can do today to make sure that you and your team have a fantastic second half of 2024, you're in the right place. My conversation today is with the founder and the CEO of Premier Listings, Jordana Tobel. She's got about a hundred agents in three offices in South Florida, and she shared all of this with us in this conversation. Pay special attention to the detail in her breakdown of a beta version of a 90 day listing program that her agents are in right now that's already producing results.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
This conversation is the result of her replying to an email that I sent out with some of these details in it. This is what I'm doing to prepare for the second half of the year. I wanted to know more about it and we turned it into this episode. You can subscribe@realestateteamos.com slash subscribe. When you go there, you put in your email address, you get subscriber only episodes immediately, and you get weekly updates with insights, lessons learned, and places to go To learn more about starting, growing, and optimizing a team that's at realestate team os.com/subscribe. I know you're going to love this conversation with Jordana as I did. Here it is.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
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 (01:48):
Hey, thank you so much for listening to and for joining me on Real estate team os Jordana.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
Happy to be here.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Yeah, really excited for this conversation. I love the way that you're preparing your organization for the second half of 2024, and I'm looking forward to sharing that with folks here in this conversation, but we're going to kick it off where we always do, which is a must have characteristic of a high-performing team. What comes to mind for you for that?

Speaker 3 (02:13):
So I think right now with all of the negativity that's been surrounding the industry, surrounding the market, I think we have to all have this relentless positivity. For me, it's about being positive and also doing it together. So having a strong community, a strong culture, a community that's really supportive and part of that includes being positive. There are so many doors that are, I don't want to say slammed at our face, but so it's important to just continue to get back up every single time. And so for me right now, the team has got to be relentlessly positive

Speaker 1 (02:55):
In my experience and in my mindset because so much of this is framed by how we see the day and see the moment and see a situation as a problem or as an opportunity. I can see the good in a lot of different situations. There's certainly plenty of good happening right now. But for you, as you think about this and you think about the diversity of mindsets and personality types in the organization that you lead, how do you help people separate false positivity from just seeing the positive and seeing the opportunity even amid the challenges and the noise and stuff? I can see maybe a false optimism or something, but it's not that. How do you parse those things for people as you're maybe doing one-on-one conversations or group conversations?

Speaker 3 (03:44):
I think that's actually easy to do in the sense that it sort of comes down to results. So people, you can't be falsely positive if you're not moving yourself forward in your business, whether it's about your skills, whether it's about the reactions that you're getting from your clients. But I do have to agree with you that I do see the silver lining in everything that's happening right now. I think it gives all of us an opportunity to raise our standard. It's something that I've always wanted to do and this is sort of forcing my hand in so many ways. As an organization, we've required every single one of our agents to have something in writing when they work with buyers for years now prior to the settlement and all the noise that's happening. And so now again, I just feel like we're forced to continue doing that and doing it in a way where it can't be a false positive if the person that's sitting across from you is saying, yes, Jordana, I'm happy to sign this agreement because I know I need you. And so to me it's sort of like a bigger part of enabling us to do the things that we do best, which is really help people solve their problems, whatever that problem might be.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Yeah, really good. Okay, so I think when we get into the ways you've been preparing your agents for what's ahead if the rest of the year, and of course in years to come, we'll probably get back into some of that in more detail. But I'd love for just context before we dive deeper, what's been your journey in the real estate industry and how did you wind up leading premier listings?

Speaker 3 (05:14):
So I have actually a really corporate background. I work for a company called Carrington Real Estate, which in 2007 it's a bank and it was a good place to be in the sense that when the market shifted and all of a sudden there were a lot of REO properties, part of my responsibility was overseeing those REO properties and heading them to agents and using that to really build the branch in representing the South Florida division. And when the market started to shift closer to 2015, what I recognized was the fact that I really liked being in this, really having this unique value proposition where I could call an agent and say, Hey, Ethan, come and work with me. I'm going to give you an RO listing. And so I wanted to continue offering something unique that had an actual impact to your bottom line and to your business.

