Speaker 1 (00:00):
Are you building a real estate business that you actually love and are excited to continue investing in? Or is it one that you secretly want to burn down? Whichever way you lean. Lindsay Dreyer, founder of City Chic Real Estate and Happy Agent Co has helpful ideas for you in this conversation. Learn when, how, and why she built a brokerage rather than a team when, how and why she decided to run it remotely from about 500 miles away. And how that brokerage helps top performing agents by balancing lifestyle, personality and goals. Learn why intentionality beats team fever, how to build successfully as a people person or as a process person, what it takes to build systems that let you walk away without everything falling apart. Why she's a self-described zap aholic and the key pieces of their tech stack. With all that and more, enjoy Lindsay Dryer here on real estate team os no

Speaker 2 (00:52):
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 Beute.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Lindsay, I'm so excited to talk with you about the philosophy of building a business that you don't secretly want to burn down. This is something that of course you've developed, building your own boutique brokerage, which you now run remotely. You've also helped a ton of agents across the country build that type of a business for themselves and frankly, as the host of the show, I've heard that story a number of times and so we're going to be helping a lot of the team leaders that watch and listen to this show. And with all that, welcome to Real Estate team os.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
Thank you Ethan. So happy to be here.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah, I love your philosophy, I love your approach. We're going to talk about being happier. I think that's kind of a word that you've used to characterize your approach to the business. But before we get into those details, I'd love to know from you what is a must have characteristic of a high performing team?

Speaker 3 (01:54):
Alright, so I really think it comes down to you need to have a reason to actually be a team. I think that there's this intentionality that has to occur on why a team and why does it make sense for me to start one.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Okay. We're going to spend a few minutes here already, just how clear you were in communicating that. Why is this even a problem? Have you observed people starting teams that aren't clear on that? If so, what's their motivation? Is it, some of the things I've heard are the culture of the brokerage drives it or they see people around them and feel like I'm supposed to do that too. Take this from the problem side first. Why are people building things that they maybe probably shouldn't? And then how can someone assess for themselves whether or not it makes sense?

Speaker 3 (02:44):
I think that there's, I like to coin it as team fever. I think that Team Fever has taken over the industry in the past eight to 10 years. And I think it really just comes down to agents reach a point where they can't do it all themselves anymore and they need to scale. And they look around and they might read certain books and they realize that there's this model out there that's called teams and they're like, I need a buyer agent, I need an assistant I need, and they start just loading all of these people underneath them and they don't actually really think, why do I want a team? What is this team going to be and why do these people even want to be on my team? And I think so often real estate agents aren't great leaders, no offense, they're amazing tactical players in real estate, but they are not good at managing employees or managing talent. And I think that there are some agents who are incredible at that and those are usually the really successful team leads is they're great leaders and they like leading people and they're good at it. But I've seen so many real estate agents start teams and they are so dysfunctional because that leader is not leading. They really have just created this group of people that literally, that's just what it is. It's a group of people.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
Okay. So I actually just had this conversation with a gentleman who's kind of on my side of the business is served into it from a variety of different positions over maybe a decade's time, this kind of team fever period.

Speaker 4 (04:27):
And

Speaker 1 (04:28):
We were just talking about why some teams even at 40, 50, 60 agents are barely on the rails and others are like these well-oiled machines. And it really is this kind of leadership gap. I think some people maybe have it in them and it emerges as they build the team. And I think other people are maybe very fortunate in that they get someone early on that can be their partner in that side of it. I guess we'll call that visionary versus integrator at some level, maybe something like that. And then others are just doing it by brute force and instinct and they don't have those types of instincts to lead sound about, right?

Speaker 3 (05:08):
Yeah, that's absolutely right. And I think I was a little bit of a combination of both where I'm the oldest of four girls and so I think naturally I was a leader of really hard to manage ladies growing up, but I started my brokerage when I was 28 years old and I did not have leadership experience. And so I now have owned a brokerage for 14 years and I would say the first half of that was me just learning how to be an effective leader that people actually wanted to follow.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
So let's go there next then. How'd you get into the business and what was going on for you 2009, 2010, 2011 when you decided to start a brokerage?

Speaker 3 (05:49):
Sure. I was a senior at the University of Maryland in College Park and I really just wanted to make as much money as possible coming out of college. And I had two job offers. One was pharmaceutical sales and the other was selling McMansions with a national home builder. And I opted to sell McMansions because that just sounded more fun and less selling my soul to the devil. So that was 2004 and I was this bright eyed, bushy tailed, I looked like I was 12, like 21-year-old and I'm selling these 1 million, $2 million houses in Northern Virginia. And I'm not kidding you, someone actually asked me, are you old enough to drive? And I said,

Speaker 1 (06:34):
Yes, flattering. Now at the time,

Speaker 3 (06:35):
Frustrated. I'm very flattering now. I was 42. But yes, when I'm 21 I'm like, I am. And I actually said to them, I was like, I am and I'm old enough to sell you this 2 million house. And they loved that answer. So I was a little precocious but was really good at it and it was a really good bootcamp for me. They taught you mortgage, they taught you construction sales. So I really feel like I became this lean mean selling machine and the market

Speaker 1 (07:03):
Crashed really quickly. Why do you, sorry, why you think you were good at it?

