Speaker 1 (00:00):
What if the team leader is what's wrong with the real estate team today? And what if local team leaders became national coaches instead, would you join your own team and would you pay your own splits? These types of questions and thought exercises became conversations and theories and they've led Keith Anderson, co-founder and CEO of space to build a new kind of real estate team, their mission, the greatest agent experience on earth, their goal to support agents serving clients in all 50 states and in every metro area in the country. Learn the unique things that space is providing real estate agents and the new role that they're defining for team leaders. Check out Keith Anderson right now on real estate team os

Speaker 2 (00:45):
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 (01:00):
Keith, you and I were on a call, it was scheduled for 25 minutes and it went a lot longer than that. I was super compelled by your vision and more so even by the thought process behind that vision and the way that you're bringing that to life, so I'm excited to dive back into it. With that, welcome to real estate team os.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
Thank you. Yeah, excited to be here. Excited to jump in a little deeper. Hopefully not the same two and a half hour setup we had prior. Gordon sweeter maybe.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yeah, it will be. I just wrapped up a viewer and listener survey that's been out in the field and by the way, anyone ever wants to send me feedback, it's just ethan@followupboss.com. I'd love to hear from you, but people seem to prefer 30 to 45 minute episodes, so it will definitely not be that and if it is, we'll chop it and it'll be a whole month of Keith Anderson. Anyway, standard opener on the show is what's a must have characteristic of a high performing team?

Speaker 3 (01:48):
Humility. Humility. I think it's an egoless humble approach to servant leadership. I think it's a fundamental thing. Now you can have a great company and a great team without humility, but you won't be a next level generational affecting team, right? One of the reference points that I did with Jim Collins book, good to Great and they describe a level five leader and what that relates to, and it all comes down to humility in every single form and fashion. When you are serving others to serve yourself, it's felt, it's disingenuine like people understand and they see it, but when you're truly a humble base leader and you let ego go and you don't care what people think in regards to your own self-interests, it's pretty powerful. The impact in the lives you can change

Speaker 1 (02:40):
And I think the thing that probably gets in most people's way and right now I'm thinking about the social media humble brag, which we've all seen. We see it almost every single day. I think what's missing for a lot of those folks is that honesty with themselves about what their real motivations are, what's really driving them for you, how did, I don't want to spend too much time getting deep in here, but how did you learn to let go and really be in the right spots, doing the right things for the right reasons? A couple of practical tips on humility.

Speaker 3 (03:14):
Two major ones. The first one is I am a devout Christian. My love for Jesus Christ is beyond everything else that I do. So when you realize that everything you do is for someone else or something else that starts you out on the right foot for humility, even the air that I breathe is given to me. Nothing that I can do can earn any of those pieces. So when it starts there, you're already starting off on the right track of realizing, well, my best is as good as filthy rack, so nothing else really matters. So if I start there, it becomes the initial pieces, foundational pieces, you need to find a place of humility and I could go down the deep dive of being a father and seeing what that looks like with my kids and what that journey. But in reality, I think what really finally clicked from the real estate perspective of taking it from a humble approach, I looked at my bank account and at the end of the day if what I put out there on social media doesn't equal what that bank account looks like, then who am I?

Speaker 3 (04:15):
Why do I care what I share to the whole world? Because at the end of the day, if I'm poor in spirit or poor even in reality, then nothing of that matters. Then it's all for show and then I catch myself realizing I don't care how many agents I have, I don't care how much volume I did, I don't care how many units I closed, none of that really matters. Who did I impact? How many millionaires did I make? How many people's lives did I change? How many agent experience lifestyles did I affect in some form or fashion? That's what it really means to be humble is to realize that what you show doesn't really matter and if you keep finding yourself showing things that are irrelevant to the end goal, then what are you doing?

Speaker 1 (04:58):
Yeah, really good. I don't want to oversimplify it, but I hear a lot of actually walking the talk and then I would just double back on my own observation of being honest with yourself and it's really hard to do. I've challenged myself with that repeatedly for decades. I'm somewhere on that journey. Share a little bit about your own real estate journey. Just give us a quick run through how'd you get into the business and then how did you arrive at what space is today?

Speaker 3 (05:25):
Yeah, I started really young. I was 22 years old when I started in the real estate business and I was selling phones in the kiosk of Costco was my first legit big boy job type situation. I was good at sales, I just was always really good gravitating to people. I was a problem solver at heart and I jumped into real estate. I scoped that out and I looked at it as like I had a lot of people give me advice of might as well just go to the biggest industry, go from cell phones to real estate, it's a normal transition, skip the car phase. No one wants any part of that anyway, so just go right over to the big bones with the houses. I started on a real estate team. So from that viewpoint of being a part of a team, I unlocked that concept of the delegation of time, energy, and movement could create more volume than figuring it all out by yourself, right?

