Speaker 1 (00:00):
Over the past few years, Teresa Hurley got licensed and became a real estate agent, quite a successful one with more opportunities than she could handle the solution, start a team, and become a team leader. She looked around and realized that she needed more speed and flexibility than her situation was allowing her. It was stifling the growth of her team, the solution. She became a co-owner in an independent brokerage and she shares lessons from all along that journey. Right here in this conversation, one theme you'll hear throughout too many opportunities and the need to keep growing and failing forward. You'll hear the story of tearing down the team's first iteration and completely rebuilding. You'll learn how indeed for more control over marketing and tech stack drove that move toward an independent brokerage and how she's plugging her tech stack and her team into that brokerage. You'll learn the sales methodology that she's using to create closings and recruit agents. Her first five hires is a new team leader in what order, the three core pieces of that tech stack, all that and so much more right now with Theresa Hurley on real estate team os,

Speaker 2 (00:59):
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 (01:13):
Theresa, I'm so glad to be able to spend this time with you and I'm really glad we can do it in person here at Unlock.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
Yeah, it's a really great event. I'm super excited to be here. It makes it slightly more nervous because when you had asked me to do this, like Oh yeah, I've seen, I've watched them, they're so phenomenal. And I was like, oh, it's in person. It kind of has this new level of a little bit of nervous for me, but I'm excited to do this in person.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Cool. And also we got John and Crew and nice lights and set up. It does feel a little bit different than doing it in your own office, which is how we would do it otherwise. We've done a number that way. I guess I'm not being indulgent in this, but how did you find the show and what has been useful about it to you?

Speaker 3 (01:51):
Oh my gosh. When we get so many phenomenal people and they're telling their stories and what they've overcome and what they've learned from and how we're all in the industry and they have tips and tricks and things that they did wrong, that's so valuable. It's so amazing that we get to share that information and grow from each other instead of being so isolated in our industry and not having to reinvent the wheel every time. In fact, a lot of my growth has been probably watching one of your shows and I'm sure you're going to ask me about that at some point. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
Great. Well, I guess you already know this is coming. I would love to know from you, what is a must have characteristic of a high performing team?

Speaker 3 (02:34):
One of the best characteristics would be coachable and then tailed with that adaptable. So coachable because we're all entrepreneurs. We're learning as we go. We're taking risks and we need to be able to get feedback and if it's negative something's not working, we need to be able to shut it down and do something else and pivot very quickly in our industry

Speaker 1 (02:58):
And take that feedback in a way that allows us to learn from it too, I think in coachability. How has coaching gone for you throughout your career?

Speaker 3 (03:06):
I love coaching. I think it's very, very important to grow in an industry, to have people that you're looking at that are at higher levels of you or have expertise in areas because you cannot be phenomenal at everything. And so listening to other people learning what they do is very, very important.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
Cool. How did you find yourself in real estate and at what point on your journey did you start thinking team?

Speaker 3 (03:31):
It was,

Speaker 1 (03:32):
You can tell that story in whatever detail you want.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
So it was actually covid

Speaker 3 (03:39):
Shut everything down and all three of my kids and my husband and myself were all at home. And I thought one day if we're all going to be stuck in the house together, I'm going to leave and I'm going to go and get a job. And I was a stay at home mom for 10 years, but then I took my real estate classes during Covid and then I was able to get that little bit of time out of the house. Previous to the 10 years I was in new home construction. And so this was kind of along the same trail,

Speaker 1 (04:09):
Real estate. Were you in sales?

Speaker 3 (04:10):
I was. Okay. And so I decided to go into real estate, decided to take my classes, and I really just wanted to sell six houses a year. That was the average in our area. And to have coffee with my girlfriends and not feel guilty about that, be able to leave the house, have coffee with my girlfriends, sell six houses a year. What happened is my first year I actually sold 35 houses.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
That's a dramatic difference. And you don't accident your way into that. I think you're overshooting how much you had to do to sell six homes.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
I know. And so it was a real shock. I was like, oh, well I guess I'm really good at this. So 35, my first year we started really investing in the business. I realized it's not a part-time job. This was now a full-time job. I was going to do this, this was going to be great. And so we started introducing some technology. We started growing really, really fast and now our team sold almost a hundred homes last year. And then when I decided that we needed to go the team route is because we invest in online leads,

Speaker 4 (05:16):
That's

Speaker 3 (05:16):
How we get a lot of our business. And I was getting so many leads, I couldn't possibly handle them all by myself anymore. And that's when I started to move some people onto our team so that I could leverage out some of my time back.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
Cool. What was just, I mean as much detail as you can or want to step by step from I'm a solo agent. I just sold 35 homes in my first year to I'm going to keep investing and now I need to bring people alongside me. Who were the first 2, 3, 4 people to come alongside you in this business?

Speaker 3 (05:53):
My very first hire onto our team really was my transactional coordinator, and she has been with me from the beginning and she is so phenomenal. I feel like my growth, a lot of it is attributed to her being able to take some of that paperwork and compliance off my plate so that I can be out on the road more selling more houses. So that was my first hire and she's phenomenal.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
How did you find her?