Speaker 3 (07:08):
I think because I wanted to be, I really had the desire to build wealth honestly. I wanted to be successful.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
So there's that clear intent and motivation that you were talking about that's key to a successful team as well.

Speaker 3 (07:26):
Exactly. You have to know what you want out of something to be able to work for it. And I have seen so many agents come into this business and they don't know why they're doing it or why they want to work hard, but it goes back to having that strong why. So my why was pretty strong. I wanted to be independent. I didn't want to lean on my parents, I wanted to make my own money. And at 23 I purchased my first house, which was incredible. And unfortunately the market crashed a year later, so I was underwater on my house and stupidly enough I decided to buy another property because I wanted to be in a different neighborhood and I had two mortgages. The market was crashed. I hadn't seen a single soul in my model home for a month. And I'm like, we need to fix this.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
So I decided to just start selling homes as a realtor. So I quit my new construction job and I was living in a up and coming neighborhood in DC at the time, this was 2007. And the really positive thing about the crash was that it brought affordability back to the market for first time buyers. And at this point I was 25 years old, there were a bunch of people around me who were like, I want to buy a house, I just don't know how. And I'm like, I've done it twice. I'm 25, I can help you. And so I really started helping all of these. At that point, millennials and younger Gen Xers discover the magic of home ownership and that it was possible for them. And I did 6 million in sales my first year, which was incredible in this crappy downturn of a market. And I was using the internet, I was posting on Craigslist, I was hosting workshops, and it was really all about just helping first time buyers make their stake in the real estate market. So fast forward, I worked at a large corporate brokerage, huge behemoth. Then I worked at a mid-size boutique, and then I worked at a startup. And I like to say that I was like Goldilocks trying to find the right fit.

Speaker 3 (09:33):
And I realized that none of them really understood how to support a tech savvy millennial real estate agent who's a top producer. So

Speaker 1 (09:47):
It just wasn't on the radar. They didn't even think to do it or they maybe thought about doing it, but they didn't know. What do you think that gap

Speaker 3 (09:55):
Was? I think that's what it was. I think it was that leadership was older, managing brokers were older. I still remember one of my managing brokers telling me, there's my first one and she's like, there's no way you're getting leads on the internet. And I was like, watch me. And so there's just this disconnect of how people found their agent or what they wanted out of their agent. And I'm going to be really honest, at that time, there were agents who wouldn't step foot in certain neighborhoods in DC and I would go to any neighborhood, I didn't care. And so I think that it was almost like this changing of the guard that I happened to hit at a certain point. And I'm entrepreneurial by nature and I was like, I'm just going to, I'm very independent and I, I'm just going to start my own brokerage.

Speaker 3 (10:47):
So at 28, in 2011, I opened City Sheet Real Estate in DC and it was me and my best friend who is also an agent. And we had just the best time it was working with. And then we amassed some other agents. And I'll say those early years were a lot of just trial and error of figuring out the culture, trying to figure out what agents were a good fit for us, a lot of building out backend systems and support and trying to figure out what our value proposition was. And I did a lot of trial by fire learning. And so I don't really feel like we hit our stride until 20 16, 20 15, 20 16.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
So about five years of figuring out all the foundational layers of what's going on.

Speaker 3 (11:39):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
And the reason you went brokerage rather than team at that point was because Team Fever had not swept your mind in the market. No, it had not. Do you think if it was maybe 2015 that you would've considered the team route instead of the brokerage route?

Speaker 3 (11:56):
That's a really good question. I think if I could have found a broker or a brokerage that aligned with my values and aligned with how I saw things, I probably would've started a team. But I will say now, just owning a brokerage and we've been approached by a lot of brokerages, why don't you just roll into us? Why don't you roll into us the amount that the brokerage takes off the top? That's my profit. So financially that doesn't make any sense for me really at

Speaker 1 (12:27):
This

Speaker 3 (12:28):
Point. At

Speaker 1 (12:28):
This point,

Speaker 3 (12:29):
Yeah, at this stage I have everything working and humming along.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
So you did the hard work for four or five years to figure out who are we, what are we about? How do we operate? Who's a good fit for us? What happens when you hit your stride?

Speaker 3 (12:43):
We grow, we really just start attracting agents who are a good fit. And I will be honest, I'm one of those people where I'm slow to hire, quick to fire. We've created a 30 day onboarding process, we call it our 30 day challenge, where if you, and this is for newer agents who don't have an established book, but if you can't make it through our 30 day challenge, you're out. Because that's really, we're trying to give them a taste of what it's like to be a real estate agent that works full time and it's really challenging for some people. So we're bringing on new agents, we're bringing on experienced, I would say it's about a 50 50 mix and we're training people up and it's going well. I am really loving it. It's a great time. And then in 2017 we had this pretty crazy shift where I decided to move to New Hampshire and everything kind of changed priority wise.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
Okay, so we're going to get into that, but I would love for you to the motivation to move to New Hampshire. Did anything need to change or what was in place that allowed you to do that? We've only heard that story to my mind once on the show. It was Joe Oz who built his business in New Jersey and then moved to I think Orange County, or at least the LA metro area. And by the way, if anyone's interested, that's on episodes 33 and 35. He was a guest on both of those episodes. But before we get into what that was about for you and what was required inside the organization, while I'm also going to peel into what does that 30 days look like? How do you balance new versus experienced, but characterize city chic real estate, however you like as it is today here as we record this in 2025, like size, structure, culture, whatever you want to share about city chic. I'd love to just give some context for folks.