Speaker 3 (06:20):
It's just very simple an approach. Now, 10 years ago, the team model is vastly different than it is today, which is a big reason for a lot of my motivation and impact of the industry, but it unlocked that piece and I ended up selling 26 transactions in my first six months in the business very quick naturally, but again, it was because I was a part of a team, I would not have been able to do that without the team. So I saw that connection there of team equals more if pushed in the right direction, but still the format of that team wasn't satisfying my inner desire of doing something for other people. It wasn't very servant led. It was very enriching the leaders at the top, which most teams in today's organizations are. And so I thought that there was a better way to do it an agent focused way, which has led me to this nine year journey beyond that of how do I create a team that's focused on the agent?

Speaker 3 (07:18):
One of the big things that I told myself early on that I wanted to define our team by was would I work for my own team based on my talent? Would I be an agent on my own team, my own ecosystem? Would I pay my own splits for the value that I'm offering? Would I do it? And if my answer is yes, then I know my heart's in the right place and then I'm serving in the right way. But if at any point in time internally I say, no, this is not good enough for what I'm offering, then I'm doing something wrong. It's not fair and I can't sell that value proposition because I'm lying to those agents saying it's worth it because internally in my own heart it wouldn't be. And so that was the journey I took over the next decade growing the team was about how do I create an experience that is so much greater than what's currently available?

Speaker 1 (08:04):
I love flipping that question. I think so often, whether it's a team leader to the agent community or whether it's anyone selling anything to anyone, flipping the question of can I sell this to would I buy this? Can I sell this to would I buy? This is a really important flip and again, it goes to that kind honesty piece and am I willing to ask myself that question and answer it honestly? So I'd love for you to characterize space as it is today and feel free to forecast as we record this mid to late July. Feel free to forecast that to the end of the year if you want. But how would you describe space, market size, structure, culture, geography is a little bit fluid. Describe it however you would.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
I think the easiest way is very simple. It's one sentence, it's the greatest agent experience on earth. It's and simple. That is our mission, that is our core goal. That is everything we're trying to achieve. And one of the things I speak about all the time is today's the worst I'm ever going to be. Tomorrow we're going to be that much better and as competition in the industry, I'd be scared of that because every day I'm gaining momentum towards that journey of creating the greatest agent experience ever. And everything that we do is placed against that lens. Every single thing, every decision, every purchase, every hire. Does this person coming onto our team or staff create the greatest agent experience ever or is it leading towards that journey? If at any point in time something doesn't align to that mission, it's removed and we're very forward thinking in that box. So I think it's very easy to say that to Vine space. It's the greatest agent experience on earth and every day we're striving towards that.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
Now give us a little bit of what that looks like, not the experience piece but the organization itself. Just for context, for viewers and listeners, what is the shape of this real estate team?

Speaker 3 (09:56):
Yeah, we're a multi metro team, so we're in four different states currently looking to unlock all 50 states. So we're hoping to be the first organized actual team within a broker entity to actually navigate all 50 states and all the metros in the entire country. Our goal is built around the fact that if you're an agent, it shouldn't matter where you live, you should be able to do real estate alongside space at the highest agent experience level. And so when we actually do release this podcast, we'll probably be further along, but as we state today, we're currently open in California, Texas, Arizona, and Florida, and we're opening all the metros of those markets. So I think it's about 57 major metros that we're a part of and that we have established entities with and agent count with. And so yeah, we're growing and we're building and it's quite exciting to see this thing climb.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
You just gave a glimpse to folks what had me so compelled and interested and excited for you in our first unrecorded conversation. I just think it's super interesting that an agent in theory can be led inside this organization by someone who may be 500 miles away, go another layer deeper. How are you going to grow into the next four states, let's say?

Speaker 3 (11:16):
Yeah, it's a great concept that I think a lot of people did it backwards is they felt that leadership should be bound by the location that you're in. Today's team and model and team environment agents feel like they have to be led by someone that lives 15 minutes away from them. That doesn't necessarily mean the case. And so what that means is that you're always going to be bound by the leadership inside your marketplace. Look at it under the lens of the sports world. A lot of people are sports and fanatics involved in that stuff. Imagine if a professional organization for an NFL team, let's say I'm in Phoenix, I'm a Seattle Seahawk fan, but Arizona Cardinals are here, so I'll respect and we'll talk about the Cardinals. Imagine if the Cardinals only were able to recruit and grow an entity or a company within the Glendale, Arizona if that was the only market that they could find talent within and serve.