Speaker 3 (06:20):
She was another agent in my office and she was not as busy as me, but she had a background doing things for a law office, so I knew she was really good at the law side of it, the compliance. I knew she'd be great with contracts and that's kind of how we started from there. And she's wonderful.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
I love that. I've heard that story so many times from my seat in these conversations, which is there are real estate agents out there who understand the business, but they're not salespeople. They don't like that part of the job. And that's such an interesting thing about real estate in general is that you have to be, especially as a solo and you have to be all the different things, and in this case, transaction, coordination, operations, whatever. And so if you are a sales person out there who doesn't feel like a sales person, you're in a sales role, but you're not a sales person, there is a job on a team for you.

Speaker 3 (07:11):
Absolutely. And she's so valuable. I tell her all the time because I love her so

Speaker 1 (07:14):
Much. You love because of that sales background.

Speaker 3 (07:16):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
She's

Speaker 3 (07:16):
So valuable and I love her and she does such a great job and I don't know how I would grow without her, but it's important to know as someone who runs a team that everybody has their different superpowers and it's making sure your people are doing their best superpowers.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
Who are the next couple folks? So you're humming along, some of this work's come off your plate, you get to live your best self out in the market talking to people. Who else are you bringing alongside?

Speaker 3 (07:46):
My next hires were all buyer agents. So then I was trying to find, because we were getting so many buyer leads at a time, I needed buyers agents to be able to show houses. So then after the transactional coordinator, it was buying agents. And then after I think three buyers agents, then I hired a inside sales agent to help with the inbound sales calls.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
Good. So now we're at a TCU three buyer's agents, an inside sales agent to deal with the inbound opportunities and probably vet them, qualify them, warm them up, hand them off to the buyer's agents. What did your marketing look like or your marketing spend, I guess, where were you spending money and what kind of tech did you have in place at that point? You could do TC a lot of different ways. It starts with checklist maybe.

Speaker 4 (08:40):
So

Speaker 1 (08:40):
I know I asked kind of two questions in one there, but what were the non-human pieces in play at that stage?

Speaker 3 (08:48):
So let's see. Of course, follow up boss. Follow up boss was a huge component in our growth because we had so many leads. When I started real estate, I had 30 names and they were all my mom's group from when I was a stay-at-home mom.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
Yeah, you're starting somewhere. That's good.

Speaker 3 (09:08):
And now we're over 10,000 people and follow-up boss. Follow up boss is a big component to our growth. Another person that I didn't mention on our team is my husband Brian, who does our technology and our leads, and he's our CTO. And his job is to do the leads and the investments and to make sure that our return on what we're paying out for leads comes back and our numbers all are great. So he's also very important.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
Cool. So where are you today in terms of staff and agents? And if maybe we'll fill in the path from where we left off there, but where are you today?

Speaker 3 (09:48):
Where we are today is I am co-owner of a brokerage, Riverpoint Realty and really, really excited. That's new. I just bought into that brokerage about a month ago. It got to the point that I didn't have enough people on my team to handle the income of all the leads that we had, so I needed a lot more people. So I had kind of a choice to make. I had outgrown my brokerage and I found that out by watching one of your episodes.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
Oh, interesting. Tell me about that a little bit. What was that dawning for you? What were you thinking about and worrying about at that time and what was the unlock to say, this is where I need to go?

Speaker 3 (10:30):
It was one of your episodes where they were talking about how when you need to move on from a brokerage, it wasn't anything. I didn't have any ill feelings about my brokerage. I really love them, they're great people, but I'd gotten to the point where I outgrew them and I needed to make a move. I was not able to grow the team fast enough because I had to recruit people to the brokerage first and then to my team. And I wanted more control over the technology

Speaker 3 (10:57):
That we use. So the technology we use, of course, follow up boss Real scout, we use our website, race.com, Sierra, we use for that. So we use a lot of things and I was having to layer things in a way that made it more complicated because I had to use my brokerage tools and I didn't like those. Well, a lot of what Brian, my husband builds for us is our own tools that are really, really phenomenal. So I wanted to be able to use all our own stuff and I had a choice. I could either go get my broker's license and I could start over independent

Speaker 1 (11:34):
Brokerage,

Speaker 3 (11:34):
Independent brokerage all by myself, but I'm selling a hundred houses a year.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
You're like four years into the business.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
And I was like, I don't have time to go get my broker's license right now. It's on my to-do list, but I don't have time right now. So I found I could partner with this independent brokerage. And the owner and broker of that is a phenomenal person.

Speaker 1 (11:59):
How long had you known him and how did this conversation start?

Speaker 3 (12:02):
I say we were almost business dating for a year.

