Speaker 1 (00:00):
What does it take to build a real estate partnership that lasts one that's built to endure all types of markets, to serve all types of clients and to stand the test of time. Some of the components like shared vision and values and great people are pretty intuitive, but others like valuations, management agreements and unified brands are a little bit less. So Mike Hines joins us to share lessons learned in partnering with Scott Oiler to form Oiler Hines an incredibly productive team. The value of EOS in getting the foundation right early signs that forming a partnership makes sense, getting the financials and leadership right, tripling your branding budget, but still having it be the best money you've ever spent. Plus tips on per agent productivity and selling new construction right now with Mike Hines on Real Estate Team os,

Speaker 2 (00:50):
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 (01:05):
Mike, thank you so much for spending time talking about these episodes within your leadership team. Thank you for spending time with me to make an episode yourself. Welcome to Real Estate Team os

Speaker 3 (01:15):
Ethan, it's awesome to be here. Of course, I'm excited to be on here. I literally listen every single week and I know we've talked about that a little bit, but I was just telling you I hope I don't screw this up. I hope it's a value add to everybody and thanks for having me aboard.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yeah, I know it will be just based on our previous conversations and some of our email exchanges, not to be too indulgent right off the top, but so I can produce a better show and maybe so that someone who's newer to the show can orient themselves. What is it that you all are looking for and finding in these conversations as you're building Oiler Heinz?

Speaker 3 (01:48):
We talk about this quite a bit, is unfortunately there's not a whole lot of other groups and teams that are exactly similar to us out there, so we can only take pieces from others and learn from others, and your network only goes so far. So what you're doing kind of with real estate team os is we're able to hear teams all across the country and the world and we're able to dive into certain issues maybe at that time that are really, really relevant to us because you know how it changes from quarter to quarter. We have different issues, so it's nice we can actually pull in just experiences that they're going through and it might only be 5% of what they chose to do that we can pull in that affects us. But what's so nice is you get to hear every single week to hear somebody's new story, what's important to them, how they do business and make it your own. So it's nice because other than masterminds, other than reading, other than taking outside industries into our world, there's not a whole lot of places that we can land and figure out what we're doing and hear from other experts that do things better than we do. So we really appreciate it. We really listen every single week, so thank you.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Thank you for that. Emily, you spoke a little bit to kind of, one of the ways I think about it, I think about a couple of different ways. One is it's the how I built this of real estate. I love how I built this. It's a great show.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
I'm a big

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Fan.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
Yes,

Speaker 1 (03:00):
And then the other one is everyone talks about the power of being in the room, being masterminds, but that's X number of times a year. If you're really lucky, it's a call a week or a call a month, but in general it's not as steady as here's a steady stream, constant stream of different people for doing different things at different sizes, at different stages of the journey. So really happy for that feedback. So you know where we always start. So I'd love to know from you, Mike, what is a must have characteristic of a high performing team?

Speaker 3 (03:31):
I thought about this a lot and I've actually been having this conversation quite a bit even before you ask this question and before we even, obviously every episode starts this way, but I'd say the number one most important aspect is shared values. And I'd put at one B is shared vision, but I say values because if everybody on your leadership team and on your team's not aligned with how they want to cater to their clientele and how they want to handle their business as far as a value sake, then I don't know if it would be everybody wouldn't be rowing in the same direction. So I think when we make decisions, we're all fairly aligned because we know what our values are and then of course we also know our North Star so we know where we're headed. So when you have values and vision align, I think it really helps you get where you're going faster. And it's not easy by the way. It takes a long time to maybe get there, but I really like the idea of shared values. I think it's really truly important not just in business but also personally throughout so many aspects of my life and other people's lives out there.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
Love it. Totally agree. I think shared belief as just a layer is kind of the connective tissue of a healthy organization. Give me a couple more words on your North Star and your vision. What is it and how did you arrive at it?

Speaker 3 (04:43):
If I was being completely honest, it took a while for us to get there and I know we're going to dive in a little bit more to our trajectory as a company, how we got to create our team because it's been an evolution over time. But when it comes to getting to our shared vision and where our North star is, it took a lot of time. I mean it took a lot of retreats, a lot of sitting down. We had to talk with not just our leadership team, our operations team, but our agents who, many of which have been with us for a long, long time, some of our family members. So they've been with us the entire time that we've been around. It took quite a while to get there. We switched to becoming an EOS team a little over a year ago and that helped us really affirm exactly where we were headed to understand exactly what was important to us and put down in paper what had always been swirling around our head.

Speaker 3 (05:30):
So when I say that is we still don't have it perfectly crystal clear if I'm being completely honest. However, it's 90% buttoned up and I think over the past year, year and a half, we've really not only created exactly what our North Star is, but we've also communicated that to the team to make sure they understand because we were hearing it like, hey, what are we becoming? Who are we? That sort of thing. And as you grow, if you don't know that it can really stumble a little bit or you can stumble quite a bit. And as leaders, Scott Oiler, my business partner and I, along with our leadership team, we were struggling with trying to understand exactly where we are, but I think now more than ever, we know that we can dive into that. But it took a while, it took a lot of conversations, a lot of heart to hearts, and also a lot of realizing that we didn't need to be everybody else. We could be whoever we wanted to be. And that's where the shared values came into effect and knowing exactly who we wanted to be and how we wanted to show up to our agents, our staff members, our families, the people closest to us, and that's where we are.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
That's great. And the call to EOS is a thing. It provides that framework that allows you to have some structure to this so you're not just wandering toward imagined solutions. It provides that framework if anyone's looking for it. We did do an EOS episode with a gentleman who was at one time a licensed real estate agent, runs a property management business and is an EOS implementer. So we do a dive in the show. It also came up quite a bit in the Inside Whistle Realty group series. So EOS comes up from time to time. Glad it's been useful to you all. I would love for you, I'm going to jump over your real estate journey because I think it's going to be part of some of the ground that we cover anyway. So I would love for you now to character Oiler Heinz, however you'd like. What is the organization today?