Speaker 3 (12:12):
And so then only people in Glendale, they could only ever become an Arizona cardinal. That was only the existence that's there. And so you're bound by that leadership, you're bound by that talent and so forth. It would be the same as saying Amazon or Intel. They're required or better yet, I guess going back to my grassroots in Seattle, if you're in Seattle and you're running the company of Boeing, you're only allowed to recruit talent that has grown up lives or currently is in Seattle. You can't outsource talent from across the world even if you know that someone's incredibly gifted in another marketplace. Sorry, that doesn't work. That doesn't exist. How is that the way that it's ran in the real estate industry, but yet every other industry in the entire world looks for talent and seeks talent for growth. It's just the way that it's done.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
And so it finally hit me like a light bulb when I was recruiting for a team leader in Ocala, Florida. So we're in this small market, central Florida, incredible people all over the place. However, they don't have this incredible level of real estate teams. There just isn't there. There's just not a lot of experience in the team led leadership, whereas just over a market away in Orlando, you have a lot more agent population. You have a lot more of mega icon team leaders and just mega leaders in itself. And my thought was that I had to hire a team leader in Ocala to serve the agents in Ocala or I had to go and find an agent in another marketplace and convince them to uproot their entire business, move to Ocala, which they would never really want to do if they left a big metro and then start and be my leader in Ocala.

Speaker 3 (13:53):
And it was at that moment where I realized I'm doing it wrong. This industry is not being served. That's not creating the greatest agent experience because an agent in Ocala deserves to be led by the best leader for them, not the best leader in Ocala for them. And that was that big aha moment where I was like, oh, it shouldn't matter. Would you not want to be led by the best period? It doesn't matter where they're at, it doesn't matter their gender or their race. None of it matters. I just want to be led by the best for what my business holds. And it was at that moment where I was like, it's incredible when you pair personalities together, legion traits and statuses in that way. If you're the best open house agent in the industry, why would you not want to learn from the best open house leader in the industry and so forth. So those synergies started to connect and I realized I'm not bound any longer, there's no strings on our organization any further, and we can scale this thing quickly, effectively, and massively.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
Something I think is super compelling about what you just shared is typically I'm just going to the agent side of this. It's like, okay, I've mastered the open house. I came up under someone who built their team around just absolutely being amazing at open houses just to pick up on your example, but now I'm ready for one or two more pillars in my business because I want more for myself and I want more for my business and I'm ready for what's next. And so now in a traditional format, I need to leave probably and go find someone who's going to teach me the next one or two pillars that I really want to learn so that I can take my business where I want to go. And so you've solved that issue or you're solving that issue, at least in concept with now I just change leaders inside, I get to stay in my market and I get to shop among all these other folks. So describe a little bit about that kind of if not a local team leader, then what, just from a logistics standpoint, talk about how you're thinking about it and then maybe if you find a way to weave it in how you arrived at that.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
So you said if not a local team leader, then to finish that statement, I would say then the best team leader, right? A big part of that mantra is I don't want what's accessible. I want the best.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (16:11):
And if I want to create the greatest agent experience, it's not about the greatest local agent experience. It's not about the greatest accessible agent experience, it's the greatest agent experience period.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
I'm also hearing now the greatest agent experience for me as an agent

Speaker 3 (16:29):
And

Speaker 1 (16:29):
A different greatest experience for her as an agent and a different experience for him, like a greatest experience for him as an

Speaker 3 (16:35):
Agent. And you evolve, right? So here's the problem with real estate teams in the traditional sense, they're built around something specific. They don't evolve with the agents as the agents evolve in their business. They're built specifically for a certain demographic and a certain length of time. But in order to have the greatest agent experience, you have to evolve with the agent and there should always be the next level to reach. There should always be the next status to hit. There should always be, I guess the next bucket to uncover or challenge to be accepted and to take on. And so what we realized that even in our marketplace, I was looking for bottlenecks, right? Part of my vision of a leader is to step outside bounds and to remove limiting beliefs and change the way I look at our model. And I realized I was running into bottlenecks because I could have the greatest product service-based team on earth in a market, but if I had the wrong leader for that individual, it did not matter.

Speaker 3 (17:32):
They would still leave my team and find a better leader or a different leader that better fit. It's not necessarily a reference of one's a better leader than the other, the best leader for that specific agent at that specific time in their life. Because again, there's four or five different variables that we're speaking to here. If you have an agent that at a certain point in time, like you said, open houses were their thing, once they've mastered that in the current market environment of the real estate team model, they got to leave that team and find someone that fits something better for them because tapped out all those resources. In our model we already have our coaches and our leaders, they're already serving in the format that they understand that an agent will transition and that's okay because they also have another agent up that's ready for them as a coach. But now that agent doesn't have to feel that negativity from shifting teams. They stay in their same ecosystem, they don't have to change brokerages, change teams rebrand, redo it all lives there. So that's a better agent experience for them if it's a click away from interviewing a leader that's now going to serve them at the next phase of their life based on the goals that they have today.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
So you have a roster of team leaders slash coaches who agents choose from and they can change at will.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
Yeah, it's all agent choice. Because here's the other thing that I realized. Our current model is not about the greatest agent experience. It's about the greatest team leader experience. Like everything we build is around them. So if it's not agent choice and it's team leader choice, then it's not creating that same mission that I'm shouting from the rooftop. So what we do is we base it off of the agent. Now the coach or the team leader always gets to verify if they want to engage in that relationship. I'm not forcing it upon any coach whatsoever. However, the agent leads it right when they're ready to move on or they feel like they want to be better served in a different way. They put in for essentially, I don't want to say relocation, but to replace to a new coach. And what's really cool is all of our coaches get their own profile and their own, all of the things about 'em, right?