Speaker 3 (06:06):
So I thought, well, how do I do this? So I started generating leads, which wasn't at all new at the time in 2015, but what the twist was that I wanted to generate the lead and also give them all of the tools and the resources to make that lead into an actual client relationship. So we did all the things from, we nurtured the client, we set out all the property alerts and the email drips, and we did a lot of the nurturing on behalf of the agent, which basically did become a unique value proposition because then I could tell you, okay, Ethan, we're going to do a lot of the work for you so that you can go ahead and do the things that you do best, which is connect with an individual and help that person with whether it's buying or whether it's selling.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
So that sort of happened organically having worked for this really large organization, I saw that I could do it myself, and that helped us. We started with one location in downtown Boca Raton. We soon expanded to having a much larger space in the Delray Beach area, which then expanded to the Broward County area. We now have three locations. We have about a hundred agents in those three different branches, all of whom, and that offering of the lead has grown to so much more, or now we really have this platform where an agent can join us, do all the things that they're doing, and then have additional revenue streams that are going to help them be the best they can be at their business.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
So much good stuff in there. And I would love, I think to go next to the platform, you have three types of offerings for agents and as a consequence in a way, you could say it the other way, which is you have kind of agents who've opt into three different types of engaging with you. I'd love for you to break those down and then at some point move into additional streams of revenue.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
Absolutely. So yeah, like you said, initially we just had one agent that was in the beginning and I soon realized we have to be able to customize the brokerage and the offering and the partnership based on where the individual is. To me, that's really what any broker is. And when you're working with an agent, there is a partnership there. If there's a commission that's being split in some way, what is the brokerage and the broker doing in turn to earn their portion of that partnership? And so the three different ways that an agent can be involved in our brokerage, we have sort of what we call it, the platform agent, which is someone that wants to be a part of our organization, they want to benefit from our training and our resources and that sort of boutique culture and vibe, that positivity that we have and our core values without necessarily being held accountable or being on our lead team, which is our second and most popular sort of agent type, which are agents that want to be held accountable.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
They want to be not just handed leads, but they also want to be held to a higher standard. So we're doing things like checking how many times they're calling, what are they saying to those leads we're asking them and requiring them to show up during role plays and show up during power hours. So again, the goal is sort of like if you were to go to the gym, are you going to work out better and get a better exercise if you're doing it on your own versus if you have someone standing over you saying, Ethan, give me two more pushups. So it's that sort of idea that that second component and then the third sort of category of how an agent might be a part of our is we have something called platform plus, which essentially means they get all the tech, get all the different tools, integrations, we use an AI texting assistant, we use a switchboard, all of those tools, but they don't necessarily want to be held accountable. They don't necessarily, they have their own leads that they're buying. That's that third option, and they all have different sort of fees and payment structures around it.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
I feel like a lot of folks that are watching and listening are, well, I know our early stage team and where a lot of them wind up is, I've been a successful agent. I needed to bring a couple people around me, maybe a full-time and a part-time assistant and a buyer's agent, and now I've created some kind of lead flow, whether it's through a partnership or some other means, and now I'm going to start essentially offering that high accountability, all the tools, all the tech, I'm going to get brand new agents and now whether they're 18 months in or 36 months in before they realize that a bunch of these agents have now outgrown their system because they don't have that mid-level offering and they don't have that independent offering that you have, that's a necessary evolution. I think where you are is where everyone needs to get at some point in a way that makes sense for them and their financials and all of that. I would love for you to share how did you figure out the right combination of essentially splits and services at multiple levels in a way that was advantageous and attractive to the agent while also being respectful of your own needs as someone running this operation with a bunch of fixed overhead and I'm sure some variable costs as well. I just asked that broadly because it's something every team leader is going to struggle with if they haven't already, and it seems like it occurred to you early.

Speaker 3 (11:24):
Yeah, I mean it sort of did, but it's interesting that you asked that because we're making another change, which I'm going to explain in a second, and we just sort of finalized this yesterday on our management call, myself and my sales manager and my marketing manager, we came up with a little bit of a shift. It's sort of in line with what you were talking about, but essentially it happened pretty organically in the sense that I realized that there's a lot of different types of agents there and each agent is running their own business. And again, if I'm going to be their partner, I have to be able to be able partner to an agent who's here, who's here, who's in all different levels. And so again, it just sort of happened organically by listening to the needs of those individuals and how could I deliver to them the things that were most important, while also maintaining something that gave my agents that are more experienced that have been around for a while, which is actually why that second sort of category that I mentioned earlier, the agents that are on my accountability program, the receiving leads every single month, just yesterday, we finalized within that program, we are dividing it into different levels so that an agent who's just licensed is going to come in a different place than someone who's been doing this for 20 something years and has an enormous amount of experience working with buyers, working with sellers.

Speaker 3 (12:39):
They understand the ins and the outs of working A CRM, and so we actually came up with four different levels of our lead program where there's going to be a level one agent, someone who maybe has a recent license, and maybe those leads are a little bit different versus a level four agent who might come in with a senior title. We do have agents in the office that we give a senior level title, whether it's a senior realtor associate or a senior broker associate. Now someone who's in that level four level is going to get opportunities that have been warmed up by the ISA versus a level one. It still sort of has to prove to us that they have what it takes because I think that one thing that I realized really quickly is that I think there are a lot of people out there at a lot of agents in all of my years of hiring and interviewing with people, they think it's going to be easy and they don't realize how difficult it actually is to make it in this really difficult business.