Speaker 3 (07:13):
Sure. So Oiler Heinz is our team name. So we are with Coldwell Banker, we've been with Coldwell Banker. When I say we, Scott Oiler is my business partner and myself, but it's funny, we have agents that have been with us forever, so there is much included in this group, of course. So our trajectory is kind of interesting how it all came to be. When I got in this business, I got licensed in 2007. Then for a few years I was working for my dad's development company. And over the years, unfortunately, 2007 to 2010 were not ideal years to work in development. So I got a crash course on how badly the economy can affect a business and how much you have little control over quite a few aspects of your life.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
That's the crash in crash course.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
That's exactly, it couldn't be more literal at that point, but it was the best experience and the best way to get into this business that I've ever had. I graduated college in oh six from Miami Diversity. After the economy crash, I went back and got my MBA. I'm like, what the hell am I going to do? Am I going to continue in real estate? Where are we going to go? I was having a lot of conversations with my dad and family members try to figure out where to go. But so in 2010 we actually launched our team. It was not called Oil or Hines then it was actually called Well Build Cincinnati Quickly Becoming Build Collective. And I'm throwing that in there because when you look at my business before I merged with Sky Oiler and his team, it was predominantly new construction. Everything I did was development based infill, tear down based selling communities, new homes, working with builders and developers around town.

Speaker 3 (08:44):
And that was our focus coming out of the downturn. We just said, okay, where do we think the market's going to come back first? And we thought it's going to come back in the most sought after infill areas where people want to live there no matter what. They are still fighting to try to live in those great areas. And if we can find the best land positions, then everybody will come to us with those land positions. So that's essentially how we created our business. And then fast forward over 10 years, we were really, really fortunate and lucky to grow. We had great builder partners, incredible staff still to this day, people that are with me, incredible family members. My dad actually ended up helping start the company when we first got started. His name's Bill. He is been the foundation of my career. If I didn't have him, I'd feel so fortunate to have him and we'll get into Scott because his dad worked with him for a long time too.

Speaker 3 (09:33):
But my brother, my mom, she was in real estate. So we just grew a great group of people and over the next 10 years the company grew and we were riding the wave of the real estate industry, making more mistakes than doing the right things half the time. But we got to the point where we got to about 2020 and Scott Oiler, who was at the time, the number one team in Cincinnati, Scott, Heather, Laura Wogan, Bryce Allen, a great group of people, they had been just crushing it in real estate and he was always a friend. We would trade ideas, share thoughts. When you're running a company, it can be a little bit lonely when you're by yourself. I was always fortunate to have my brother and my dad that I could lean on, but I always wanted a little bit more and I always wanted to kept pushing and pushing and pushing.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
So Scott and I came together mainly because of the shared values of sharing and just being good to one another, good to people. And we just started talking about, Hey, what does the future your future look like? What does my future look like? And what's interesting is we had no plans to merge zero. We were just talking. And then one day I remember Heather and Becky were sitting in a little meeting with everybody together talking about where we're going and we just decided why are we screwed off? Let's just bring our companies together. I'll do new construction. Scott does resale. Our teams are working right there with us. And literally when I say they're the best in the business, everybody on our team has a different strength. And we just decided to merge. And that's where Oiler Heinz came together. And we're still with Coldwell Banker to this day. They've been our leadership team here in Cincinnati at Caldwell's. Incredible. And yeah, we've been reaching quite a bit of success. I always like to say we were pretty damn successful on the new construction side. Scott was a little bit more successful on the resale side, so I just latched to his bandwagon and we just took off from there and we never looked back. So I'm really fortunate to have good people, good partners,

Speaker 1 (11:19):
Love it. So we're going to spend some time in partnerships in kind of against the pervasive take of partnerships Don't work. We're going to talk a little bit about naming and branding and then you all are I think top three in the state of Ohio, but you don't really have that many agents. So if we have time, I'd love to maybe touch on per agent productivity and certainly touch on new construction. But let's stay in this partnership zone a little bit with the why and how. Obviously you share values, but cool, we share values with all kinds of people in our lives.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
You respect what they're doing, they respect what you're doing. That's cool. But we have mutual respect for a lot of people in our lives. What was the motivation behind it? I think there's certainly efficiencies of bringing some of the backend together maybe and really building off of a newer, bigger, more thoughtful foundation or something. But go a little bit into why, what was the motivation behind going from you're awesome, your business is awesome, we really like you, we like learning and talking with each other. We mastermind together too. We're actually formally in a business partnership. There's a line there and I think some people maybe look at it but they never jump over it.