Speaker 3 (19:41):
A full biography of who they are, video work, they're national coaches. They're not bound by market either, which is something we can touch on later. That's incredible. But in the same sense, an agent can now start the journey of looking for their next coach. Maybe at the beginning they had a national coach and they kind of want more of a local environment and a one-to-one relationship. Well, they can choose that too. If they want a local coach, they can choose. So if they want a national coach that specializes that's the best in one specific field, they can choose that too. And so they go through the placement journey again, where they based on their legion style, personality style and all of the things that they're looking for, we narrow that search for their three to five coaches that might best serve them in this stage in their life and business. And then they start that interviewing process with those coaches and find which one is best ready to serve them at their next goals.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
I'm thinking about this both from the team leader and the agent side. Why participate in a model like this? And you keep kind of unlocking different layers of it. The seamlessness for the agent seems very favorable. When I'm ready for what's next, I can get what's next. Talk about the operating system underneath all of this. How have you built the operating system or the tech stack or wherever the key pieces are in order to deliver the greatest agent experience?

Speaker 3 (21:03):
There's a few that are I think really important. So a lot of teams look at some of the value props that they offer. That's just to get a seat at the table. In order for you to be considered a team, you better have agent support, you better have training, you better have some sort of transaction process of some capacity, and you better have some sort of lead structure or lead management structure which comes in with follow up off and so forth. But then you take it up another level and it's how do you leverage those same tools to unleash a new complexity of what that box is? And so with what we're building, our vision is to be a billion dollar entity within the next three years, which is a pretty grand goal from the real estate team side of things. However, that requires a lot of work behind the scenes that most people just aren't aware of.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
I'm building a data warehouse to store and aggregate actual creative data that's behind the scenes using API integration technology to be able to manage and use data for the reference point of both leaders and for agents because data is only as good as what you can leverage it for. And if it sits in a box and you don't ever look at it, then there's no point of even having it. You might as well stop your capacity of time. And so a lot of that is about storing it, cleaning it, migrating it, and then digesting it into something that an agent can actually use or a leader can leverage to coach an agent forward. So that's a big piece that we're building is massive data warehousing right now and then building software off of that box using all of my other tech stack tools to integrate into it seamlessly.

Speaker 3 (22:33):
So that's one. I'm also using follow up Boss in a very unique way, which is kind of exciting given the ecosystem that you're in. We have two instances of follow-up boss, and we're really pushing the boundaries of what some of this stuff can do, and we're using obviously for the sales component and sales side of it, but I also use fab and in a completely different instance for my recruiting, coaching and agent management structure as well, allowing me the same versatility I love and fab for the sales side, but also from a digestion of agents and helping them navigate those next phases in their business. And so that plus extensive amount of project management tools like Asana, and we also operate as an EOS team. So we use an operating system in that light based on meeting cadence and things like that. But collectively, when they're all meshed really well together, you create this environment that is untapped potential.

Speaker 1 (23:27):
Talk a little bit more about that second instance of follow-up boss. I mean, I think it's pretty easy to understand the idea of attracting and engaging and potentially converting the right agents the same way as we do with the right buyers and sellers and using a fellow boss or A CRM in general to kind of track the stages of that relationship.

Speaker 3 (23:46):
So this is not a work for everybody solution. I don't believe it's worth it if you're a team smaller than maybe a hundred, I really don't. This is for expansive teams, truly enterprise mega teams, and then you can untap it most of the time. They also have their own solutions and different ways to go about doing things, but until you get to that size, there's really no point to build out a variable based CRM for your agent count, right? So I use it not only for the recruiting purposes, which could be used as such, but also agent management. So I'm leveraging my roster in there and kind of like a past client database would be building out retention and recruiting metrics around that. That's where it really unpacks is when you have enough agents to where you can use F at its fullest. Whereas if I had a smaller team, I'd probably just keep a Google sheet and keep it simple because the easiest trap we fall into as team leaders is complexity.