Speaker 3 (13:34):
And so it's never the ones that you think either, right? I might be sitting across from somebody in an interview and they join the company and I think that they're going to be the number one agent in the office and at the end of the day, they might not have the skills that it requires. And so that's sort of why we've put these levels in place so that somebody that does have those skills can have those warmed up ISA handoffs, they can have Zillow leads, they can have leads that are coming from sellers, which is another sort of shift. I think it's really important to pivot as the market pivots and as the industry pivots. And one thing that we've moved our focus on is to focus on making sure that we have a strong message to sellers and that I can then deliver these opportunities for sellers to work directly with my team of agents who are all have been highly trained, but again, a level one agent might not have had the same training as what I'm calling a level four agent or a seller lead agent.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
The nuance in there is so good and so important. My foolish assumption was like you kind of graduate into this independent offering that you have, but in fact, there are experienced people who still want leads. They still want accountability. They still want to be close into this culture and community a way that you're more independent folks that have a different structure with you. Do just a quick, I tend not to do cross promotions in the body of an episode, but I would be remiss if I didn't point viewers and listeners to the inside the Lawton team series that we recently did. I think four of the eight interviews we did in that series, different folks talked from different perspectives about their multiple levels of splits and services across agents as well. It's a standalone YouTube playlist and you can see them marked inside the team in brackets in your podcast app. Thank you for enduring that, Georgeanna. I appreciate it. No,

Speaker 3 (15:28):
I have to say, I want to interrupt and add on to what you're saying because I watched those and I learned so much from how they've scaled and how they've grown and all the different perspectives. So I really enjoyed that whole video series that you did. I was furiously writing notes as you were in those interviews, so I'm glad that you shared it and I do recommend watching it.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
What a joy. So thank you for that. Thanks for spending your time with it, and thanks again for spending time with me in this conversation. I would love in that spirit you mentioned our leadership team just came up with, you mentioned a couple of the roles, but I would love for you to characterize Premier Listings as it is today. How is it structured? What are some of the key positions from a staff perspective? How many agents, how many staff, and maybe even approximately how many agents are in those different offerings that you have, not by count, but maybe as a share of the population, just to give people a sketch of what is Premier Listings today in mid 2024?

Speaker 3 (16:36):
Yeah, I think that's a great question and I can give exact numbers because I know them. Yeah, we, we hover around a hundred licensees and about 40, 45% of them are on what we call our lead team. And the lead team essentially, like I mentioned earlier, is that accountability program where people want that additional revenue stream. But just to touch on what you said earlier, there are agents in that program that are extremely experienced that have an enormous book of business and they just want another funnel of business to add to. And we do give people in that program the opportunity to be in control. I think to answer your question earlier, you asked a little bit about how this company came to be, and in many ways it came to be because of my own experience. When I first got licensed, I was told to call everybody in my cell phone and I was new in Florida, I didn't have a very big contact list in my phone.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
And I thought, okay, I know I'm smart, this doesn't feel smart, and how do I put myself in a position where I'm the one in control? And so that sort of theme still exists as far as what is pre listings all about. It's all about helping the individual agent reach whatever, put them in control to reach the goals that they want to. So if a person has a certain goal that they're trying to reach, our goal is to help them reach that by giving them whatever it is that they need, whether it's seller leads, whether it's buyer leads, whether it's additional marketing tools. We have a marketing sector. We had all different types of tools that essentially helped the individual get to that level. So again, about 40, 45% of our team are on our lead program and the rest are split up into those two other sections.

Speaker 3 (18:23):
We have an office in Broward County, which is a little bit newer than our main headquarters, which is located in Palm Beach County in downtown Ray. Each of the locations has a sales manager, and then we have our marketing manager as well. We have some virtual staff, two virtual ISAs, a virtual office assistant. And I'm really all about keeping it relatively lean in the sense that I don't want an enormous amount of staff. I never really was of that mindset. We do have a transaction coordinator as well, but I'm not interested in having this enormous payroll, but I think in the end ends up hurting the organization and creating too much of that overhead.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
Yeah, it's such a difficult tension. I think it was the Elise h Baum episode of that inside the Lawton Teamsters where she talked about toggling so that you don't want to burn out your best people, but you also don't want to overhire and have people sitting around and wondering what to do next. Lean is such, there's such a tension in it. How have you managed that over the years as you've pushed up against, okay, because you're not a small organization, but there was a point where you were half the size you are today, and so you've probably gone through some growth spurts and fits if you're pretty much every other team I've talked about.

Speaker 3 (19:38):
It's interesting. I think a lot of what's happened is it sort of happened organically, and I think that's something that really sets apart good leadership and good team leaders is you sort of have to be able to roll with the punches and as they arrive you got to figure out how do you pivot? And if you make the right pivot, keep moving in that direction. If it's not the right pivot, you got to figure out a pivot again. And so for me, it sort of happened accidentally in the sense that I lost a key player that from an operations perspective was doing so much and she was also a pretty big line item on my payroll p and l. And initially I panicked and I went and tried to hire anyone I could to fill that role. And then believe it or not, I was able to eventually split it up, split up all those roles and outsource them in a way that was extremely cost effective.