Speaker 3 (12:06):
We had met at an event and I really liked him and what he had to offer. Of course, any partnership, he's really good at things I'm not really good at. And so we were a great fit for each other and we could both see the potential of growing together and really just expanding. And so it's an independent brokerage, which I like too because then I didn't have to use any technology that I didn't want to use. And I am slowly integrating all the brokerage into my technology stack. So we met, I think we met six or seven times over a year just kind of feeling out, it's like, can this work? Can we work together? Do we like each other? What are our plans? What are our goals? And can we build something that is bigger than both of us together? That's going to be really incredible. And we decided, yeah, we could and it was really great.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
That is great. And I love the idea that the technology that you and Brian have put together is part of that vision as well. It's

Speaker 3 (13:07):
A big part of it.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
So your team is inside the brokerage. Is any of the solo agents going to be coming into the team? Talk about this hybrid. I feel like it's a hybrid situation. What is this situation?

Speaker 3 (13:21):
It's really confusing because we're kind of, well

Speaker 1 (13:23):
Because early too, it just happened.

Speaker 3 (13:26):
We're falling forward is like I like to say,

Speaker 1 (13:29):
But how many agents do you have? How many agents are in the brokerage?

Speaker 3 (13:33):
So we had a team of 10 and now we've joined the brokerage and now we have about 40 agents.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
And so 30 of them are independent agents or solo agents I should say, inside the brokerage. So the episodes you reminded me of, I thought of Jenny Weer telling her story of taking Weimert Realty independent, and then also you made me think of Levi Rogers who was in a franchise model became part of Zillow's flex program, a partner in it and needed the speed and flexibility to do the business he wanted to without having to double check or adhere to some extra sets of rules. Those are the two that came to mind there. Here I'm thinking about Barry Jenkins who built his own team inside the brokerage that he was in, and at a certain point became a partner in that brokerage and they merged it all together and it all became one

Speaker 4 (14:24):
Super

Speaker 1 (14:24):
Teamer. I'm sure there's no vision for that yet necessarily. That's probably to be seen. But in your multiple discussions, do you expect additional teams inside the brokerage or is it more likely that it goes all into one teamer?

Speaker 3 (14:38):
So right now we're kind of focusing on creating a internet leads team inside the brokerage.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
Oh, cool.

Speaker 3 (14:45):
And then all the leads that we produce are going to go towards that team.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
Cool. And so people can opt into it. It's just one option for how you can participate with us?

Speaker 3 (14:54):
Exactly. And then I can do more mentoring and recruiting and everything kind of on the brokerage level instead of just a team level.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. So let's talk about that. How has your focus or motivation or excitement or sets of activities in any given week, how has that changed from I'm going to go out and sell six houses a year to today?

Speaker 3 (15:18):
There's a lot of growth there, a lot of movement, and not all of it has been great.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
Yeah, that'ss,

Speaker 3 (15:24):
Why I asked. It's learning. It's definitely learning. So when I first started the team, I did it from a place of I'm in pain and I need to fix it. I was like, I've got too many leads. I've got 17 appointments in the next two days. I haven't seen my kids in four days. So it came from pain. And when you do anything based on pain, you usually make the wrong choice. So when I was first starting a team, I literally went to anybody with a pulse. I was like, Hey, I want to be on your team. I was like, you come, do you have a cell phone here? You can be on our team. And so it made me realize that I hired some of the wrong people at first because I hired anybody with a pulse, and that's not what I needed. But in my head I was like, this will help the business pain.

Speaker 3 (16:15):
I'll have more people. But what I found as I've developed the business and grown is that culture fits are very, very important to a team. And being able to hire the right people, it's never a good idea to hire from pain and to hire someone with a pulse. You should make a little more effort in making sure that these people coming on our right fit. And not only now for the team, but for our brokerage. Now I make sure that the people that we hire are people that are going to work with us, that are going to grow with us, that are going to be excited. And I know from personality studies and things like that, I do have my master's in clinical counseling that I am really, really high on the optimism scale. So sometimes knowing that I will downplay red flags because I'll be like, it's okay, I can fix it. But when you are already over leveraged and you've got all these people coming at you, you don't have time to fix things. You have to have the right people

Speaker 1 (17:20):
To change a person's mindset or personality in a fundamental way.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
Yeah. What was I thinking?

Speaker 1 (17:27):
Well, you were thinking, I need to alleviate this pain.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
Yeah. So talk about that process a little bit. I mean, I heard you say culture and I heard you say right fit. How formal was your approach at that point? As some of these things were occurring to you now you created this new pain of now I've got some people alongside me and it doesn't work. I need to figure out the exit situation here. How formal initially when you started bringing people on, how formal were your thoughts about culture and right fit? I mean, obviously they weren't, you just shared that they weren't top of mind. But from there, did you lay out things like some of the standard components are a purpose statement or a mission statement or documented core values? Did you go through that exercise in an intentional way?

Speaker 3 (18:15):
I tried to.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (18:16):
I tried to and I realized,

Speaker 1 (18:18):
Did you follow a particular model? I'm sorry to interrupt.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
No, I

Speaker 1 (18:19):
Didn't. Did you follow a particular model or you're like, I need to start writing down some of these things that are important?