Speaker 3 (24:45):
If there's any advice that I would give every listener here on this podcast, don't overcomplicate it. Every time you hire a new person, add a new tool, add a new tech solution, you just multiplied your complexity by that number of entities or units. So the less is more concept is vastly important as you scale and build. And I've done more of a journey of removing things over this last year than I've ever done in my entire career, and it's when we're the biggest, which it just blows my mind in that sense. But going back to the follow-up off side of things, you can manage agents in a much, much bigger way when you unpack this concept that an agent is your client, right? When you become a team leader, when you step up into the next box, your client is no longer the customer, it's no longer the buyer or the seller. That's your agent's clients. That's one degree removed. And you as a leader have to realize that your client is the agent. That's who your sales channel is focused on. You're providing product for your client, the agent you are retaining your clients, the agents. And so why not use the most powerful CRM in the business to work your clients the same way we're teaching them to do it in a different degree. We're just doing it in the same format.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
I appreciate the call for simplicity. One of the things I get a lot directly, and again, I offer my email address off the top of this episode and I didn't offer it because I don't want to hear from people. One of the things I get very often in my inbox or on social is what tools do I need at what stages? You're obviously pulling back and what that suggests to me is you were reminded of your own commitment to simplicity or you felt burdened by complexity, but what advice would you give to an early stage team leader that's wondering when do I level up? Some people go from a spreadsheet into they're doing some stuff inside follow-up boss, maybe like, and then I need to go to an open to close or some other dedicated transaction. They're wondering when to step up in some of these different categories with tools and tech. What advice would you give those folks? Would you go to the point of, our team just can't take it anymore, we need to find a solution. Are you staying out a little bit ahead of it? How would you advise that?

Speaker 3 (27:01):
It's a great question, and my answer to you might be a little bit different than expected.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
Not surprised.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
The first thing that I would give as an advice to these team leaders, right? So we're assuming these are teams probably 10 to 20 agents, maybe less, right?

Speaker 1 (27:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:18):
I guess the first question I would ask them is, are you sure you want to do this? And it's important because the journey you're about to take when it comes to a product and a tech and an expansive journey of expenses that are about to come forth ahead of you, you have to really decide if building a massive team is actually what you want. Or if you're chasing the ego like we spoke about earlier, of what a team enlists if you will, you have to really get grounded in what your goals are because most of the time there's an easier approach to achieving that goal than just add. And I think that's where we get lost in that trap is we are preparing for what we want this thing to be, sometimes more than just doing the actions that actually get us to be able to afford what we want to be.

Speaker 3 (28:07):
And it's really easy in real estate because most of us are visionary leaders, so we're already thinking four steps ahead, which is great, but it's also got me in my biggest traps along the way. Scaling profitably is extremely important and understanding that before you go into your next box, don't think that once I get this next tool, then I'll be profitable. If you're in that trap, stop right now. Reverse, go the other direction, find profitability first, then start thinking about next steps of scaling that profitability number. I think one of the biggest mistakes that a lot of people make is actually hiring a transaction coordinator too early. A lot of the reading and the overall vision that a lot of people have given us is go hire that first executive assistant, that transaction coordinator, but people also lose sight on the variable profitability that a variable TC can offer, right?

Speaker 3 (28:57):
So if you're paying per file, you're only limited to a per file basis. So why not stretch that to the furthest extent until it's no longer profitable at a sustained scale? Then to think, oh, I'm at 10 files a month right now and I'm paying per file. If I hire a personal TC that did everything, maybe I can jump to the 20 files and then I can recapture that profitability at some point. But no one takes into account. Well, that's true, but what if your files go down from 10 to seven and now you're in the hole and now you're digging yourself out of this box that you never really was a part of. So I think what is important is to focus more on people than tech. I think that starts first. You need a good CRM right out the gates. That's a baseline of your business, but everything else can be done through people more than tech at the beginning.

Speaker 3 (29:48):
It's not until the cost of people become so outweighed that you should look at tech to replace or enhance the people that you have. And I would speak to that more. So you don't need a transaction management tool until the people you have a part of the system can't do it anymore individually and so forth. And I think it just happens with A CRM so quick because one agent's already maxed out on the capacity of what an agent can do. So that's why A CRM is needed day one. But a lot of the other products, tools, systems, they're right in front of you.

Speaker 1 (30:23):
Yeah, really good. So the other question I wanted to ask when we split off a little bit on F and recruiting, if you have your sites on being a billion dollar organization, what are some of the key roles that you have put in place that have allowed you to get to where you are and have a foundation to reach those heights and or what are a couple roles or functions that you have your site set on that will be required on that journey?

Speaker 3 (30:48):
As a visionary, you have this concept, and when you're building a business, especially as a team leader, you're essentially spinning a bunch of plates. You're balancing this, I guess circus act if you will, trying to manage and balance all these plates. As you scale and build a big company, you have to make a decision, do I want to hire someone to help me spin this plate, or do I want to give them the plate to spin themselves? That's a very unique complex thought process that you have to take in a journey because if you give a plate away and you ask them to spin it, it's never going to be spun like you would want it to be spun. So you better hope that you trust that person to most likely spin it better than you. They better be in a bucket or a field of strength that can spin it better than you, or you should never hire or hand off that plate until you find someone that can actually spin it better than you.