Speaker 3 (12:40):
No, absolutely. And where I'll start there is sometimes these partnerships are just, you wing 'em, right? You wing it, you just figure it out as you go. If anybody knows me, I don't wing a lot of things. I like that. Trying to think about kind of person, not that, yeah, I can make decisions quickly, but I also big decisions like this, I like to take my time and understand it. So Scott and I dated for a while. We really didn't, I even understand that we were going towards trying to become a partnership and a team, Scott loves to say, and you just hit on this as let's start with the why. What's the behind this whole thing? So when we look back at our why, when we first started sitting down and talking about something more than just sharing ideas, it was, Hey, why don't we share some services?

Speaker 3 (13:26):
It's expensive to run a team when it comes to operations, marketing, all this sort of thing. And unfortunately we always have huge aspirations, but we couldn't afford to just bring anybody and everybody how we wanted. So we thought, hey, as you get bigger, you have the luxury of hiring better talent, people that have been in the business a little bit longer. You just have the more business you do, you have more discretionary funds to use as you need to use. So that started crossing our mind to say, hey, if we came under one umbrella or at least maybe a backend umbrella to where we had shared these services, we could really grow and leverage that. That quickly went into, well gosh, we don't overlap a whole lot. Scott handles resale. I handle new construction. I don't like resale. Be honest with you, I'm not great at it.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
I can figure it out and I work hard, so we will do a damn good job. But it wasn't my focus on a day-to-day basis. It was his focus also wasn't new construction. So we were finding that he could tee up opportunities to me and I could tee up opportunities to him quite often. And that was really the essence of what the partnership started to become. It said, Hey, you know what? We can now have these two department silos, whatever you want to call it in our business. So the why was, Hey, you know what? We can now offer so much more to our clients. We don't have to say, Hey, we can't do that. Go down that path even further. When you look at our team members and the reason I bring up our team members and you say, Hey, you talked about age per agent productivity. Every one of our agents has a specialty that's different than the others. And just like Scott and I, the same goes if you look at Bob, my little brother, I say he's my brother. I'm not going to say little, he's 18 months younger than me. So he's my brother. Your

Speaker 1 (15:03):
Little brother.

Speaker 3 (15:04):
Yeah, sorry Bob. If you look at him, he is one of the best that there is to sell new construction. He knows what it is and he's also one of the best at getting offers accepted. He just knows what to do. That's his strong suit. Laura is great at giving people the confidence to make a decision, to know what to buy and to give them the information that Bryce is the ultimate, handyman's the wrong word, but just the ultimate. He understands the foundational components and the mechanicals behind a house. So everybody's so different. And I could go and do this for 15 more people. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (15:35):
And I won't layer you guys out, but I think having everybody have a little bit different position on a bench, it's like a sports team. You everybody plays a little bit different position. You also have utility players, but you have that sort of thing. So that's what our team foundationally became built on was our tagline. We'll get into branding in a second. Our tagline is make more possible because everybody can do more. One person can only do so much and they may be awesome, but they're eventually going to hit a ceiling and they can't burst through it without more support and more help. And that was the essence of what we wanted to do. We wanted to create a team that was able to offer as much as possible to our clientele and be able to do it at the highest level we can. And that's probably our standard. Our standard is set very, very high when it comes to our processes. Basically the way we treat clients, what we're standing for, hitting on our values, it's set very high. We don't want to just churn deals. Yes, we do a lot of deals, but that's not what we're about. We don't want to lead with the numbers, we want to lead with the client service. So

Speaker 1 (16:34):
Love it. Okay, so I hear shared values, I hear shared standards. I think that matters a lot too. I hear essentially a diversified portfolio of services and expertise so that we can serve one client at all the phases of their life, maybe because we have all these different strengths and their complimentary, et cetera. Two things here before we move into kind of how you did the naming and the branding and the importance of that. One of them is just the logistics layer of negotiation, blending people together. How do you announce it internally? Just some of the nuts and bolts of if someone wants to go down this road, what are a couple of things you learned from essentially creating a blended family while both businesses are highly successful and fully in motion? And then the other one I'd like to hear you out on is any other tips for someone watching or listening to consider whether it's right for them in light of what you've shared already and again in light of what you learned in blending the organizations.

Speaker 3 (17:41):
And that's a good question because looking back, we made some missteps and we do get asked a lot like, Hey, how did your partnership work? Where it start from? What did you have to do? I'll dive into some tactical items because I think sometimes it's helpful. I could talk in just in high level, but the first thing item is a valuation. What is the valuation of my company? What is the valuation of Scott's company? That was the very first thing we had to do. So we hired, we had accountants that we brought in. Scott had one, I had one. And they sat down on the table together along with us. It's not our strong suit, but we figured it out. We were able to kind of figure out what each was, so we figured that out. So we leveled the playing field. We figured out where we each stood as far as that based on profitability, all of those sorts of things.

Speaker 3 (18:21):
The next thing we did, which is we actually debated whether this was good money being spent when we did it because we didn't realize how expensive it was. We actually did these personality tests to try to understand not just a disc, we did a full scale understanding of who we were, what are our missteps going to be, where are we going to have issues down the road? It was awesome because now I know exactly how Scott operates, he knows how I operate and it was really helpful. We got to a report back to understand exactly how that was and that was through our CPA firm that helped us run those. Our CPA market reader's still around to this day has been super helpful given us guidance and advice and I can a smart

Speaker 1 (18:59):
Value add for an evaluation and accounting that's so smart for them to do that because they're doing business partnerships all the time.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
Yeah, and let's be honest, the financials are important, but they're this much, our personalities and egos get way more into this stuff than it is the financials. Money will drive that obviously crazy and it'll be a huge component, but really it's us and our egos and not knowing how to communicate with each other is the issue. The best thing that we got from them was the turd on the table. I dunno if you've ever heard this before. No. So when there's an issue, we have a literal fake turd that sits on our desks and when something is around and we have an issue, we pull that. There's a turd on the table, we throw it out there, it means it's a hard subject to talk about. So what's the item that we need to talk about? And Scott always says it figuratively because the turds naturally somewhere else and we can't find it.