Speaker 3 (18:24):
So at the time, I was at kw, so I followed a lot of Gary Keller's

Speaker 4 (18:28):
Models

Speaker 3 (18:29):
For that, but it wasn't working at that time. I was trying to do, okay, these are our core values, this is what we're going to focus on, these are our mission statements. But what I found was if you have wrong people in wrong places that there's no amount of bandage on it that can help. And we kind of got to the point where it was, I think it was Christmas, and I was like, I forget what the catalyst was, probably that it was Christmas and it's stressful and trying to get stuff done. And I've got agents that are fighting and yelling at each other and nobody's doing what they're supposed to, and the clients are suffering. And I kept having to

Speaker 1 (19:06):
Get, it's a hot market,

Speaker 3 (19:08):
And I had clients coming back to me saying, I'm not going to work with your agent. I don't like them. It's like, I don't want to lose business. So I kept being like, so you were

Speaker 1 (19:19):
Stepping in?

Speaker 3 (19:19):
Yeah. So I kept having to step in and be like, I'll take 'em. Don't worry. I'll take this one. Don't worry. Oh, they gave you a better, that's fine. I'll take 'em back. So I was realizing I was taking everybody's clients back

Speaker 4 (19:29):
Because

Speaker 3 (19:30):
They were coming back to us upset. And then I finally kind of threw my hands in the air. I looked at Brian, I was like, we're done. It's like I quit. I quit. I was probably in a frantic, crazy way.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
Is this 2022? 2023 maybe.

Speaker 3 (19:45):
2023.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (19:46):
Yeah. I was like, I quit. I was like, we're done. We don't have a team anymore. I'll go back independent. I don't know what I'll do. But I was like, we're going to let everybody go. I was like, I can't, can't be everything to everybody anymore and just be upset and sad and feeling like every time I talk to the agents, it got to the point where every time we had a team meeting, I felt so sad afterwards.

Speaker 3 (20:14):
I was like, they're just upset and they're sad and they're complaining and nobody's getting any sales and they're having to send their clients back to me and I'll close them out and they'll be fine. But then I'm still having to pay those agents. I feel bad that they lost a client and it just wasn't working. And every team meeting came back and I was just so sad. It wasn't invigorating me. It wasn't making me happy. I was like, what am I doing? Oh no. I was almost banging my head against the wall. It's like, what am I doing wrong? How am I failing? It has to be me. I have to be failing at something. And what I realized I was failing at is I had the wrong people in the wrong places, and I could not make them into the people they needed to be. And because I had hired from Payne, those were just not the right fits. So we reset and we did, we reset, and I took a couple days and cried and stuck my head in a pillow and cried. And I was like, okay, enough wallowing. I was like, we reset. I was like, okay, I know I have something to offer. I sell a lot of houses. I know I'm a good leader. I know I can get people up and running and selling houses,

Speaker 1 (21:29):
And you have the best CTO in town

Speaker 3 (21:31):
And I have the best CTO in town. And I was like, I know I can do this. I was like, we reset now. And so I let everyone from the team go. And two of the agents that were on the team, one we had just hired and one that we had hired just a couple months previously, they were like, Hey, they contacted me. They we're not with the other agents. We want to stay. And I was like, okay. I was like, you guys can stay. We're going to rebuild from here though. And I was like, and we're going to have very, very strict things in place, that negativity of the toxicity. We cannot have that in our group. I won't allow it. And I had to be stronger of being a person that was like, I can't fix everything. Let's restart and these are our new core values and these are our operations that we're going to keep in place, and this is what I expect from you. And we built a much stronger, happier team, and we built very quickly. So I had those two agents, transactional coordinator, Brian, for the tech lead. We had an ISA. So then we hired three more agents very quickly, and I was very,

Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah. How did you find them? What was that process you said, I know I have something to offer. How did your process change at that point in light of core values and some of that reflection, and what was your value prop to them at that point?

Speaker 3 (23:02):
My value prop to then them was that I can ramp you up and get you to be a producing agent. So what I kind of targeted were agents that had been in the industry a while, but weren't having the success and the levels that they were looking for. Maybe they had sold a couple properties, but we know if you don't stay consistent, it doesn't feel like you're growing because you can never learn from each situation. You almost have to reset every time because there's too much time in between sales.

Speaker 4 (23:31):
So I

Speaker 3 (23:31):
Was like, I can make you more consistent. I can ramp you up. I can give you all this technology that's amazing. I can show you exactly what to do to convert people faster. And so we hired three more agents after that very quickly. And I focused on people that were hungry, that had a positive attitude, were willing to learn and grow. That's why I said the coachable was one of my favorite things because for all of us, for me, it's being coachable too. I have to be able to see something and be like, oh, I didn't do that. Well, how can I fix it? How can I learn from that? How can I make myself better? And so we look at that in agents too. I want someone that's going to be able to adapt with us and be like, Hey, I really love how you did this and this thing over here. Let's tweak that a little bit. And I want the agent to be like, yeah, let's do it together. And they're excited about learning and getting out there. So we hired three more agents very quickly, and all three of those agents are great. I'm very excited. And then we hired another one just recently, and she's been phenomenal. So

Speaker 1 (24:37):
Where have you found them?