Speaker 3 (14:39):
Sure. So we are 12 real estate agents, licensed real estate agents. We cover DC, Maryland, and Virginia. We did about 72 million in volume last year. And we are not a team, heh, we really are a brokerage, but the reason for being and why our agents are with us is that we offer an immense amount of support on the backend that they can plug into. So that's admin support, marketing support, and transaction coordination. So my whole goal is that I want people to be able to be top producers and still have a life. So we really attract, I would say top solo agents or smaller partnerships where they don't want to build a team. So these are people who know that about themselves. They're not just going to be the one that just creates an amalgamation of people to just have them, but they're like, I need the support of a team. I don't want to run a team. And they just plug into our system basically, and I'm the one that manages the people on the backend for them.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
What do you think are a couple things that I'm thinking about an agent or an early stage team leader that's watching or listening right now that's wondering, am I going down the right path because you just introduced this idea, I am a top performing agent and I either know that I'm capable of building something bigger or I don't love the lifestyle that I'm in in order to produce these results, but I love the results that I want to keep producing these results, so I need to change something. How do I know whether I'm a top performer that needs to just work to find the right fit in someone else's organization and plug into someone else's situation or whether I should build my own thing? What are a couple of the characteristics or questions that someone should ask themselves to give them a sense of if we'll just call that a fork in the road, which direction might be the right one for me?

Speaker 3 (16:40):
I think one of the things you should look at is are you a people person or are you a process person? And I think so many real estate agents are people, people and they aren't necessarily process people. And I think in order to be a successful team lead, you need to either hire somebody to be your process person or you have to be the process person yourself. I personally am an insane process person. It's actually why I love running a real estate brokerage is the systems and the processes and the tech and all of that is one of my favorite things to do. So you have to have something that people can plug into. So I think about that. The other thing is do you love being in production or do you not love being in production? Or maybe you just love doing listings, but you don't like working with buyers.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
So knowing what parts of the business you really love and what parts of the business don't light you up as much is also a really good thing to look at. Because if you start a team and you start handing out all of your leads and you realize that you actually want to be selling all of those deals or you want to be working with all those clients, that's a really crappy place to be in. You don't want to be there. And then the other piece is you can always kind of try it out. So if you're at a brokerage and you're a solo top producer, bring in an agent that you could potentially bring in on a few deals as a buyer's agent or have a referral partner that you start referring things. So you don't have to go from zero to a hundred right away.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
You can kind of start practicing a little bit, start seeing if you feel like you can let go of control or see if you like sending certain deals out and keeping certain deals. So I think that there's this misunderstanding out there that you have to jump immediately into, I'm a team, but you can kind of test the waters. I love experimenting. So just do some experiments, see what it feels like, maybe team up with somebody on a deal or maybe hire a showing agent or get a transaction coordinator. But I do think running a team requires you to not only be good at managing people, but it also requires you to trust people and let go of some control, which is really, really hard for some people.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
Yeah, control is a major issue. I love that you used that word a couple of times in that take. And the other one is process orientation. Again, you either have to get the right person early and be patient with taking all the things out of your head and someone else turning it into something that other people can plug into or you need to be good or interested in doing that yourself. So 2017, you've built this brokerage. It's six years old, you've got all the foundation laid. It took you about four or five years to do that. And by foundation we mean culture, process, et cetera. Who are we right for? Who aren't we right for? And how do we make sure that the right-ish people

Speaker 1 (19:41):
Have the ramp they need to be productive in here, but you decide you want to head north to New Hampshire? What motivated that and then what needed to happen? When did you know that this was a viable, I'm sure it was a dream or an imagination for you for some period of time, but what did you need to have in place to know that that was a viable option in the moment? And then what else kind of got layered in to make sure that it would continue to be successful while you were, I don't know, at least a couple hundred miles away. My geography of the northeast is amazing. Oh,

Speaker 3 (20:14):
It's 500 ish. 500

Speaker 1 (20:16):
Ish. Okay. Yeah, there we go.

Speaker 3 (20:17):
So I will be honest with you, it was a 100% personal decision and I just had no interest in raising kids in the DC area. I grew up in New Hampshire in particular, this small town called Peter Guro, and it's actually the town that Grover's corners. The play was written after. It is just the most quintessential New England town. It's a wonderful place to grow up. I had my daughter in dc, she's two and a half years old. My husband actually had quit his job because his dad passed away. So he was going through this kind of soul searching of his own, and one day we were on vacation is summer of 2017, and that's when you always get your wild ideas is when you're on vacation and you're resting and you're away from the world. And I just said to him, I was drinking my coffee.