Speaker 3 (19:50):
But we'll throw that out and be like, all right, we have something tough to talk about. And the beauty is I trust him implicitly. I think I would like to say he trusts me. I have to ask him that and that kind of front. But we trust each other. So even when there's a hard subject, we don't let money, we don't let our egos get in the way. We just try to talk it through. We may disagree on something, but we still work our way through it with that mutual admiration for each other, which is really nice. So that's an item. So I just would say those tough conversations know early on if you're going into a business relationship, how it's going to work. And the next portion of it I'll say is the structure. The structure of how the financials work is really important.

Speaker 3 (20:28):
You can do this a thousand different ways. You could take all of the commission and put it all into all your revenue into one pot, figure out if people get salaries, do they get paid on their own deals? There is so many ways to skin that cat and I'll be a resource to anybody that ever needs it on. We're pretty much an open book mean without sharing the exact numbers and stuff like that, I'd be happy to help. My only advice would be think about what's most fair based on who's bringing what to the table. So understand what the partners and the team members are doing. This is my perspective. Again, there are much smarter people than I, but Scott and I knew we wanted to stay in production. We weren't ready to get out. We also knew there was a component of management on our divisions that we had to run.

Speaker 3 (21:10):
But then operationally, who's doing where on that kind of front? So where are the positions that we're each going to hold and divide up responsibilities and compensate based on that? Because if one person's running more of the operation and one person's running more of the sales, then that may be look at a different compensation package. So you might have salary and commission on something like that based on the team. So again, the way we set it up is not right for everybody. In fact, I'd say it's probably not right for most people because we're both in production, but it's worked pretty dang well for us. And then I'll go into the next one and then I'll shut up for a second. Is a management agreement is really important just to make sure you guys understand what happens if one person kicks the can. It's a stressful business. What happens if you guys have a disagreement and you need to dismantle it? What happens there? Just like you have with your ics, your independent contractors, you want to make sure you have that sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (21:59):
Quick question on the structure of it. You mentioned all those pieces. So as you were evaluating all the different ways it could be done, was that also in partnership with the CPA firm or were you just like, okay, let's spend an afternoon laying out all the different ways this could go and then figure out, do you throw all the puzzle pieces out on the table and put it together? Did someone else facilitate that? How did that process go for people? Because again, I can see exactly what you're saying, but how would you advise someone to go forward knowing that there are all these different ways you could do it?

Speaker 3 (22:32):
Yeah, that's a great question because the way we did it, which I don't know if it was right, is we kind of had a few different components. We had obviously Scott and I that were trying to figure things out along with Becky and Heather who are operations and sales management. Well, they both do. They help us run everything in the company, so I can't give them just a title. So we obviously had that group. We also had our accountants and CPAs, two of which by the way, I had my accountant and Scott had his to which we eventually had to merge. The third piece was lawyers just to have an attorney that could help you do that. If I was, again being honest, we had our operating agreement set up early on day one. Our management agreement took a long time. I mean you get busy and deals will always win over a management agreement or the other day-to-day stuff.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
It took us like a year and a half, two years to get it together. So we were under a handshake agreement for a little while and we always laugh because it just sat on our desks and we would be like, all right, we should probably pick this back up a little while. So if maybe you're easing into a partnership, maybe get that hammered out quickly. Take a day or a couple days, just have a few different meetings and make sure your lawyer's pushing you or whoever's pushing you. So we did get it all buttoned up and it's all good, but it took us a little while.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
Love it. So in this scenario, I can see a situation where the whole organization moves forward with one of the preexisting brands or it moves forward with the other preexisting brand. And of course the other opportunity, which I think you both took was let's create a new name, new branding, new position. Overall, how did that come together?

Speaker 3 (24:06):
So Scott and I, one of the reasons we are so compatible is we love marketing. We had always been early on into the video world. We loved tinkering with new tools, which is con, you guys know all how that goes. We love marketing. So I think when it came to creating a brand, we didn't want to just create a logo. We wanted to do something right and we struggled with the name for the better part of a year because keep in mind, this was a process of a year and a half of us courting and dating before we actually jumped into saying, Hey, let's do this. So by the time we actually were ready to go, we had looked at a couple local branding firms and we had looked at a few larger ones. We ended up landing on, I'm going to give props. I love these guys a thousand watt. They were phenomenal and we got sticker shock when we saw what the cost was, I'm not going to lie, it was triple what we would've spent locally on this front. Best money we ever spent, ever spent. They crushed it. They gave us great ideas. They've helped us with naming, with positioning, storytelling.