Speaker 3 (24:39):
I reached out to my lenders and my title company. I was like, who's good out there, who's really nice, who's hustling, who has a great personality, but they're just not able to produce, they don't have the sphere

Speaker 4 (24:58):
To be

Speaker 3 (24:58):
Able to sell from and they don't have the technology to be able to get leads

Speaker 4 (25:03):
And

Speaker 3 (25:03):
They don't have the money to buy leads. Who are those people? Who are those people that I can help? And my lenders and my brokers and my friends and my title company, they started giving me names to interview. And those are the people that we started with. And usually people start with, I try to do a call first or coffee first, and then we kind of do, if that appointment goes well, then we do another one. And then if that goes well, then we talk about contracts and we signed an onboard em. How

Speaker 1 (25:40):
Formal is that process? So

Speaker 3 (25:42):
I'm trying to make it

Speaker 1 (25:42):
More formal. You're not doing massive volume, but it's enough and you have aspirations for growth and the foundation for growth, especially now that your partner in the brokerage, you have room to really start running.

Speaker 4 (25:54):
What

Speaker 1 (25:54):
Does that process look like now and what's in the year ahead? What do you feel like you need to harden about the, okay, this person has agreed to come here. How do I actually deliver? And I know I have a lot to teach them and I can help them become much more productive, but how formal is that system and process to get that going now and where do you want to take that in the year ahead?

Speaker 3 (26:17):
We need, even with acquiring the brokerage and partnering, I still don't have enough agents at 40 agents. I have way more leads than that, so I need even more, honestly, I need a hundred agents. I need a brokerage of a hundred agents. I can support it. So that's what I'm looking for. And the systems we have in place are not existent right now because the brokerage that I bought really didn't have any formal systems. So I'm creating the systems as we go. So I'm

Speaker 1 (26:46):
Onboarding and training systems. Yes.

Speaker 3 (26:49):
So I lean a lot on my follow-up Boss mod squad that I'm a part of because those are some phenomenal people and they have all these things. So we trade a lot of things back and forth for growth. They're just such amazing people. And I remember reading a book a long time ago, it was a business book. I love business books, but this one a long time ago when I was first starting, it said that at some point you're going to get to a level where you're going to have to get on a plane to see your friends. And I was like, that's my first year in real estate. I was like, that's silly. I have friends that live right here. I'm not going to do that.

Speaker 3 (27:23):
But it's totally true with the Mod Squad when we get together and see each other, it's so exciting. We stay connected all year long, and then we see each other in person at our masterminds and events like this, and it is, it's like getting on a plane to see your friend. We help each other all the time. If I have ideas, we bounce 'em off each other. We're giving each other. It's like, oh, you don't have a system and procedure for this thing. It's like, I've got that. Here's mine. It's like, oh, someone else is like, oh, I've got a question about Google ads and an ad copy. Can I ask Brian that? It's like, yeah, of course. So we just trade things back and forth, and that's why our community is so impactful is because we're generally here to help each other. That is hard to see in other industries, especially in real estate where people tend to be a little bit more, I'd say catty or coming from an idea of scarcity where they're like, I can't give you my good ideas. I need to keep those from me. We're not like that at all. The growth that I've felt, the growth that I've had is hugely attributed to the follow-up boss community.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
Cool. So for anyone who's not familiar, what Therese is talking about is the Follow-Up Boss Success community, which is open to all customers. I think there are 25,000 ish in there as we record this. And the Mod squad is the moderating, the moderator group members of the follow-up boss community who voluntarily spend their time and energy answering questions in that community. But then you're also talking about extending that offline into real relationships.

Speaker 3 (29:04):
Oh yeah, we're friends.

Speaker 1 (29:06):
Yeah,

Speaker 3 (29:07):
It's awesome. That's what we've built. I can say that that is one of the most important things that I found in business is that it's important to align yourself with great people who just want to all grow together, and that's part of our community is when we all succeed, we all grow together, and that's really important. Not everybody has that, but we have that here, which is phenomenal.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
A little bit of a pivot here in the conversation. Talk a little bit more about your background in, did you say clinical psychology?

Speaker 3 (29:42):
Yep. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:43):
Talk a little bit more about that, and I'm sure it comes to life a bit in all the work that you do. I mean, playfully people will toss off the language that a real estate agent is a therapist for their clients or that a team leader is a therapist for their agents. That is true, but not everyone has any background in that direction.

Speaker 3 (30:03):
So yes, so I have a bachelor's in psychology, master's in clinical counseling. What I focused in on that everybody has their superpower. My superpower is talking to people and we dig in really deep when we're talking to clients, and I'm sure you've heard the pen situation where,

Speaker 1 (30:30):
Yes, sell me this pen.