Speaker 3 (21:11):
I still remember we were on this houseboat and we were cruising the Erie Canal and I was like, Andrew, what if we just moved to New Hampshire now instead of three years from now? And he was like, yeah, why can't we? So we decided we were just going to do it. We had a vacation house already that we could kind of land that was going to be our lily pad, and I basically decided to list our house for sale, announced to my team, I'm moving to New Hampshire, and it was really this just massive leap of faith. And I like to say it was a leap of faith towards joy, and I really do believe that when you follow what you want in your heart and which you just want it so badly that you're just going to find a way to make it work. And so I didn't necessarily know how it was going to play out.

Speaker 3 (22:04):
I didn't know what was going to happen to the team. I kind of had prepared myself that the brokerage was just going to completely shut down. So that's like anytime I'm making a big move, I always prepare myself for worst case scenario. So worst case scenario was just city chic disappears and I just sell real estate in New Hampshire. It's always good backup plan, right? Go back into production. So I didn't have to do that. Luckily the team was like, no, this is fine. I don't even use the office anyway, we're all on Slack chatting. We do our team meetings virtual anyway, so we had already kind of been operating like a hybrid anyway, and I was traveling down to DC every other month to just check in, make sure everyone was okay. But what I realized was those trips actually didn't really do anything. And so I essentially flipped to just coming down every three to four times a year, so once a quarter, and that's kind of the cadence that we're at now. And it honestly COVID hit four years later and that was almost like we didn't even skip a beat. It was like, we've been doing this forever.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
I was going to hit that in case anyone watching or listening missed it, like this is way pre pandemic, almost anyone can imagine their ability to do it today. They might have some trepidation about it. Again, what you shared with the agents and things, but I think your agent reaction in 2017 is probably more likely today than it was in 2017. Oh, totally. I mean if you think about it, we do everything virtually anyway.

Speaker 3 (23:36):
This was before this was real. This was any of the virtual brokerages. And so I do remember a few people not inside the brokerage, but outside the brokerage, they were like, there's no way you can do this. You're going to be out of business in two to three years. And I was like, no. I was like, I'm going to make this work if I can.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
Yeah, I've already thought of the worst case scenario. Don't worry about it. Exactly.

Speaker 3 (23:58):
So you can't scare me. I'll be fine.

Speaker 1 (24:01):
Who are a couple of the key people or the key roles that allow things to be what they need to be on site or even that allowed you to be in this position where you could be a much more distant brokerage owner? What are a couple of key roles and or people and how you found those people?

Speaker 3 (24:22):
I think that really, it's kind of funny that we don't have a lot of heavy staff boots on the ground to be honest. I have one person who checks in on the office to make sure that the printer ink is there, the snacks are stocked, it's clean. They're basically there just to make sure the office is in presentable condition. And that's really it. The rest of my staff is remote, so our marketing and ops person is in Rochester, New York. Our transaction coordinator is a licensed agent with our brokerage, so she's local, but otherwise everything else is remote.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
Wow, okay. How long has your director of operations and marketing, I think, I don't know if I made that title up or not. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (25:05):
You got it.

Speaker 1 (25:06):
How long had that person, or has that person been remote

Speaker 3 (25:11):
The entire time she's been with us, which is eight years

Speaker 1 (25:13):
Marketing in a local market that you don't live in, clear that hurdle or solve that question for people? Sure.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
I will say it makes creating Instagram reels difficult, but social media is not a huge part of our marketing strategy. So our marketing person has been with us for so long that she knows the local market, and she's our ops person too. So she sees all the deals that come in, she sees what they sell for, she is in touch with what's happening, and if she doesn't feel like if she needs information, she'll ask the agents or she'll ask me. So she's a process person. She also happens to be my sister, but she is very detail oriented and so she doesn't know something she's going to ask somebody. So I mean it works. There's definitely limitations, but I would say we have someone who will go out and film reels for us if we need them, and that's boots on the ground. So we just kind of make it work. I think a lot of times agents or people in general will just say, there's no way that can work. Instead of just thinking, how could this work? How can we make this

Speaker 1 (26:23):
Work? Yeah, really good. Okay. What is your role today? I feel like you've put yourself in a position to be who you want to be relative to your brokerage. What is that approximately?

Speaker 3 (26:37):
Sure. So I am pretty high level at this point. I really do our coaching. I'm still the managing broker, so if deals are blowing up, I'm dealing with that, making sure that if there's any new tech or systems or marketing efforts or anything like that. So I'll think a lot of it's like I get to be really the true CEO and that's really a nice place to be. I'm not in production, which is nice. So I really am just working behind the scenes to make sure that the agents are supported, that the system they're plugging into works and also just evaluating any other things that might make us more efficient or make us a better place to work.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
Cool. Okay. What is your value prop that you landed on? I think when we talked earlier, it's like three buckets of leverage, like marketing, TC and admin. I dunno if I got that exactly right, but when you're talking with folks, what are you promising them and what are you delivering for them and where does that fit from a competitive perspective relative to other options?