Speaker 3 (20:29):
And I think that because of all the changes in the market and the industry, it's really helped us maintain our ability to continue giving to the agents because I don't have this massive overhead so I can continue investing in things like a new seller lead program and more Zillow leads. So it's really helped me and a way sort of this happened that way. It's like organically I was like, well, I need someone to do this and I can't find the right person to sit right over there and do it. Lemme see if I can find somebody virtually or I can split it up and find somebody else that does it. And I used a lot of the resources, I used the follow-up boss community to find a good virtual assistant and just really by asking the right questions and finding people, trying them didn't work, trying it again. And I'm lucky in a sense. And now we're in this really great place where even though it's tough times, I think that we are really poised for significant growth and that's really what we're trying to do is get from that hundred agent count to more like the 300 agent count.

Speaker 1 (21:33):
Awesome. Okay. We're going to talk about market conditions and your plan for growth and how you're preparing your agents to support that growth for themselves and for the organization. But one more quick follow-up question on where we've been the past several minutes, which is talk a little bit. I can see a variety of different routes for an agent joining the organization into one of your three programs. And I'm sure some of it would be self-selected. Sure. Some of it would maybe be discovery through the recruiting processes. You're like, Hey, does it make sense for you to come join this organization? Here's some options. I actually see this for you. Share a couple of paths for someone that's thinking about or already has established multiple different endpoints and ways to engage with an organization, how does that work in terms of someone finding their right path? And do people, I joined in the independent program, but I decided I wanted to be in the accountability program. How do people get into the program and how much movement is there across any of them and how much of that is driven by the agent and how much of that is driven by maybe coaching or the recruitment process itself?

Speaker 3 (22:39):
So that's a great question and I think it's sort of both. It really comes down to the goals of the individual, and it's also about having clarity. I know that there are times when an agent says, okay, Jordana, I absolutely, I'm going to be full-time and this is what I'm going to do. And then at the end of the day, that sort of changes. So we try really hard to more or less customize the needs of the individual to the organization. So if somebody is full-time, and there are many agents here thinking of a specific agent who joined us. She had just gotten her license. She wanted to be full-time, but she just couldn't make it work from a financial perspective. But she had a part-time job, and the goal was to get her from working in this part-time job that was also toxic by the way, and getting her to be in a full-time role where she was earning enough and felt comfortable enough that she could remove that.

Speaker 3 (23:36):
And we worked together to get her to that point. So she started in one of our programs and eventually became one of our most successful in our accountability program. So essentially the answer to your question is that it does sort of shift. There is some movement back and forth where an agent might start out and say, okay, I want to be held accountable. And then they might realize quickly, okay, I actually don't. And then vice versa, people that say I don't want it, and then they say, you know what? I've seen a little bit about what that looks like and I actually love it and I want to be a part of it. So there is some shifting. The other thing that I think has been really important for us is that with all of the changes and with all of the news and the settlement, it's given us an opportunity to require more of ourselves and of our team.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
So we have really raised our standards. I mean, every single agent that's on, if we're giving an agent a lead, we're expecting them to do certain things and there are no, that is a black and white. There's no negotiation on that. They have to have their A BR, they have to do a role play in front of the entire office. And the role play is specifically about how to talk about commissions, which we all know is probably one of the hardest things to do. They have to do a buyer consultation in front of the office again. So we have a four part buyer consultation that we teach agents to do. They're required to show up at meetings, they're required to do role plays, they're required to make a certain amount of calls. And so the industry shifting has enabled us to basically put our standards from here to here, and then in turn the agents are having more success. So all in all, I'm absolutely seeing a silver lining of the changes that are happening in the industry. I think that there's a really good part that comes out of it.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
That's a really nice job setting us up for the next portion of the conversation, which is obviously we've had interest rate challenges, we've had inventory challenges. This in part creates affordability or viability challenges. We obviously have DNAR settlement. It sounds like you were way ahead of the demands of the state of Florida. I think Florida is one of the states that really basically had nothing required with regard to some of this buyer communication that we really need to be expert at in the near term. So share a little bit about how you approached resetting or re-engaging. I know you're several weeks in at this moment into an awesome listings program that's producing results already, even though people are still in this opt-in program. I'd love for you to just give a high level of how did you and or the leadership team look at 2024, get through first quarter and look at the back half of the year? How did you do that strategically? And then what are some of the things you implemented including this listing intensive program that a bunch of your agents opted into?

Speaker 3 (26:33):
So I think that rather than, I never wanted to give up, so to speak on buyer leads, I think there is this sort of risk that, oh, well, they're going to be buyers that maybe aren't going to choose to work with agents and they're going to be maybe less transactions where they are agent assisted. That has never really been my approach. Instead, my approach has been, okay, how do we make our agents that much more skilled so that when they do have an opportunity in front of them, they're going to convert that opportunity into a client and the client's going to feel good about it too. I'm on this, my new mission right now is all about as cheesy as it is, how do we make someone's world a little bit better? So if my age is sitting across from a buyer who doesn't need to buy and say their first time home, how do we make that person's world better and help them get into their home?