Speaker 3 (31:38):
If you can still spin it the best, then hire someone to help you spin, if that makes sense. And so the reason why I say that is because we as visionaries, again, as leaders, we're chasing this vision that someone else can do all of my work and I can just lead from this weird hypothetical chair, which is this kingdom chair and says, Hey, listen, I'm the king. You guys go do all of this stuff. I'm going to sit back and you let me know how it's going. And it doesn't exist in the team format because the complexities too intense and the margin of scalability and profitability is too tight. And so team leaders run this race where they think that that next hire is going to get them out of the box, but in reality, that next hire just opens up another hire that you need to hire again.

Speaker 3 (32:22):
And it's a never ending trap until you get to a certain size of scale, which has took me a decade to get to. And honestly, it's helped. Some team leaders may never get there, and that's why we get to that conversation of should you? But in theory, once we got to a certain, I think what we really untapped was a marketing team that was pretty powerful. So hiring A CMO for us was really, really big because that was a plate that I no longer had to spin and that I could trust someone else to level it up and spin that plate pretty heavily.

Speaker 3 (32:56):
The other one was growth recruiting side of things. And it's not just a recruiter, but the strategist behind recruiting and the demographic attack. So when you get to a certain level, in order for you to step back and look at the business and work on the business, you have to give away some of these plates. You cannot keep growing and spin all these plates and have people help her. You will burn out. And so the two big ones for me that was really, really big was giving away the marketing component of letting someone that's an incredible marketing mind, spin that plate. And then the growth aspect of I don't need to manage the people that are doing these interviews or attracting people anymore. The strategy of that can be inspired by me, but spun by someone else.

Speaker 1 (33:38):
Okay, give me two minutes on what agents are getting out of this marketing team led by A CMO and then after that, give me two minutes on the strategy of recruiting.

Speaker 3 (33:50):
So we do more for agents than probably most teams do we invest in that higher end side of agents? Our target demographic is our higher level agents that are already in production or in a different stage in their business. Primarily what we do is we do an entire brand build out for them. We spend thousands of dollars through our marketing team and through a natural brand specialist to build them out like a 60 page brand voice definition for them. So colors, logos, vibes, energy, content, even to the point of what text do you want, what fonts we go deep like you would as if Intel was defining what type of brand development they need. And then we completely take over meta for them and we do it all for 'em in that sense. So we do over 15 posts a month for them, curated custom to their brand, and then we also help them build their network database around their past clients and their current sphere of business.

Speaker 3 (34:43):
And so we actually message directly through meta and Instagram and Facebook and comment on their entire network audience for them on their behalf. We realize that all of the marketing efforts, 99% agents hate doing that, or they're not very good at it, one of the two. And so if we can just take that off our plate, why can't we empower our agents to spend more time doing their superpower, which is be out in the field spending and building relationships, which goes back full scope to creating a better agent experience as a whole is now they're not behind a computer, they're building relationships with their friends, their family, or spending more time with their friends and family. And then you spoke of the other two. What's the recruiting focus behind it? Well, that recruiting focus is about that, right? Is it's flipping the industry on its head.

Speaker 3 (35:29):
Our team specializes with agents that are on the next level of their business that are going to level up to an extreme level. Most teams focus on brand new agents and helping those agents grow and flourish, which we do as well. That is part of the agent experience is to help brand new agents move forward. But what happens is, is 90% of teams stop just there. They've become outgrown, and agents are always coming back asking for a split increase or asking for more concessions of things back, or they're eventually going to leave because they've outgrown their team's ability to grow them. We felt like it was important. If we wanted to create the greatest agent experience, then we better have a format that is un growable, right? We can't be outgrown in this model because we're always thinking of how do I improve an agent's ability no matter what level they're at in their business?

Speaker 3 (36:17):
And so with our recruiting strategy, we're targeting agents that are doing 12 to 25 transactions a year. And our target now is how can I help that agent do a hundred deals a year, remove all of the stuff that they hate in the real estate industry, give it to us. We're not going to increase our splits, we're not going to change anything, but let's invest in your business on our dime and then help you double, triple your business. But beyond that, it's all about your quality of life at the end of the day, are you spending more time with your friends and family? Are you spending more time with your kids? Are you able to actually coach your kids to sports teams, show up to birthday parties, take the family vacations, do those things because right now the industry says it's one or the other.

Speaker 3 (36:56):
Either you're going to sell real estate and make a lot of money, or you're going to be able to spend time with your money or your family, but you're going to be broke. So which one do you want? I thought that that was a pretty stupid thing about our industry and that we could change that and we could do it better. Why not have both? Why can't you have the quality of life that you want and still run a very profitable business that's on margins that no one individually could ever do, but collectively together as a team, we can empower you to make more money and spend more time with your family than you ever normally could.