Speaker 3 (27:44):
The first thing is just plugging into a system that works. So that's going to be a tech stack that is simple but also is effective. So follow up Boss obviously is on that list. Love you guys have been with you forever and ever. We also have Real Scout and those are our two main pieces that we're using to nurture, to keep track of everything. So they're able to plug in and just really take all of the stuff we've already built there and then just use it. The next is our marketing support. So we really have an in-house marketing agency essentially. And one, I think I'm very proud of the sphere marketing we do. So one of the things that we have is our referral Boost program. And so one of the challenges real estate agents have is they just do not consistently market to their database.

Speaker 3 (28:37):
It is a massive problem. So we send out a monthly postcard that has the agent's info on it. It's designed, so it's not cookie cutter, it's very specific to our market and what's going on. So we have that go out monthly. We have a really good email newsletter that has thoughts on the market articles, events that are happening, our listings. So we have a very low unsubscribe rate and high open rate on that, which is great. We also have quarterly gifts that they can sign up for, and we're making sure that they're basically in front of their sphere as much as we can get them in front of their sphere. We also do custom branded moving kits for every buyer and seller that are under contract, and that's included. And the thing is the agents don't have to even order this stuff, we're just ordering it for them.

Speaker 3 (29:31):
So at closing, we're scheduling a settlement statement to go out at tax time, so they don't have to do that. We're also updating the CRM for them. They don't have to go in and make sure the address is correct or the tags are correct. So my theory is that if you can push the button for them, push the button, and that's really what it's all about is that agents are busy, they have a lot to keep track of already. And so if we can take the admin, the marketing, the TC stuff off of their plate, that gives them more time to sell and build relationships with new clients or current clients or past clients. And I feel like that's where real estate agents need the most support is that admin, TC and marketing. And so for example, we have a team, they want to do a team event or if agents want to do some kind of event for past clients, they're basically just ordering that from us. So we're like, alright, here's the invite, here's the landing page, here's the RSVPs, here's the X, Y, Z. And so we're trying to make it as easy as possible for our agents to get more business and service that business and then after close stay in touch with them.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
Love it. Quick plug. Thank you for enduring this in advance, Lindsay, episode 48, I believe is the number. It was definitely December of 2024. I had Andrew Flacker of RealScout on the show. We walk through all of the findings in the team's report. It's like a 40 or 50 question dive that hundreds and hundreds, I think over a thousand at this point. But when we were looking at results, it was from hundreds of team leaders and there's a clear quantification of the problem that you highlighted and that you have designed marketing and systems to support, which is staying in touch with people. It's where almost all of our business comes from, and yet it's one of the places that we spend the least amount of time and money in general. And so that problem is quantified in that team's report. So be sure to check that one out with intra Flack nerve RealScout. Lindsay, you mentioned that you are bringing newer agents onto the team that's part of the set of partnerships that you develop. As you said, they may not have their book of business yet, so you have this 30 day program to make sure that this is going to work for them and work for you. What are the elements of that 30 day program and do you have any lead support for someone who doesn't have their own book of business?

Speaker 3 (31:48):
Sure. So the 30 day program is really just the nuts and bolts of being a real estate agent and doing real estate. So it involves going through our five modules, which are basically how to work with buyers. And we also do how to work with renters, which I think makes us a little unique, especially in the DC market. We have a pretty transient population and the price points are very good. So working with renters can be an incredible way to get quick business and also build your sphere at the same time. The 30 day challenge includes previewing property writing, sample contracts, doing neighborhood profiles, shadowing, home inspection, shadowing, closing, and it's really all about just getting them out there to see what being a real estate agent is about. Because I really feel like so many people enter the business as a new agent and they literally have no idea.

Speaker 3 (32:40):
They have watched HGTV or selling Sunset or whatever and they think it's going to be this glam. I just sit and people come to me. And so it's really about showing them how hard it is. And I'm pretty honest, so I think I scare more of the new agents than the ones that make it past my interview process. I'm like, all right, well I'm glad I didn't scare you off, but I tried. So I always tell them it takes three years to really ramp up a real estate business. And years one and two are really, really hard. You have to be working, it has to be a 40 hour a week job. So that's the 30 days. And then if they make it past the 30 days, that's when we put them on our rental leads. So all new agents go on our rentals because we have a lot of them coming in.