Speaker 3 (27:24):
And so it comes from that sort of a theme. And so in doing so, what we've done is we've focused on, again, raising the standard so people are simply better at it. So they're better at handling the buyer conversations, they're better at handling leads or conversion rates are improving. But at the same time, there also has to be a shift because listings have always been a core and they should be of any good realtors business. And so as a broker, that's something that's a little bit more challenging. How do you provide those listing opportunities? So what we did was we put together, we have a 90 day program where the agents are held accountable. There is an app where they put up all their data at the end of the week, we tell 'em the specific tasks that we now are going to yield the results going after expires, going after FSBOs.

Speaker 3 (28:17):
We're also getting seller leads that are coming in. We started a whole new campaign on seller oriented buyer activity, meaning if there is someone searching online and they own a home, how do we get that person into our system? How do we capture their information and then turn it around and hand it to the agent who's also trained to ask, do you have a home to sell? So it comes down to, again, just better skills, better training and better opportunities is essentially a big part of how we're shifting and preparing for all of these changes and the second half of the year really.

Speaker 1 (28:55):
I love that you addressed something that I thought as soon as you started it was like, well, so many buyer leads are seller leads too. It's just waiting to be discovered. And I love that also too, you positioned it as well-trained to make sure that that's discovered sooner rather than later because it puts the relationship on a whole different trajectory at some level, it's just more nuanced conversation to have. It is a 90 day listing program. How did you structure it? How did you design it? Do you have a team member who did that? Did the sales managers work together on that with you, or is that something that you woke up one day and it just occurred to you and you put it on paper? Yeah, it

Speaker 3 (29:35):
Sort of just occurred to me. It was something I put together myself. I'm calling it my beta program in the sense that we're testing it out and I'm doing it along with my marketing manager who sort of helped me by creating the app and creating all of the training that goes along with it. So there is a weekly huddle that we do, and then there are slides and presentations and trainings. I use some really cool, I had this cool AI app where it's an AI role play where I can plug in the script and it's two different sort of AI personas that has been a great training tool. So the agents know the right words to say when they're talking to those sellers, sellers. But to answer your question, I'm somebody that I like to do the thing and learn from it and then tweak it.

Speaker 3 (30:27):
So rather than spend weeks and months making it perfect, I'd rather just go for it and then tweak it as I go. We started out with 25 agents that started in this program and I said to them from the very beginning, the program was more or less designed for people to sort of weed out the strong in the sense that it was pretty intense as far as what we were asking people to do. And the way it was structured is that it's 12 total weeks, five activities that have to be done every single week. And then every single week there was a new specific task, whether it's sending out a mailer or doing a video or holding an open house. And so during those 12 weeks, they have to log into our huddle on Mondays where we talk about the previous week and the upcoming week on Sunday night, we have to enter all their data, all of those five tasks, how many calls, how many listing appointments, how many ZMA people that they talk to, how many business cards that they hand out.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
And we talk about those numbers and I actually share the numbers with the entire group. And so that way we had some big aha moments as a group because we had some agents that were making 10 calls and had two appointments. I had another agent that had 190 calls, 17 conversations, but zero appointments. So what was so great about that is as a group, we were able to say, well, what is it that you're not saying with those 17 conversations? Because you weren't able to successfully schedule any appointments. And that was pretty eyeopening for that individual because he was able to then turn it around and start asking the right things. It also led us to sort of discover, because we're doing it week after week, the challenges that come up. So for example, we had another agent that was calling for sale by owners that was saying, I'm going to wait to sell.

Speaker 3 (32:22):
I decided I don't need to sell after all and I'll reach out to you. And so we were able to then as a group come up with, okay, is the best response, okay, lemme know when you're ready. And we came up with the answer that, no, that's not the best response. Lemme know when you're ready. Instead, we up with this whole strategy of, okay, don't just say let me know when you're ready. Instead schedule the appointment anyway. Make the face-to-face. Give some materials for when you do decide to sell. Here's how you prepare your home. So what that did was it just opened up all of these new strategies and tactics, and by talking about it week after week week, we were able to address new challenges, challenges, share new successes. Something as little as one of the tasks they're doing weekly is they go into their social media, whether it's Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn, and they actually send a direct message to people.

Speaker 3 (33:14):
So it would say something like, Hey Ethan, I hope you had a great time in The Bahamas and by the way, in real estate, I'm looking to get more listings. Or do you know anybody in your area that will be selling something along those lines? And we have had such positive responses because it's a little bit more proactive. Instead of the agents just posting something about something, a house that they just sold. Instead, they're actually interacting with the people in their sphere. So it's little sort of things like that that by all doing it together and doing it in this really structured, formatted way, it's the things I think we all know we should be doing it, but it's not something that you're going to necessarily do unless you're sort of made to do it. And so that's the purpose of this program and also to create some habits.

Speaker 3 (34:03):
So the idea of the program is that after the 90 days, people will continue to take some of those activities and continue to do the ones that they like. I'm sitting in our office right now in Broward and I have three agents that are about to get into a golf cart and go and door knock in the neighborhood and they alternate. One will go to one house the next will go to, so that's one of the activities in the 90 day challenge. These three individuals found a lot of success in doing it, and the goal of this 90 day challenge is to expose them to those things that they maybe weren't doing before and hopefully they'll continue to do it even after the 90 days is over.