Speaker 1 (37:25):
I'd love for you to share anything that we didn't touch on that you feel deeply compelled about that would make the industry better for agents and most importantly for clients. I think that's the ultimate thing. We serve agents in order to make better client experiences. In part, there's two sides of the same coin, but anything else that you've spent a lot of time testing, testing, beating up and have become very convicted about that we haven't touched on that you would like to share?

Speaker 3 (37:53):
Yeah. So for a long time I felt like the team model is broken in its core. I spoke about it a little bit earlier, 10 years ago, the way that teams were formatted or different than they are today. Something happened along that transition phase and being someone that has built this entire business around serving agents, I felt that weird desire in the middle where it's like, why is this broken? Why does this not work? Why do teams suffer? And I felt this way for a while that in every relationship of a normal standard team, which again, most of your audience is probably having a team of five agents upwards of 50 plus potentially, but in that middle ground, it's a struggle on one side or the other. Either a team leader without trying sometimes could be taken advantage of the agent experience on one side by taking aggressive splits.

Speaker 3 (38:42):
Now again, they're building a business. It's not on them at the end of the day, they're trying to make money for their family. But what that does is it creates a negative agent experience and the retention has issues. You're losing agents left and right. You're forcing agents to just do leads. You're not growing them to the level that they could be. Or maybe you're on the other side of that and you're like, man, all I do is serve. All I do is give, my agents have everything. They got good splits, they have good structure, it's great, but then you're broke. So if you don't put your oxygen mask on first on the plane, you're toast anyways. They could have the greatest experience ever. But when you're dead, that experience is gone, right? So there's no balance. And what I realized is what is causing that void in the middle of all of this?

Speaker 3 (39:26):
Why is the team model broken? Why is there so many people looking at how do I do better at my team? That's probably the hottest topic right now in the real estate industry, is how can I make my team better? How can I make more money? And I asked myself, well, what's the void? What's causing all of these issues regardless of team size? What's the one thing that's the same? And all of these teams, and what I came down to is it was the team leader. That team leader. When looking at it from a humble approach, at a certain point in time that team leader no longer gives value to the agent experience. And what's holding it up is the income that the team leader needs to make that puts pressure on the rest of the organization and take it from me. I'm a team leader.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
So when I had this conversation in my mind I was like, well, I can't eradicate myself. What's the point in that? But what I got down to is with economy of scale, collectively we can do it better and the team leader can finally win and so can the agent. And so for us, our vision was to shift it. What if it wasn't about the team leader anymore? Because what an agent really wants us to be coached, they want to be led. And 99% of the time, a team leader got into the business of leading agents because they wanted to coach and lead agents. They didn't want to deal with all of the organizational things that a team ran. And so that aha light bulb went on was, well, what if I could have coaches that could make a half a million dollars or more a year, they could travel the world and have the quality of life that they always envisioned, and they could do it on a rails of an organization that's dialed, that's systematic, that figured out all the other process pieces to where they just do their superpower, lead and coach and inspire agents, and they finally can make the money that they wanted to do that as long as they were willing and able to let go of the ego and the other components behind it, they were able to serve their family and make impact in the real estate industry.

Speaker 3 (41:21):
And that was the light bulb that went off. And now all of a sudden we have 30 plus coaches across the country and scaling agents are having an incredible experience where agents are making a half a million dollars a year, and then coaches are on track to do the, and now we're building an organization that is going to, in all reality, I think reshape the team leader model in the entire industry because if a team leader can actually make more money profitably with less overhead, with no risk, with less stress in their life, isn't that what they started the team to begin with, is to have a better quality of life. So that's our focus and our change that we're on that mission now is to create the greatest agent experience. And by doing so, if an agent has a great agent experience, guess what? The team leader ends up having a pretty good one as well. So it's a win.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
Really, really well done. That was great. If you want to connect with Keith one, of course, we'll have contact information down below in the description of this episode two, he will be at unlock as will I in November. You can go to unlock conference.com and check more of that out. He and I will be on a panel together about lead diversification. But now Keith, what's your very favorite team to root for besides space or what is the best team you've ever been a member of besides space?

Speaker 3 (42:34):
Oh man. So I'm going to flip it on you. I'm going to give you the worst team I've ever been

Speaker 1 (42:39):
Part of. I haven't had that before. I've excited

Speaker 3 (42:41):
Worst team, and it's not going to be in the same perspective. So when I first decided I wanted to drop out of college, I was on pace to be a math and physics double major. I was going down that route. Problem solver, didn't really like math, but I just liked complexity of things and trying to solve it. I was in my last math class, which was modern Diffy q and I was about to finish out. It was the last one on my agenda to get my degree. And we had a group class session. The professor stood up in front of us and said, Hey, okay everybody, let's get into pairs, let's get into teams now. And I stood up being the extrovert that I am, and I looked around the room and everybody's got their head down like this. No one would look at any other human in the room. I was the only one that stood up. I had to go find my teammates and basically beg them to Guys, we got to find a team, let's work together. That was my worst team experience by far on earth. And then after that class, I dropped the class because I was like, I'm not going to do life like this for the rest of my life.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
Those are your future colleagues if you stay on course.