Speaker 3 (33:29):
And we have a unique rental process where we actually charge a non-refundable retainer to work with us. So the agent, if a client starts touring with them, that agent is guaranteed income, which is I think really important. And then there's obviously a success fee on top of that that they receive as well. So I have found that the agents that ramp up with rentals and are willing to work them, those tend to be the best agents that I feel comfortable flipping sales leads to or giving open houses to or really trusting them with opportunities. So we are not a lead farm. I am really passionate on teaching people how to fish and nurture a sphere and create opportunities for themselves.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
Really good. Obviously we're not very far away from Tech Temp. We theme the show in September to Tech Temp, and I feel like that sphere orientation and that relationship orientation, I think that F RealScout combo is really powerful. I'd love for you to share and not a plug for either company, but how did you find Follow-Up Boss? You've been with us for over a decade I think, or approximately a decade. How did you find it and why have you stuck with it? What is it about that? I assume that it's part of that as integration. So talk about CRM from a high level and why FBOs is the CRM of choice and maybe then we'll get into a couple of tech tips.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
Sure. So back in the day, I tried out a lot of different CRMs and I even tried Salesforce to be honest with you. So I really was isn't not crazy like a battle. It was a horrible choice, not a good choice. So I always think it's like you need to know what your goals are going into a software purchase and I have bought so many pieces of software, it's unreal to me. So my goals with the CRM was I wanted it to be easy for the agents to use. I wanted it to integrate with the technology that we were using and also have future integration possibilities. And that was Follow-Up Bus delivered on all of that. And it always has. And so I remember, I don't even remember what the year was, but I love having an open architecture kind of system because you can always take the best in class of whatever piece of software you need and plug it in and follow-up.

Speaker 3 (35:58):
Boss has always played well with others and that is part of why I love it and I probably will never get rid of it, is that it has always been easy to integrate with whatever I've needed to integrate it with. So I remember Zapier came on the scene and it was just like I was zapping everything to follow up Boss. It was awesome. I was a Zap aholic. And so that was just such a great, that was kind of when I fell in love mostly with Follow-Up Boss was when I was able to zap everything in. And so then that became like, alright, well if you don't have a Zapier integration, I can't plug even to follow-up Boss, so I'm not using you. And I remember I was talking to Andrew Lachner forever and I'm like, when are you integrating with Follow-Up Boss? I would actually just email him occasionally and be like, Hey, when's that happening? Hey, when's that happening? So when that integration came became live, that was a dream come true for me because I really always loved Real Scout. I was one of the OGs of Real Scout too. And then when Follow-up Boston Real Scout started playing well together, I was just because I was zapping, it was a lot of Zaps. My monthly usage was pretty insane from Real Scout. So when that came live, it's like, oh, sold, I'm in heaven.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
I have not heard Zap aholic before. I really love that. For folks that aren't familiar, tools like Zapier or Make are essentially what I would call middleware. I don't know how common that term is. It may be very common, but essentially if there's not a direct integration as there is now with Follow Up Boss, a couple few hundred other pieces of software, you can use this kind of middleware to write if then rule sets where if this happens over here, make this happen over in Follow Up Boss, or if this happens in Follow Up Boss, then trigger this thing over there so that open API and that ability to work with best in class software no matter what that is, and to be excellent at what we're excellent at, which is CRM and not try to be a second or third rate, this, that and the other thing, just to be the best at what we are. Let anything else plug into it. I'm glad that that philosophy A stood out to you back then and has continued to provide value to you today. Is there anything from a tech or system perspective that today that you wish you knew two or three years ago?

Speaker 3 (38:13):
I think it probably comes down to being really clear on what my use case is. So what I was saying before was I was very into shiny objects early on and the add-on to the shiny objects is your agents probably aren't going to use it. So if you're buying for a team or for a brokerage, you have to be really clear on how your agents are going to use it and be really realistic if they actually are going to use it. That's why our tech stack used to be very complicated. We used to have five or six pieces of software that the agents had access to, and what I realized was they weren't using it. So why am I paying for it now? I'm just a lot more intentional about, I might think it's sexy, I might think it's the most amazing thing on earth. If I were an agent I would use it. But as a brokerage owner, if I deploy this, am I going to have adoption and is it going to really do what I need it to do? And what I've realized is there's actually not a lot of software out there that my agents necessarily need to be effective.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
I love that. I just want to double down on this idea of being very clear on the use case and the value. I love this orientation towards simplicity because it's easier to train. Again, the theme that we've been talking about here is a system that someone can plug into and get moving right away, and I think the more complicated it is, the more expensive it is, and B, the less use you'll get of the whole system that someone's plugging into. I would assume that agents within Citi CH have some freedom to, if they do want to one off something, they can go

Speaker 3 (39:56):
For it.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
Yeah,

Speaker 3 (39:57):
Yeah, go for it. Our tc, we're playing around right now with different TC software that she might start using. So again, there's a use case there. I'm not going to deploy it to everybody in the brokerage, but specifically for our tc, I think we're getting to a point where our current system, we're kind of outgrowing it, so I'm evaluating what might make sense for her. So yeah, again, I used to be like, let's throw all, I want to be the most tech, I want all the tech, I want everything, but I love simplicity now it's streamlined and I want them to use it and get value out of it.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
So many benefits to doing that. I think that's probably an assessment that someone should be doing here at earliest opportunity because most tools are probably by seat and

Speaker 3 (40:44):
Yes,

Speaker 1 (40:44):
There's no reason to have seats that 80% of people aren't using and that makes it more difficult to train. It's another module, et cetera. I'm sure it's hard for some people too. They might say, we have this, we have that. We have the other thing, you should come over and this might be good From the outside, it's so many things. It's like a lot of advertising historically, it's this, it's that. It's the other thing, but wait, there's more. And then it's like ultimately you order it and you're like, I didn't need any of those. I want to transition into a little bit Happy Agent. So Happy Agent Co is how you coach people. Happy Agent podcast, happy. I think I'm going to capture this correctly, but it's based on lifestyle, personality and someone's goals. I want to have this happy conversation in the context of finding the right team or brokerage situation for you and your personality, the lifestyle you're looking to lead and your personal goals. But start high level, what is a happy agent and what is an unhappy agent?