Speaker 1 (34:41):
Oh my gosh. Okay, so that thing was loaded. That entire passage that you offered, there are all those details. A couple of quick observation. One, LinkedIn is absolutely under leveraged by the real estate community, just period far none, no matter what. Two, I love this idea, and

Speaker 3 (34:59):
People are on Instagram and they don't realize that you can share that post to LinkedIn and get probably double the amount of reactions

Speaker 1 (35:06):
And the concentration of agents there is so much lower that your ability to kind of break through and be a realtor that someone might know on LinkedIn is so much higher. I spend a ton of time on LinkedIn over the years. There's so little relative to the number of agents and team leaders and brokerage owners and operators, I just don't see them there. Two dms, this idea of a DM versus a post. I think everyone's familiar with posting and they feel like I put up a post, check the box, I feel good about that, but this dm, A, it's a little bit more personal and you can be more personal, but B, it creates a higher level of essentially reciprocity on the other person's behalf

Speaker 3 (35:55):
Of engagement. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (35:56):
You're not going to get a DM from someone even if it's basically no. If I get a DM from a stranger, I feel like I'm okay to ignore that, but if I get a DM from someone I know I'm not going to ignore it. So

Speaker 3 (36:07):
No, just, yeah, that'll be rude

Speaker 1 (36:10):
And people aren't going to reply. The way that you kind of structured that, I'm sure people are doing it in a variety of different ways, but approximately that way it's a yes or a no question kind of, but no one says yes, send it's yes or yes but or no or no, but that's the start of a conversation. And then higher level, I love so much about the way that you've designed this because it's a nice blend of both activities and activity count and accountability toward doing the activities at the right quantity blended with the qualitative side of it, which is like it's not just how many calls, it's also how good are those calls? You provided an example of that. I had 17 conversations with no appointments, so that blend is really, really good. I also think what's super powerful about what you're doing is that some people might already be comfortable with doing direct mail. Both people aren't. And so if we're going to implement new different strategies and activate different channels, for some people they're going to get better at something that they already have some exposure to. But some people are going to be doing something absolutely brand new from the first time, but across a population of a couple dozen people and this kind of conversational approach, it sounds like you all have dissecting what's working and what's not working. Everyone gets better at all the stuff,

Speaker 3 (37:33):
Everybody gets better, and it really forced a lot of people to get really uncomfortable. I was shocked at how many of them were uncomfortable putting themselves in front of the camera. So we did one of the weekly activities was to do a quick community report. So in the very beginning of the course, they had to identify their farming area. That was in one of, I think it was week one or two, and one of the following weeks was, okay, now that you've identified your farm, I want you to pull the stats on how many homes have sold in the past year, what's the average days on market? What's the average price per foot? Take those stats, take your phone, turn it around and record yourself talking about the neighborhood. And I was shocked and how hard this was for people. People did it, they got uncomfortable, many of them used it, had great reactions, which was really cool.

Speaker 3 (38:20):
And if they didn't use it, they at least started that. They sort of took that first step, which I think sometimes is the hardest step. Again, yeah, it's sort of exposing them to these new things that they know that they should be doing, but they're never going to do it when they have, okay, you have to get it done. And I gave them the script and I gave them the training. So I gave them all these really specific instructions on, I know it's hard to do a video and put yourself in front of it. We have an agent in our office who, her niche is seniors. She herself is a senior and I give her so much credit because it was really hard for her to put herself in front of the camera, but in the end it really worked. She was able to then take that video and send it out to an entire community. She had the email list and in turn got someone that responded and said, you know what? I loved your video and I'd love for you to come to me to talk about listing my hope with you. So it's been really cool to see people get uncomfortable but also get results from it.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
And those skills, I've spent years teaching, training and practicing video communication and video messaging and the one high level thing I would observe for anyone who's kind of on that border, I've tried it, but I've been uncomfortable and I never broke through. I haven't had that success story yet. Usually what it takes as soon as soon as you get some money off the effort, you're like, oh yeah, you're good. I can do this a little bit more. But these skills are so transferable. Your buyer presentations are going to be better. Your listing presentations are going to be better. Your ability to connect with and engage with people is going to be better through the challenge of communicating with multiple people as if they're just one person, even though they're not there by looking the camera in the lens and communicating with it. It's just, it's such a powerful skill to master. It really is. Recognizing is such is one with a steep upfront, but a massive payoff I think is going to be helpful for folks. How do you get comfortable on camera?

Speaker 3 (40:29):
I think the way that I get comfortable is by doing what I'm telling everybody else to do, which is I just do it. I turn my phone around and I've been doing it for a long time. It's funny, we have a YouTube channel. It's there. It's our company's YouTube channel. It's premier listings. And if you look back at some of the early videos that were on that channel, the ones that I did, you can see how incredibly uncomfortable I was using a script initially and now it's gotten to the point where I've become much better at it because I do it so often. And so I tell the agents that there's something that you want to get good at, you've got to do more of it. I think it's something like 10,000 hours. Isn't that what they say? I don't know that I've recorded 10,000 hours of myself, but certainly close, maybe not close, but I've recorded a lot and in doing so, I've become way more comfortable.