Speaker 3 (30:31):
Exactly. Sell me this pen. Well, the fact is I can't sell you anything unless I know how you use that pen.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
What

Speaker 3 (30:37):
Do you love about that pen? What's your favorite color on that pen? What are you going to use your pen for? I can't sell someone a house unless I know what motivates them, why they need it, why they don't like their current house, what's missing, what their dreams are, what their holidays look like, what pets do they have. We go really deep and the reason why is because when I'm in a house with them, it makes it easier for me to present the house in a way that best suits their needs. And I don't know that unless I know those very, very deep down things. For example, we call it feature benefit sales, and I learned a lot how to do that from actually Ryan Holmes because as a new construction sales rep, I had to sell a ground with nothing on it. I had to sell the vision. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (31:29):
Imagine this. Look at this pencil drawing.

Speaker 3 (31:32):
Exactly. So we had to build a picture. So a lot of what I do for future benefit sales is I have to know what motivates them, and then we have to turn that around to match how the features of the home will benefit them. Because everybody is looking from any situation, any interaction you ever have is how do you benefit me? And it's not because people are selfish, it's because that's the way we're programmed to be. How does this benefit me when I call someone, as someone just looked at our website and they looked at a house and I call them, it's going to be thirst thing was this person calling me was benefit me? So we have to show value very, very quickly. So feature benefit sales is a good way to do that inside a house. And that's what I teach a lot of my agents is that feature benefit sales.

Speaker 3 (32:18):
And it's really digging down deep knowing your client, presenting that back in a house. For example, if I know because of communication that my client is family of four with a dog, they're moving because their house is too small. Two of their kids share rooms and that creates fighting. I'm going to bring that up in the house that we're in, it's like, okay, so the kids are fighting too many. We need more bedrooms. Like, okay, this house has this many bedrooms. Jason can go here. I thought Elliot could use this one. I know Elliot likes to read and he could put his reading chair there. That's something that you told me you like about your house. I'm painting a picture. The faster I can paint a picture, the faster a client falls in love. But they only do that if you really, really make it personal to them. Gone are the days or they never were. The days where you just opened a door, you stood in the corner and you're like, walk around. Tell me what you think. It's like you could do that forever. But the fact is I show very little houses before I get a house under contract, and that is better for me, and it's because I know my clients, it's

Speaker 1 (33:27):
Better for them too. You hear these stories of they looked at 61 houses before they wrote a contract. That's really bad for everyone. I mean, I think some people enjoy the, maybe there are rare buyers who enjoy that process, but as I bought a handful of properties over the years, I don't want to look at 61 homes. I want someone to have a process to guide me through it and show me the right stuff.

Speaker 3 (33:58):
I mean, people get excited at first it's like, oh, we're going to go see at houses after the fifth or sixth house. They're like, oh, this is tedious. It's like, yes, but,

Speaker 1 (34:06):
And they start getting blurry in your mind, and I'm like, how different were these? After all,

Speaker 3 (34:10):
They start losing their excitement. So anytime I want to psychologically I want to push a client forward or I want them to stay put, I either elicit an emotional response or I pull back the emotion and show numbers. So for example, when I'm showing a house, I'm going to elicit the emotional responses based on what I know that they need and want in their house. So if we're doing inspections and they're starting to get afraid, I'm going to pull back the emotion from that and we're going to push the numbers because I want them to focus and remove the emotion from the situation. But emotion is what guides everyone and moves anyone forward. Just like in sales and homes and everything else, you have to make that the pain of staying put is worse than the pain of moving forward

Speaker 1 (35:00):
And the chronic pain of staying put versus the acute pain of going forward, it looks like a lot more pain. But you're not appreciating the chronic pain that you're in now in a home or not even having a home that's ideal for your living situation or family situation.

Speaker 3 (35:14):
Exactly. It's in that case, it's like the family, four kids were fighting not enough bedrooms. It's like, what happens if we don't move forward?

Speaker 4 (35:21):
Well,

Speaker 3 (35:21):
They're going to keep fighting. Well, of course they are. They're kids. It's like, do you think it's going to get better as they get older or going to get worse? Oh, it's going to get way worse and I can't actually do this. So it's again, a listening and emotional response to get them to move forward in the best case scenario.

Speaker 1 (35:39):
Cool. So what I think I've heard is that 2025 is going to be a really interesting and fun and challenging and different year from the years that you've had in the business so far in that you're going to be doing more onboarding, training, coaching, not just for your own team, but also for the brokerage at large. It sounds like you're going to be growing your team in the year ahead. What are you looking forward to in 2025? Yourself? And did I capture some of it right there?

Speaker 3 (36:06):
No. Yes, you did. I know. I feel like we went on a bunch of tangents. I'm really sorry. No,

Speaker 1 (36:10):
No, no. That's what we're doing. That's why we don't do these is five minutes. Give me your best tips. This is an open conversation about where you are and how you got here and where we're going.