Speaker 3 (41:43):
Oh my gosh, okay, so a happy agent is someone who loves their life and loves their business and the two work together in harmony. I'm not going to say a hundred percent of the time, but majority of the time you are really loving your work and you are really able to love your life. That's really what it comes down to. I don't know the exact stat, but there's something that came out. I think it was like 87% of real estate agents have depression or something. It was like this crazy stat and

Speaker 1 (42:15):
Really stuck. I'll tell you, 87% is the exact number, exact share of agents that are out of the business within five years, and that's due to a variety

Speaker 3 (42:23):
Of doctors,

Speaker 1 (42:23):
But I'm sure dissatisfaction is part of it.

Speaker 3 (42:26):
There we go. But also I was seeing it around me too was that everyone was just miserable. They don't like these businesses they built, they don't think that there's another choice. It's always more, more, more, more, more and more. And I really think it's about getting intentional about what you want in your life and in your business. And so that's really what it's about is a happy agent is someone who really pays attention to what they enjoy. They pay attention to why are they in this business? They pay attention to what do I love doing in my life and how does real estate enable me to do more of that? And so I don't think that's a conversation. We're having enough in real estate, which is we do real estate to live our lives. We don't live to do real estate or at least I hope you're not because you got to flip that.

Speaker 3 (43:23):
So it's again, I want to be one of those real estate coaches, which is kind of counterintuitive, which is I'm not going to tell you to just make your calls. I'm not going to tell you you have to call a hundred people today or open a phone book or whatever. It starts with I have the Happy Agent method and the first step is start with joy. We're going to go through and figure out what do you enjoy in your life and what do you enjoy in your business and how can we figure out how to set up the systems, the marketing, the processes to get you to do more of that?

Speaker 1 (43:56):
How do you help talk people through the process of finding their right fit? When we talk about personality and preferred lifestyle and goals, that's as unique as there are people in the business. There are as many combinations of those three things. Everyone, you're not one in a million, you're one of a kind. And so there are lots of different ways to do this on both sides of the relationship. I think specifically for our primary audience, which is a team leader, secondarily brokerage owner, and then third is an agent or aspiring team leader or someone who is this person that we've been talking about all along, which is like, I'm standing at the fork in the road. Which way should I go and or I'm 15 steps down the road, am I going in the right direction or should I back up and go the other way? And you've already given some good advice on that, but every team in brokerage is unique, every agent is unique, and this finding a fit between those two is so important and I think challenging, but I assume you've helped people at least think through it many times.

Speaker 3 (44:54):
Definitely. So I think lifestyle is probably the most important because you need to really figure out how many hours are you able to work per week, when are you able to work those hours? And that's where real estate needs to fit into your life. Now I am a very busy mom of three children. There are four, six, and 10. I want to be able to have dinner with them every night. I want to be able to hang out with them on the weekend. And money isn't necessarily my top goal right now in my life. If I wanted to just crush it, make as much money as possible, then I probably wouldn't necessarily be showing up as my best self for my family. So lifestyle goals, that's important. Now, as we talked about earlier, when I was 21 years old, I had no children, I had no partner.

Speaker 3 (45:45):
I just wanted to crush and I did. And so knowing where you're at with your life and how much you want to be working, that's really important. Then you have to go to your personality. So are you a type A person? Are you type B? Are you comfortable with authority? Are you not comfortable with authority? Do you prefer to make up your own system to work within or do you like to plug into someone? So just knowing who you are as a person and what kind of environments you thrive in, that's really important. Are you into that hyper competitive? Everyone has an ego? Does that drive you? There's some people that really drives them. They want to just be the best and they want to compete and they want to get to the top. Then there's other people who are like, I just want to love everyone I work with.

Speaker 3 (46:32):
I just want to be in a collaborative environment. I just want to feel like I'm best friends with everybody. And so knowing your personality and where you thrive and what kind of environment you thrive in, that's really important. And then also your goals. Like I said earlier, I don't necessarily need to make the most money. I want to make a good living obviously, but I don't need to be making $700,000 a year at this point in my life. What's more important to me is that I show up for my family and I have that balance between my family, my partner, me being able to spend time with myself, showing up for my team. I feel like everything is pretty much I balance for me right now and I don't want to rock that boat too much. So just kind of knowing where you're at I think is just a really important thing when you're factoring where should I work or what's the best fit for, because I think so often we assume in our industry, everyone wants to be number one. Everyone wants to make a million dollars, everyone wants to drive a gwa, everyone wants to whatever. It's like I drive a 2018 paid off Honda Odyssey and I'm really fine with that.