Speaker 3 (25:09):
It took a while for us to, it was more us than them to try to think through again, coming up with that shared vision, who do we want to be? How can we create a positioning statement and a brand that's going to align with both new construction and the resale side of the business? And we kind of almost took more of a brokerage mentality of it. We wanted to create a brand that could be a brokerage. We have no interest in being brokerage. We love Coldwell Banker. That's not our intention, but we wanted to be its own element and or entity to do that. So we built that with a thousand Watt. It took a number of months and I couldn't, I'd love to say we could take credit for it. We didn't want to be called Oil or hinz to be frank. We had other names that were not as good.

Speaker 3 (25:50):
I say maybe we're better if you actually look back at 'em. That had nothing to do with us, but we just couldn't land on one. It was too hard and it was too broad. So we ended up there. Now everything is really, we're our marketing team. Becky runs our marketing. We have Emily and Caroline and Heather's a big part of it. Our marketing team's awesome and they keep everything so consistent. It's just really sharp. I feel like they've done a great job. We can't take as much credit for it because they've done it. So branding, I'd say the business setup partnership side is really important. I think actually the brand you create is as important if not more important because that's what the consumer sees and that's what they care about. If one of my clients listen to this episode and heard me talking about this other crap, they'd have no interest but our brand, we want to have that hold to place in their heart.

Speaker 1 (26:36):
Yeah, okay. A few things here. First, because so much family is involved, I kind of love that it carries on the family name. I think there's something really, maybe I'm being too sentimental about it, but I actually think that's pretty cool. That's a second thousand Watts shout out on the show. Of course, Jill Biggs, who's also a broker by Coldwell Banker, I know you know her. I brought that into the conversation because I loved her branding so much and then she revealed that that's how she got it done. I just want to know about her branding. I thought it was so cool. I would love for you to spend one more minute for someone who heard best money I ever spent but also triple what all the other things were. I think sometimes people will spend triple on something, but when we go down that road, we're usually in my question about frivolous purchases and sheep skate habits and they're talking about buying a multi-thousand dollar handbag or a six figure car when a $40,000 car is functionally perfectly equivalent.

Speaker 3 (27:32):
Of course.

Speaker 1 (27:33):
Talk about that a little bit, especially because it's so hard to assign value to brand the impact. You mentioned if a client was listening, client perception of the brand, client interaction with it, the benefit is intuitive. I think the benefit sometimes comes out in the way that they talk to you, but in general, I think we could say that spend on brand produces kind of an unquantifiable positive impact. So I would love for you just to double down on that for a minute. For anyone that's like really triple the price, of course

Speaker 3 (28:05):
A brand's not built in a day, right? A brand's not just a logo and a statement and then you're off to the races. A brand's built with storytelling and living up to the expectation. I was having a great conversation the other day of we can say a lot of things, but if you don't have the action behind it, then it doesn't matter how many times are people talking about things, but their actions don't match what they just said. And that's the thing I feel like your brand's the same goes is you can be ultra luxury in a brand, but then your social media doesn't match being ultra luxury and next thing you know it, it's broken and dismantled. I feel the same when it comes to brands. So the way I look at the components of the brand that Thousand Watt put together is first off they helped us with naming, which was, I mean that was worth its weight right there. Just trying to figure out how it is the logo and how it just held a spot in our signage, our business cards with Coldwell Banker logo because we have equal prominence. That's a big thing. That's really hard. Creating a brand for real estate is a pain in the ass. I'm just going to be completely honest. It sucks. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (29:00):
A lot of 'em just have the brokerage just tacked on. It's like our thing, watch this another thing. Half of 'em don't

Speaker 3 (29:05):
Follow rules. Yeah, it's just, it's like where's it living next to all this other stuff. So we just wanted consistency. When we want our customers talking about our brand, we want to be very approachable. We don't want to be too stuffy. We want to make sure work, it's clean, concise and clear. That's really important. And we also want to be humble. So when it comes to that sort of thing, so we wanted the brand to be really good looking and have that component to it, but also needed to be playful enough to where if you're selling $150,000 house, you're comfortable with us. If you're selling a two and a half million dollars house, we might have a little offshoot of that brand. Let's say we have a $5 million listing that we just sold. We have a $5 million house. We want to make sure that brand, maybe it's a little bit different colors, there's a little play on it, but it matches that listing.

Speaker 3 (29:49):
But also our company. That's a challenge because you can't be everything to everybody and it's probably the hardest thing we've ever we've come to realize when we're marketing and trying to get out there. So hopefully I'm answering your question properly, but for us, there was so many components that needed to be catered to and needed to be considered that if we hired somebody that didn't understand real estate and I mean truly understand real estate, and that's where Brian Ryan and Jessica and everybody market, they are incredible because not only do they understand real estate, they're forward thinkers. They're thinking 10 years down the road. And that's what we loved because they were throwing ideas and thoughts and asking questions that no branding company I've ever been around would've thought to ask. And it's because of what they know. I'm going to give a shout out real quick sign up for their newsletters that come out on a weekly basis. They're phenomenal. I read the first segment of it every single time because of how much thought the term thought leader, I would consider them that they just are giving thought to What's happening in the industry has nothing to do with branding, just has to do with our industry. And I love that. That was a component of what we

Speaker 1 (30:56):
Did. Really good call out. I'm going to find that signup form and drop a link right down below 2000 Watts weekly email. Good call out there. And I'll just also make a really simple parallel to what you were talking about, about $150,000 home versus a $5 million home. You want to be able to service all those people, but you're not the same thing. There's a reason that Honda, I think it was Honda spun out Acura, there's a reason Toyota spun out Lexus. There's a reason why Kia spun out Optima in that case. It's a completely separate brand, but you're not going to do that. So it needs to be dynamic and flexible just to speak to those different audiences. And frankly, there is some transparency there too. Everyone knows that. I think most people understand that Alexis is just really a better finished nicer Toyota. I think most people know that