Speaker 3 (43:48):
Yes. So big lesson for me was if I'm a part of a team or an organization that doesn't feed my soul, my energy, my life, why are you on it? Then just be a part of something that feeds your life, period.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
Yeah, good call. What is one of your most frivolous purchases, or what is a cheapskate habit you hold onto, even though you probably don't need to

Speaker 3 (44:08):
Shoes for whatever reason? My goodness, I will spend money on pointless things sometimes, but a pair of shoes, it will take me

Speaker 1 (44:17):
Like athletic shoes or any kind of shoes, any

Speaker 3 (44:19):
Kind of shoe. I'm still frustrated with the fact that a pair of shoes cost more than a hundred dollars, whereas vice versa. One of the normal things a lot of people are really frivolous on is a bed where it's like you spend a third of your life on a mattress, but yet, listen, I don't want to spend over a couple hundred dollars on this mattress, right? But yeah, no shoes. Shoes crush me. I don't know what it is. I can't wrap my mind around spending. I'll go to Costco and I'll buy a $30 pair of shoes and wear it around. I'm the guy that'll wear those new balances probably till I die if I'm in that box, just because what do I care?

Speaker 1 (44:54):
Well, it is getting crazy. I run and walk and hike a ton, a lot. And so I mean,

Speaker 3 (44:59):
Brooks for a pair of shoes that wear out in a month.

Speaker 1 (45:02):
Yeah, well, that's the thing is that they do wear out, but now they're like 180 bucks Brooks or on or nice solid running or trail shoes. Yeah, and you burn through 'em. Okay. What does it look like for you, Keith, when you're investing time in resting, relaxing, and recharging? What are you doing or what does it look like? What are you doing when you're investing time in learning, growing and developing?

Speaker 3 (45:24):
I love to golf. Golf's a big thing of challenging myself in that. And travel plus golf is a big win. So if I add travel, golf plus audiobook, I'm in a really, really good spot mentally. But when I'm challenging myself, I think for me, in reality, when it's less about relaxing, which is where the golf and those things come into play, when it's really about how do I think critically, how do I evolve as a human being, I don't think people are meant to be alone at all. No, part of that focus is about being by myself. And so I will take a theory or a thought and then I scrub it past as many human being or human beings as I possibly can, because my mindset is I don't know how that conversation with that human being is going to trigger something else that I wasn't thinking about prior.

Speaker 3 (46:13):
And 90% of the time, they're not even speaking about the thing that I was talking about. It was something else they said in a different way. And I'm like, oh, there it is. Lemme go down this route. And so I think people are scared to share their ideas, but in reality, by sharing your ideas, your idea is able to evolve and grow in ways that you never thought possible. And so for me now, when I challenge myself, my own limiting beliefs, my first instinct is I'm going to go tell everyone about it until I find someone to shut it down. And then when they shut it down, I'm now ready to take on the next thing. I guess. Here's a fun reference real quick. If you've seen the movie Incredibles, the original Incredibles, he goes to the island to fight this robot that literally learns from all the people that it's able to take on.

Speaker 3 (47:05):
I'm a dad of young toddlers, so listen, I'm in the incredible scope of things, but this concept is very true. If you're not scrubbing your idea past people until they defeat it, how can your idea ever evolve and grow? And over the course of time, it will get better. It will flourish, it will expand. And so by hiding it, it's always going to be a baseline idea. It'll never be past that. You need people to blow it up. And if you don't have people in your life that will challenge you, then I guess you better have a really good relationship with Chad GPT and let that roll out the rest of the way. Because without that, I mean complexity of thought is really, really big.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
Really well done. Great reference to, by the way. And gosh, maybe I'll link up the Incredibles down below so that people can watch it. I'll see if I can find that clip in particular. I always link stuff up down below. Keith, if someone wants to reach out, follow up on this conversation. What link should I include for you?

Speaker 3 (47:57):
Yeah, my website is great space re.com. You guys can go there. You can also find me on socials Keith Carl Anderson. Feel free. I'm an open book. You can Google me and text me. I'm pretty here to just serve people and just serve leaders. So at any point in time, I'm here for that.

Speaker 1 (48:15):
Awesome. Well done and absolute joy and privilege. I appreciate you spending this time with all of us, and I hope you have a great afternoon.

Speaker 3 (48:20):
Thanks, Ethan.

Speaker 2 (48:22):
Thanks for checking out this episode of Team Os. Get quick insights all the time by checking out real estate TM Os on Instagram and on TikTok.