Speaker 3 (41:23):
It's funny because in my family as a child, I had a speech impediment and I was really uncomfortable and there are family videos where I hiding from the camera or I'm really uncomfortable in front of it. And so I'm sort of known in my family to be the worst when it comes to putting myself in front of the camera. And now you might argue that I'm not as bad as I was because I've done it so many times. So that has helped me become comfortable. And I think it's also partially because I do feel so strongly, I am so passionate about the things that I'm saying and I know how much I can help people if I do it. So it does come down to that cheesy saying I was saying earlier, which is that if I can make one person's world just a little bit better by giving them something or telling a story that I've done that I'm willing to do it.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
Okay, quick side note, for folks watching and listening, I will link up the Premier Listings YouTube page down below, whether you're watching in YouTube or you're listening to your podcast app or you're at realestate team os.com. Looking at it, we embed the audio and the video there. The link to that will be down below. You have to check out Jordana on Instagram where you can see her on camera too. That'll be linked up, down below. And if you want more resources or insights or you have a specific question about video, hit me up. It's ethan@followupboss.com. Happy to hear from you directly. If you've listened to, I think we're like 40 minutes into this covers. If you're this deep in, I'd be happy to hear from you. I wouldn't put that in the first two seconds, but I would love to hear from anyone if you have thoughts or questions or need any guidance on video.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
I've spent over a dozen years of my life myself and helping other people do that. Okay. I have two zones I want to go into. One of them is really quick, so I'll save that one. I would love for you to share a little bit for folks because we've talked a lot about the sell side. I'd love to switch back to the buy side briefly, as I mentioned, and essentially as anyone who knows how different states have been ahead or behind the curve on all of this, you've been way ahead of the curve in Florida with regard to buyer consultations, buyer agreements, commission conversations. A, why was that so important to you and B, are you making any adjustments relative to what is likely going to be expected in the back half of the year with regard to the NAR settlement?

Speaker 3 (43:41):
So I have been asking agents to get something in writing when they work with a buyer. I think this is maybe we started five years ago. And the reason why it's so important is because I think as we all now know, I wanted to make sure that we explained who we are and our value from the very beginning and having that conversation, having them sign something sort of forces that conversation. It forces you to take a little bit more of a consultative approach. And what I didn't want to see happen was I didn't want to see an agent spend hours and hours working for somebody and not ever explaining to that person why they were doing it and how they were going to get paid. And so I sort of recognized that years ago, and I think frankly, it's probably part of why we're in this problem or in this mess to begin with, partially because I don't think enough people had enough conversations about what their value is and they maybe didn't provide value that was as strong as it maybe could happen.

Speaker 3 (44:47):
And so by taking a more consultative approach, by asking people to sign an agreement, by having those tough conversations on day one, you're sort of setting the precedent. You're sort of setting the expectation. So Ethan, you're going to be buying a house. Here's how I'm going to help you buy that house and here's why you need me. Here's the process of what that looks like and here's the market that you're going to be buying into. All of those things really empowers the buyer and the agent. So the agent now has a much stronger footing, so to speak in that relationship and so does the buyer because the agent just explained to them what they can expect in the process, how much they're going to have to spend in that particular market, if there are any nuances of that market that they have to maybe be prepared for.

Speaker 3 (45:30):
So to me, it sort of always made sense, and to answer your question, how I'm shifting, I think it sort of just made it even easier for me to continue asking for more, asking for more of myself as a leader, as a manager, as a trainer, to put more emphasis and create more resources and more training, and then in turn require more of the agent to go ahead and get their A BR designation. Why not the National Association of Realtors is offering it for free to designation that everyone should have. Doing that in addition to all the other things that we are requiring, again, gives the agent more power and makes them more confident in who they are and what they do, which I think will yield better results and raise up their own standard of performance and then in turn, the entire industry.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
Yeah, I'm so excited for your plans for your organization, but also the way that that is a microcosm of the leveling up of the entire industry. Some language that people have been using is the professionalization of the industry. We're at this verge, there are a number of forces converging to do it, and you've been out in front of it all along, and I think you're poised to really take advantage of that through your approach in general. The quick question I had for you, I would be remiss if I did not ask you a little bit more about AI role play. I think role play is something that all of the best teams are doing and not just with new people, with everybody. They're not just doing it in small group, they're also doing it in group settings, like larger group settings so that everyone can learn from this as awkward and challenging as that can be as awkward, as challenging as the period on camera. I'd love for you to share a little bit more about AI role play. How did you find the tool? Anything practical that someone could take away and be like, oh gosh, I'm so glad for a variety of reasons, but especially for AI role play that I got to the 45 minute mark with Jordana and Ethan.