Speaker 3 (31:45):
They're transparent with that, right? Yeah. Can I say real quick, Ethan as well is, let's just talk about your podcast right here is we know that Team OS is catered to a certain audience and there's only so much of us out there, but that's why you know exactly who you are and you know exactly what we want, or at least you're always trying to find what could be helpful and relevant to us. Same goes is like we want to do what you're doing to for us, to our clientele, and if you become everything, then it just dilutes the brand. So you got to be broad, but you also still have to be refined and directed

Speaker 1 (32:16):
And you don't have to show up identically for every single person either in the case that you can't do what I'm doing, which is trying. Thank you for the positive words by the way, where I've tried to really understand and cater to a very specific audience. Most people watching and listening can't do that. They have some diversity in their service offering, so you need to just find ways to manage it. It sounds like you all have done that quite well. Thank you. Per agent productivity. Give me a couple of minutes on that. You all are very, very productive on a per agent basis. The only thing I think I've heard so far besides high standards, shared values, just like good people, good tenure, I think not experience is not expertise, but the two of them do have a positive correlation. I think just doing something a long time doesn't make you expert at it, but I think it helps. Sure. So I hear those things. I also heard focus and specialty again kind of where we just were. Any other components to help someone improve per agent productivity besides some of those pieces that you've laid out already in this conversation?

Speaker 3 (33:18):
I think all of those are totally relevant. We're really fortunate. I can't speak to how fortunate we are with the people we have. I sit next to my dad every single day. We have a little office. It's tiny. I mean literally he'd be right here next to me and I say I'm using him as an examples. I learned everything on the development side from him. I still learn from him every single day. He's in his early seventies. What he is to that world and so well-respected in the development business here in Cincinnati is the way our agents are perceived outside. In my perspective, and I know if other agents were asked about them, they would say this, but to outside agents, into clients with being so successful and being so good at what they do, they get a confidence. And swagger's the wrong word. I don't mean that it comes across a little egotistical, but they have the confidence and they know they're good at what they do.

Speaker 3 (34:08):
And we want to build people that have confidence. They don't need me, they don't need Scott. Are we there to assist and answer questions and help and make connections, do all of course. But they're good in their own right. And I think that's the best part is they're confident, they are incredibly good and not only good at what they do, but good quality people. Again, coming back to that shared values, they all would make the same decisions that we would make when it comes to if a deal's going awry and we have to do something to help it get through it, they would do it. So I say the confidence is really an important thing. And then also the discipline. This business is fricking hard. I don't care unless you're in it, you don't know how hard you're working Fridays and Saturday nights you're getting calls at 11 o'clock at night.

Speaker 3 (34:54):
Sometimes you're stressed out with your family when you're having dinner because you know have to answer back some emails or there's a deal coming in. It's incredibly hard. And the way they handle it with grace and just an overall positive demeanor is fantastic. And that's the kind of people we want to surround ourselves by. We will give anything to those types of people. We've been really fortunate to not have very much turnover too. I'm going to knock on some wood and if they're watching this, thank you guys. So special, so awesome. And Scott, I know would say the same things. So incredibly fortunate as a team to have great people and I think that's where it is. Lean into the greatest of the greats on your team. Build up the new ones so they can be greats just like that. Because we an assistant program as well where we call it our sales associate.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
So if you're a high level agent like Laura on her team, she does 50, 60, 70 deals a year. She has a sales associate who's a great agent in her own right, been in the business for a long time. They work together as a team underneath the team and they do that. So we are trying to offer leverage and that sort of thing, which I know a lot of teams are doing. We've just made our own version of it. So I'll stop you said just a couple minutes, but I could go on about the team all day long.

Speaker 1 (36:02):
Yeah, that's great. Well, I guess I will reset you on that, but just in a specific direction, I love the sales associate program and just finding ways to help really productive people continue to be productive. I think that's fundamental to retention in addition to ion productivity. That's just a consequence of it as well. But give me a quick pass on one-on-one weekly stuff, monthly stuff, because I hear, when I hear about discipline and consistency and some of these other key characteristics, it's good if you can find that, but there's also something about developing it. You talked a little bit about that too, like developing and investing in people. What does that look like functionally just in terms of meeting cadence and coaching and training.

Speaker 3 (36:49):
So that's an area where we've been really consistent over the past several years since Scott and I merged. Scott had a way that he went about it. We had a way that we went about it and we kind of merged the best of both worlds. So right now we do a weekly staff sales meeting, essentially Wednesdays at nine o'clock, never more than an hour unless something crazy's coming up or we go through. Basically it's high level whatever's happening in the day. We own an event space as well that's connected to it. So we're really fortunate because our team, our office rolls out into the event space. We all meet together and we chat and we talk a little bit. So everybody there is probably 25 or so people that are there at every meeting and we just talk about our listings, what's going on in the world today with the real estate industry, talk about any kind of more clerical items that we need to know, items they need to go learning that kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
So that's our hour long Wednesday sales meeting. Additionally that we do a biweekly or twice a month event or events by the wrong word, just a lunch that is called Teamwork Tuesday. So we get together twice a month from maybe 1130 or 1230 to 1 30, 2 30 depending on how it shakes out. And we just have a different subject we discuss. We are not an overly, we don't have a lot of time to have to get together and feel mandatory to say mandatory. You can't make it any of the mandatory, but we don't structure that much time together, even though sometimes we'd want more, mainly because our agents are busy and they are out serving clients. So we want every time that they're in the office to be a value add to where they're getting stuff. And it can't be a one size fits all for every agent because an agent that's been in the business for one year, compared to Laura who's been in the business for 20 years, they need two different things.