Speaker 3 (36:20):
2025 is going to be a lot of growth. I'm going to redo our systems and procedures for the brokerage level, and we're going to be recruiting a lot more agents. I'm going to

Speaker 1 (36:31):
And you're going to be involved in that?

Speaker 3 (36:32):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (36:33):
Both team and brokerage?

Speaker 3 (36:34):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
Cool. Okay.

Speaker 3 (36:36):
So then we're going to be onboarding a lot more agents. We're going to set up kind of a systematic way to onboard these agents too. For example, your first 20 steps when you join the brokerage, you're going to be here, here, here, here. I'm going to need you to do all these things. I'm going to have to be able, because the more agents that we get into our brokerage, which we need, it can't be let's sit down. I'm going to show you how to write a sales contract or I'm going to show you how to, because we can't scale that. So it's going to be a lot of creating systems that can scale now, and that's something that I don't have experience with, so I'm going to have to learn, and some of it will be probably failing forward, but then we will pivot and we'll adapt and we'll come up with new systems. It'll be really good. I'm excited

Speaker 1 (37:25):
You have people around you. That's what we already heard. And by the way, that Mod Squad is answering questions that if you're a follow boss customer and you're not in that group, you need to get in there. There are a number of people that will jump in right away. You're never going to go a long time without a good answer to a question, but you've surrounded yourself with people who can help. You're going to set up the initial version in place.

Speaker 1 (37:45):
And from my experience, I haven't been in real estate, but in other businesses I've been in, the most important challenge is making sure that you build in time to constantly iterate. And of course, you already said that that's what's going to be happening, but that it's not like you put it in place and 12 months later you look at it and go like, how did that first 12 months ago that you're building in time? Not just to implement the system that you're putting into place, but also allow yourself time on a week to week or month to month basis to review and tweak and review feedback loops from the people that are going through it. Maybe some dashboard metrics that are associating some of the coaching and training with some of the dashboard metrics that we should see harden. And if they don't, then it's like, okay, so it's just building in enough time.

Speaker 3 (38:32):
Yeah. I have to get

Speaker 1 (38:33):
In your day, which sounds like it's, are you still listing properties?

Speaker 3 (38:36):
I am.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
And you will continue to do so.

Speaker 3 (38:39):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
For the time. So manage

Speaker 3 (38:41):
Budgeting

Speaker 1 (38:42):
Time. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:42):
Yeah. Actually I still take buyers and sellers right now. I'm trying to ease back on the buyers as much, even though I absolutely love buyers just because I have different roles and I only have so many hours in a day like everybody else. So I need to kind of critique what I am now and where I have to spend time. So I have to get a lot better with time blocking. I know this for a fact.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
Good. Okay. Last zone here, and it's specifically on part of what you've charged yourself with or the opportunity you've created for yourself for 2025. Give a little bit of advice to a solo agent who's evaluating brokerages and teams out there. You're going to be recruiting into both. How are you going to help guide the conversation? What are some of the questions you're going to ask these people that you're interacting with to help figure out whether or not they're right for the leads team or for your team or whether this brokerage is a great spot for them to move forward? How are we going to be guiding that conversation so that an agent listening can maybe think about it themselves as well?

Speaker 3 (39:46):
So just like how I talked about feature benefit sales for clients, it's feature benefit sales for agents too. What can I do for you? What do you need? What are your goals? How can I help you get there? Because really I can spout 20 things that I do, but if it doesn't impact you or the agent, it doesn't matter. So I need to know the agents that are coming in. What are your goals? What do you want to see yourself and what steps can I introduce to you that we can work on together to get you where you need to go? Because really as a team lead now as an owner, that's my goal. My goal is to get my agents to where they want to find their goals. That's most important thing I could do.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
So what are a couple things you might hear that will say you would be great as a solo agent inside this brokerage versus it sounds like the lead team is right for you besides obviously leads.

Speaker 3 (40:43):
So I'd say a lot of individual agents, they're like, Nope, I'm good with my sphere. I'm working my sphere. I'm doing that. I'm consistent to the level I want to be. Great. Then you just come to our brokerage. We'll help you and mentor you with exactly what you have in place and just make that much better. But if it's a person where they're like, I'm not getting the deals that I need. I'm not consistent as I want to be. I want to figure out how to do a different format to, I want to introduce other ways for me to find business, then leads team is probably a great bet for you and we can teach you how to convert those people faster using the feature benefit sales

Speaker 1 (41:33):
And probably more accountability. Is part of that too, more accountability too? Part of what I heard when you said consistency and engaging my sphere of influence is like you got some of the right habits

Speaker 4 (41:41):
Already

Speaker 1 (41:42):
In place, whereas someone who maybe doesn't have those habits, the accountability that comes with the leads team is probably a benefit to them as well.

Speaker 3 (41:49):
And there are some agents out there that are great individual agents, they don't need my leads and that's great. I'm so happy for them.