Speaker 3 (47:35):
So I think AI role play, there's a lot more capabilities than what I'm going to talk about what I did. I think eventually, I know that there are tools already that enable, I think I just saw that chat, GBT four O, some or other where you can actually do the role play with ai. What I'm referring to is a training tool, because in the past, what I've done is I've either recorded myself doing a role play or recorded other role plays to use it in training. And so I'm using this really fantastic tool. It's called Seven Taps and within seven Taps, which it's a micro learning training tool. So for example, in working with my 90 day listing challengers, we were all going to be making calls to expired listings. And so there was a specific back and forth and script that we were suggesting.

Speaker 3 (48:25):
So rather than me do it with another agent and record it, which takes time and effort, what I was able to do using this cool tool called Seven Taps was it gave you two different avatars and you could upload the script and go back and forth. So when you call what you say. So it just made it that much easier to show an agent rather than just handing them, here's a script, go and practice this script. What I was able to do is say, here's an example of how this script works and how it sounds. By using that AR ai tool and just writing the script for ai, avatar number one says, I see your home's off the market. And then the seller AI responds and it goes back and forth like that. So it was a really great tool to help the agents get better and here somebody else do it. And then of course, we went and did the live role play, which I think is also really effective.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for everything you've shared in this conversation. It's been an absolute pleasure. I have a lot more that I would like to ask you about. I would love for you to keep me updated on how things are going, especially as we get deeper into the year relative to your goals and ambitions for yourself and for your team. I wish you success on that journey. And before I let you go, Jordana three standard, by the way, one of the zones we didn't get into is this idea of blogs and newsletters and social and how it feels like it's not working, and then all of a sudden three people come out and say like, I've been paying attention all along, we talk about, but I'm going to go to my three standard closers, which I absolutely would love to hear from you on, which is, what is your very favorite team to root for besides Premier listings or what is the best team you've ever been a member of besides Premier listings?

Speaker 3 (50:15):
Wow, that's a tough question. The best team I've ever been a member of

Speaker 1 (50:22):
Or favorite team to root for,

Speaker 3 (50:24):
I'm going to say the best team I've ever been a member of. So when I was in high school, I was a tennis player and I went to a really, really small high school and somehow we made it to the state championship. I was the captain of my tennis team, even though I was not the best player, which was sort of cool because it told me that the people around me saw me as a leader, and it was cool to be from this really, really small town with not a lot of people and to go to the state championship and just make it there. So that was a really cool experience. So that was probably my favorite team to sort of be a part of.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
That's awesome. I love that tennis is such an interesting sport that way. I mean, it is physical, it's strategic, but it's also so much of a mind game. It really

Speaker 3 (51:07):
Is. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
I feel like we could probably spend 20 minutes breaking down how your high school tennis experience, both as a captain and as a player, allowed you to develop the skills necessary to do everything that you're doing today. But I'm going to go to my second question, which is, 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 3 (51:29):
So I think the most frivolous purchase is I use the autopilot function on my Tesla and my kids think I'm crazy, but I like that it will drive me to where I need to be. You still have to have your hands on the wheel and all that, but it's frivolous. I don't think it's necessary. I think we should be driving our own cars, but I sort of love it. So I think that's the most frivolous purchase. I don't think I need to have that, but I do.

Speaker 1 (51:59):
Yeah, love it. Great. And with regard to resting, relaxing, or recharging or learning, growing and developing, what are you doing when you're doing one of those two things?

Speaker 3 (52:12):
So I have to say, honestly, I struggle a little bit with relaxing. I am a voracious reader and I am seriously ambitious. So I've always, I think that second category is easier for me to address, and I'll say that I'm a consumer of content in the sense that I love learning from your channel. I love listening to what other people are doing and how they're growing and how they got there. I love stories of inspiration when it comes to entrepreneurship and building something. That's always been something that I'm really attracted to is being a part of something and building something that's sort of bigger than yourself. So I think it's all about listening to good podcasts. I'm on YouTube. I'm reading every possible newsletter I can get my hands on. So yeah,

Speaker 1 (53:03):
Thank you so much for that. As I mentioned, I will link up down below on the website in the YouTube description and in the podcast description, your Premier listings YouTube channel, premier Listings homepage, your Instagram. Is there anything else that you think would be worth linking up for folks who want to learn more about you and about what you're up to with Premier Listings?

Speaker 3 (53:23):
The only other recommendation would make is we do have a site specifically that explains some of the three programs that we offer that you talked about earlier, and that's join premier listings com, which is sort of the agent facing site versus premier listings.com, which is more of the public facing site for searching for real estate and all those other things.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
Got it. That will be down below as well. Jordana, you're awesome. I wish you continued success and I appreciate you doing this with me.

Speaker 3 (53:50):
Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity and I'm so grateful for all of the work and the amazing conversations you had with people in the industry. So I thank you.

Speaker 2 (53:58):
Thanks for checking out this episode of Team Os. For email exclusive insights every week, sign up@realestateteamos.com.