Speaker 3 (38:24):
So we also have coaching, Scott and I, we have conversations with our agents. It's not official coaching, but we'll be sitting down with them, talking with them. We also have a sales manager that's meeting quite a few of our agents on a weekly basis to talk through what's going on, what do they need. We are a flex team, so we talk about flex, we talk about pipelines, we talk about those sorts of things. We're a newly oriented flex team. So we go through all of that and that's it. I mean it's not more. And then we get together as often as we can once a month, once every other month, happy hours, fun events. We just did kickball back out here in the field behind our office. So we try to have a little bit of fun too, which I got to get props to Heather and Jason and Becky and Lauren because they always plan some fun stuff for us. So it's fun. It's not too much though.

Speaker 1 (39:11):
Yeah, that's great. And gosh, kickball, I don't know that there's any activity that literally everyone on the team could participate in that takes us back to such a playful childhood nature as kickball. There's just something about it that's really,

Speaker 3 (39:25):
It was great

Speaker 1 (39:25):
Childlike and playful. We obviously don't have a ton of time left together here, but I do want to hear you as a new construction expert, and I hope you will wear that cap or that crown or that t-shirt of new construction expert happily. What do most agents or teams misunderstand about being a great person on the new construction side? And is it something that can be a small part of someone's business or does it really require a good amount of commitment? I mean, I could see it going any of a variety of ways. So I would love your take or recommendation.

Speaker 3 (40:02):
Sure, sure. I like to say being opportunistic is probably the best way to get into new construction. If you see the opportunity and it feels like the right opportunity for you to be involved there, then do it. So if you're in an area, I'm sitting here in the city of Montgomery, which is a small little suburb inside Cincinnati and there's tear downs everywhere. And we situate ourselves here because we saw the opportunity for tear downs and we said that's what we want to do and we're going to go after it. We're going to find land positions, we're going to bring our builders in. So that's one area where I'd say, Hey, if you enjoy new construction, like Patrick who just joined our team a few months ago, he knew he just wanted to do new construction. That was his goal. And we're going to figure out we have how he's going to get into the business and how he's going to find new builders and land positions to rep at the same time.

Speaker 3 (40:45):
I'm going to steal a little quote, just a little thought from Kevin Oakley. I dunno if you guys ever listened to Kevin Oakley at all. He's great. He's a new construction, he's a podcast. He has all kinds of cool stuff out there. But he had mentioned in one of his podcasts, I wonder if he even remember this, but becoming operational to a builder or developer, you're not just their salesperson, you're not just the real estate agent. And that's kind of what we became and we want to be continually is we want to be a division of their company. We don't need to be just, Hey, Mike is my agent. Reach out to 'em. We want to be a member of their company. When they talk about me or one of our sales agents, we're literally just an extension of them. And I think that's like, so you kind of got to think of it.

Speaker 3 (41:25):
Do you want to be just do a listing here or there, or do you want to be an extension of another entity to become more than just a salesperson? Because that's how you become a little bit less expendable to a builder. So a lot of builders will do their marketing, we'll do their land acquisition and we'll do their sales. The only thing we like to say, the only thing we definitely don't do is build the houses. I never want to build a house, meaning, meaning I don't want to be the physical person that's out there doing it. It's probably, I could figure it out. I know how to do it probably based on how many we've done, but I should not be that person. And that's the hardest business. We know real estate's hard. That's one of the other hardest businesses out there. So I'd say if you want to do it, just look at it as like, do you want to have a couple listings here and there and dabble with it, or do you want to look at something a little bit more serious where you're actually truly developing a value add service that gets into them?

Speaker 3 (42:10):
And that's why I say don't get into it just to dabble. This is a personal preference. I don't love dabbler people that'll do a thousand different things. Partially, if you're going to do it, do it well. Just bust your butt, learn everything there is to know about it.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
This is second invitation and we're going to share shortly here how to reach out to Mike. But I will also link up Kevin Oakley down below. And when I do a new construction series or a new construction special episode, like Jonathan Campbell talked a little bit about, I got a great story from Treasure Davis with some takeaways earlier this calendar year with her on new construction. I've got some new construction people. So if you're watching and listening to this and you want to hear more about new construction, either as a series or an episode, email me ethan@followupboss.com. I need to know that people need and want it.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
And Mike, when I get those emails, I'll certainly be reaching back out to you. So this has been a gift. I really appreciate, again, being part of what you all are doing. I'm so glad that you're finding these conversations helpful. I appreciate you sharing some of your experience here. There's obviously a lot more to share. I tried to touch on a handful of subjects. We could have gone all in on one and had just as good a time. Obviously you know that. Before I let you go, I've got three pairs of closing questions. The first one, what is your very favorite team to root for besides Oiler Heinz or what is the best team you've ever been a member of besides Oiler Heinz?