Speaker 4 (41:56):
That's

Speaker 3 (41:56):
Great. I want them to be successful with what they have. Those people, maybe they're on a team or maybe they're sphere based and they're like, I'm good. I've got this. We'll still go over that accountability, making sure they're hitting their goals, but they might not be right for the leads team, and that's totally fine. Everybody has their own superpower and I want them to be the best agent they can be with our brokerage in whatever bucket they're in.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
Yeah, really, really good. You probably know my three pairs of closing questions are coming.

Speaker 3 (42:26):
I'm

Speaker 1 (42:26):
Going to ask them out loud anyway. For anyone who this might be their first episode. First of all, thank you for spending this time with me. What is your very favorite team to root for, or what is the best team you've been a member of?

Speaker 3 (42:40):
So my favorite team is probably my husband and I are a great yin and yang. He is very analytical. He does runs the numbers and everything for our team. I am all social based and we fit really well together. And my second favorite team would be Mod Squad.

Speaker 1 (42:59):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (43:00):
I love those people. It's such a great community. So they're my second favorite team.

Speaker 1 (43:04):
Cool. Love it. 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 (43:12):
So I am sure you've heard this one before, but it's my car. My first million dollar transaction. I bought myself a Mazda Miata and that a little red sports car convertible and I drive that to this day. I love that car. That was my first frivolous purchase.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
Cool. Through a Pittsburgh winter.

Speaker 3 (43:31):
I don't drive it in the winter. It doesn't do well in the winter. I'm pretty sure it's rear wheel drive, so it doesn't do well on ice.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
It's probably pretty lightweight too. Yes,

Speaker 3 (43:39):
It is. Yeah, that thing skis, but it's good during, it's easy because it's super small and it's easy to park in Pittsburgh, which is very, very hilly terrain. So I drive that when it's not freezing outside.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
Cool. Love it. Last one of course. What is your favorite activity when you're looking to rest, relax or recharge or what's your favorite activity when you are investing time in learning, growing and developing?

Speaker 3 (44:03):
So my favorite thing when I'm resting, relaxing, of course, I have to say my family, that's number one. But hanging out with my family, I love them, but sewing, I love to sew and I play the ukulele, so I like to do those kind of things. I'm very small. I'm only five foot tall, so you can't be this small without having to hem every single pair of clothes that you own.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
So it started out of necessity. It became a joy or a passion.

Speaker 3 (44:29):
Yes. Now I love to sew. I love to sew and craft and quilt and knit, and I have a sewing room in my house that's full of all kinds of wonderful, bright colored fabrics, and that is a happy zone for me. If I can be in my sewing room for a little bit each day, even if it's going into clean up a project that my kids tore apart, it just makes me happy.

Speaker 1 (44:50):
That's cool. You ever, I can't believe I'm asking another question. Have you ever worked with a buyer who said, this is a nice to have? It's not a must have, but I would love a sewing room.

Speaker 3 (45:01):
Oh yeah. And I'm like, oh, we are right on the same wavelength. Yeah. That's something to really, actually, I have a seller who is, they're building a house and one of their requirements in their new house is a sewing room. So I was like, oh, yes. We looked at quilts together and we bonded over that. I love that sort of thing, so yeah. Cool. I love when someone says they need a craft room. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
Thank you so much for spending this time with me. I hope you have a great rest of the experience here at Unlock, and I appreciate you making this happen.

Speaker 3 (45:32):
Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time, and I hope somebody gets some kind of aha moment maybe from watching this.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the things, we've had a ton, and this because watched or listened to a number of them. Do you watch or listen by the way?

Speaker 3 (45:47):
I usually listen

Speaker 1 (45:48):
Me, because

Speaker 3 (45:49):
I'm usually listen while I'm driving.

Speaker 1 (45:50):
That's me too. Everyone's like, you two is where I go, go throw my pockets. I'm like, well, we're going to put it there because a lot of people like it, but I'm also a going for a run or mowing the lawn or whatever, cleaning the house, keeping it my ears. We've had a lot of very large teams on, but your experience of getting building and then figuring out this next step that turned into buying into a brokerage so you could have more flexibility and use this wonderful tech stack that you all are putting together and help other people benefit from it as well. Yeah, we want to include all kinds of different stories on the show, and I'm sure someone got a great deal of value out of this.

Speaker 3 (46:28):
Oh, good. Anyone can contact me too. I know that since I'm in the Mod squad, a lot of people do, but they can always find me on teresa.com or social media or anything like that. Luckily, I have a weird name, so you can find me pretty easily. In fact, on Google, I outrank, if you just search my first name, I outrank the flower that is also named Theresa.

Speaker 1 (46:51):
Oh, interesting. I didn't know there was a Theresa, by the way, T-A-R-A-S a.com. Easy to find. And of course, I'll add a bunch of links down below in the YouTube description in the Apple Podcast and Spotify description. Or you can watch or listen anytime@realestateteamos.com. Those links will be down there too. Appreciate you.

Speaker 3 (47:10):
Yep. Appreciate you too. Thanks so much.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
Thanks for checking out this episode of Team Os. Get quick insights all the time by checking out real estate team Os on Instagram and on TikTok.