Speaker 1 (47:51):
Yeah, I love that. I love that breakdown and I think if someone is clear in themselves as if they are looking for a new team or a brokerage or a place to build their business and to be their best selves, being clear on that. And then from the team leader and brokerage owner perspective, if you're clear on yourself and you're interviewing with somebody or you are interviewing someone, by the way, the team leader or a brokerage owner works for the agent, that's part of how the business partnership works.

Speaker 4 (48:17):
It's true,

Speaker 1 (48:17):
Totally. You look for each other, you are partners in a business and that business is yours and you're deciding where to dock or anchor or whatever. Being clear on that and reading that situation and coming with questions that are going to match what you need. And you can only ask those right questions. One, if you're comfortable and confident about who you are and where you stand on those three criteria you laid out and talked through, and it allows you to develop questions and be bold enough to ask those questions knowing that you want the right situation. You don't just want this situation. But I feel like in a lot of cases, especially younger agents, they feel like they're interviewing to land a position versus interviewing to find the right fit.

Speaker 3 (49:00):
Exactly. The last thing I want is someone to come onto my team and then having them be the wrong fit. And I think a lot of agents, they get into this business because they don't want to be micromanaged, and a lot of times agents are joining a team and they're getting micromanaged because either it's Zillow leads or they need to make calls or whatever. And so knowing that about your team, if that's the way you run your team, you need to make sure you're bringing people on who are okay being managed, because I do think a lot of people get into this business to not be managed

Speaker 1 (49:38):
Even as we're coming to a close, you just opened up something that I think is a rich point of conversation, which I think a lot of people think that's what they want, but they're not prepared to be successful with complete freedom. Exactly. Some us, their own book of business and has 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 years behind them of relative success, moderate, at least they can probably afford a lot more freedom and control, but I think a lot of younger agents come in thinking that they're just psyched to be their own boss and they realize they're just not prepared to do so. And so the team model is fantastic for a really plug and play, do this, do this, do this is super helpful for a lot of folks. We're wrapping up a series or wrapped up a series of panel discussions. The first panels we've done on the show, and one of those panels was four agents.

Speaker 1 (50:25):
All four of them started on teams. Two of them have continued to thrive and love that environment and it's been the right fit for them. One of them has built a team inside the team. The other one's a pod leader. They both love their lives and businesses. The two others realized I would much rather do this solo, but that both of them said I could not have been successful as a solo agent without that foundation because of some of the stuff that I learned on the way. Anyway, Lindsay, this has been a pleasure. I'm so glad that we connected me. I do have three pair of posing questions before I let you go off into your Friday. We're recording this on a Friday. I wish you a wonderful weekend in advance. Lindsay, what is your very favorite team to root for besides C Chic or Happy Agent Co or what is the best team you've ever been a member of your favorite team to root for or the best team you've ever been a member of?

Speaker 3 (51:09):
So I'm pretty feral, so I haven't been a member of a lot of teams, but I'll say my favorite team that I have been a part of is my marriage with my husband. He is the ultimate teammate, the ultimate cheerleader, and I just would not be where I am without him.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
Love it. Well done. What is one of your most frivolous purchases? And I don't think it's the Honda Odyssey that seems very practical. It's not Or what is a cheapskate habit you've held onto even though you probably

Speaker 3 (51:38):
Didn't we're on frivolous purchase, Ethan? So it is definitely my $10,000 refrigerator when we did our remodel. It is literally like a walk-in closet for your food. I'm obsessed with it. It's so great.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
Okay, I know what I'm doing after I hit stop on this and we part ways for the conversation I'm going to see because I actually need a refrigerator right now. So I've been looking at them and in my mind, 3,500 is top of the line, but I need to see what $10,000 gets. Last one. What does it look like for you, Lindsay, when you are resting, relaxing, and recharging? What are you doing or what does it look like for you? What are you doing when you're investing time in learning, growing and developing?

Speaker 3 (52:21):
I am a massive, massive fan of resting, relaxing, and recharging. I think it is crucial. I take at least three retreats a year solo, and those usually are long weekends and I just unplug and just check out and I always find that I come back a better mom, a better wife, a better human, a better boss, and I just think it is really important to have that rest time.

Speaker 1 (52:50):
I relate to feral. I always say I'm not a joiner. Feral is something I might adopt and then also some solitude I've found to be very helpful as well. Just truly unplugged too. This has been awesome. I appreciate you so much. If someone wants to learn more about you or about your brokerage or about becoming a happy agent, where are some places you would send folks?

Speaker 3 (53:12):
Sure. So my Instagram is definitely a great place to go. It is Lindsay dot dryer. If you want to check out the website, it's happy agent.co and the brokerage website is citi chic realestate.com.

Speaker 1 (53:26):
All of those are linked up right down below. Whether you're watching in YouTube, you're watching or listening in Spotify, you're listening to Apple Podcasts or you're watching or listening on the website, realestate team os.com. That's all linked up down below. Lindsay, I wish you continued success. Thanks so much for being here.

Speaker 3 (53:40):
Thanks you, Rocky, Ethan and love follow up us.

Speaker 2 (53:43):
Thanks for checking out this episode of Team Os. For email exclusive insights every week, sign up@realestateteamos.com.