Speaker 3 (43:33):
Yeah, I'm a big Cincinnati Bengals fan, so I love the Bengals who day all day long, watch the games, got to just enjoy all of that. So that's my favorite team to root for. I will say, and I can't say because I just had this conversation with Becky, our operations director yesterday. The best team I've ever been a part of is the team we're on right now. I've talked about this with more people than I can count lately. This team is awesome and I'd love to say we get credit for assembling it, but that's not the case. It just organically has come together and been built and I'm so damn lucky. I'll throw another one, my dad and I and my brother as well. I mean that for a long time we've been growing and doing what we've been doing together. So that is, again, I can't tell you how grateful I am for that because a lot of life is just being in the right place in the right times and being born to a great family. And that is part of this as well. We went through some tough times too, but seeing that has been great. So

Speaker 1 (44:29):
Yeah, I appreciate that awareness and that gratitude. Frivolous purchase or cheapskate habit.

Speaker 3 (44:35):
Cheapskate habit. I've thought about this beforehand. I eat the damn butts of the bread. I don't know if anybody else, people throw it away.

Speaker 1 (44:41):
Yeah, I do.

Speaker 3 (44:42):
Come on. Yeah, everybody throws it away. The butts of the bread are great and then frivolous. I love, this is where I'm weird. I love doing these weird workout retreats, all these crazy. I know Spring Bees does 29 0 29, which is fun. I do these XPT things, they cost way too much damn money, but they're so much fun and they keep me sane. So that's where I'll spend more of my money than anything else. And my kids

Speaker 1 (45:02):
Love it. That kind of bleeds into the final one, which is what it looks like for you to rest, relax, and recharge or what it looks like for you to invest time in learning, growing and developing.

Speaker 3 (45:12):
Sure, sure. So I think everybody on my team would tell me I probably need to rest and relax a little bit more often than I do. I've been trying to get better at that lately. I just enjoy what I do. So my safe haven is doing some kind of workout, whether it's just doing training for something or I'm training for High Rocks right now. I like doing hot yoga. I like just working out really hard. Sometimes I'll leave after this. I think I'm going to work out at two o'clock, put my clothes back on all sweaty and then go to my next meeting and pretend like I was walking a lot. So that kind of stuff. So a little workout is keeps me sane. And then I'll say listening to your podcast, I do a weekly, there's probably only three or four podcasts I listen to on a weekly basis. That's how I learn mostly. And I just read, like to read articles, learn, and I just like to be a sponge. I'm not that smart. So I got to just take credit for other people's things. Like I mentioned you, I've mentioned Kevin, just other for everybody else's stuff.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
Well, I'm just a vehicle to get other people's ideas and it's a joy and privilege to do it. And I'll just add too, folks might look at your lifestyle and the way that you run your day to day and say, this guy doesn't relax. But when I think about relaxing and recharging, for me it's unplugging my mind from all of the things that I need to get done and things that I focus on and things that come into my view. If I can unplug, but my body is fully in motion and my muscles are being engaged, it's still insanely relaxing. It's not necessarily an on the beach experience for me. It's like if my mind can be relaxed and disengaged and I'm just active, to me that's insanely recharging.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
Agreed. Everybody does it a little bit different. Some people want to kick their feet up on the couch. That's not me. I can do that at night. Every once in a while I need to be moving. Going for a hike and a long walk is awesome for me and with or without these in my ear, so it

Speaker 1 (47:02):
Mine's 50

Speaker 3 (47:02):
50. I'm right there with you.

Speaker 1 (47:04):
I listen 50% of the time and pop 'em out and go follow my own thought or whatever, or just let the experience happen

Speaker 3 (47:12):
And I'm going to throw something out there. I don dunno if anybody's ever heard of the 12 hour walk. It's a guy named Colin O'Grady. If you want something cool, it's just where you take these out. You walk for 12 hours. I haven't done it yet, but I'm going to do it soon. Just something like that because we don't clear our mind enough. In our business, we are constantly on this and connected and it's probably my least favorite part about this business. So finding more ways to detach and be away from it I think is really, really important for us. I don't do a great job, but I'm working on it. I'm trying.

Speaker 1 (47:40):
Cool. I'm going to look that one up and link it up down below. I will say I have done the 12 hour walk, just, I've summoned dozens of mountains. I don't even know how many, and a lot of them are long enough that it does take all, literally all day. Like you're on your feet for 14 hours. Anyway, we could keep going. I appreciate you so much. Happy to hear from you anytime and would love for you. You already offered to connect with people on a couple of specific topics. What's the best way for people to reach out and learn more about you?

Speaker 3 (48:06):
Easiest way to connect with me is just mike@oerhines.com. It's O-Y-L-E-R-H-I-N-E s.com. You can follow us on social media, oiler Hines on Instagram. My Instagram handles MP Hines one. It's all my kids. That's where I post on that kind of stuff and just give me a call. Look me up on oil hines.com and give me a holler. I always answer my phone or I always try to. At least

Speaker 1 (48:29):
All of that is also listed down below. Appreciate you so much, Mike, and I wish you a great rest of the day.

Speaker 3 (48:35):
Ethan, I can't tell you how much I appreciate being here. I really enjoyed this. It's always good to have a conversation with you and hopefully it's helpful for everybody. So thanks guys. I'll keep listening.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
Thanks for checking out this episode of Team Os. For email exclusive insights every week, sign up@realestateteamos.com.