Speaker 1 (00:01):
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 2 (00:15):
Jeremy, thank you so much for sitting down with me. Looking forward to hearing your story. I think it's got a lot of doubles in it. Maybe it's a rock solid baseball game, a lot of double, but we're going to start where I'm starting with everyone, which is a must have characteristic of a high performing team.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
Great. So I really feel there's three must have characteristics or fundamentals for a team. Number one is resources. Number two is support and training. And then number three has got to be some type of opportunity, whether that comes in leads, online leads, open house opportunities, or access to a database. Break

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Those down a little bit. Yeah, talk about how those developed for you. Did you have that vision for all three of those components when you started your team? And then we'll kind of get into that story too, but how did those emerge for you? Or was it just obvious in doing your research before starting a team

Speaker 3 (01:11):
And doing my own research? And those three are kind of the three pillars I always go back to. Okay, support, what do we have for support? What we're doing now is much more dynamic than what we were doing 12, 24 months ago with support. And whether that is staff marketing manager, transaction coordinator, operation manager, lead scientist, whatever the support staff looks like. And then even the tech that we're using as so much that we're discussing this week here at Fcon as well, the tech stack and everything. It's a really exciting time right now for that. And so we're constantly going back to those three. And then when we talk about training even more so, the training's changing and it's getting deeper connecting with the client more. Today's consumer is much more educated and equipped than we've ever seen throughout the history of the real estate market.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
They can pull out their phone and they can see 50 pictures of the house. They can see a video, they can see what it was purchased for, estimated mortgage payment, insurance, taxes. And so the dialogue and the listening that is required now is different than when it was before. And then when I say leads, I mean what is the opportunity that the team is offering for the agent to join the team? And so even then now, I think we're seeing higher intent leads across a lot of the referral platforms, whether we're talking about Zillow or even open houses. People are coming up and they're a lot more higher intent right now in this current marketplace that we're in. Interesting. Yeah. Talk

Speaker 2 (02:59):
A little bit about training. I've asked a number of folks about onboarding, whether they're bringing on new agents or even experienced agents, they have unique experiences there. Talk a bit about ongoing training. So how much time are you asking your team members to devote to ongoing training? What does it look like? Is it like a weekly cadence, the standard, or is it we're going to do some special events as the opportunity arises? Talk a little bit about how you're doing ongoing training or how you think about it.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
Yeah, specifically. I mean, I think I feel like you have to retrain. I also feel like you have to re-recruit, right? And so

Speaker 2 (03:40):
Sometimes I like both of those very much. Go on.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
Sorry. Yeah, so you asked about training. So our cadence is twice a week, every other week it's in person. Keep in mind we have two offices. And so I'm in a different office each week for those meetings. So they're either in person or it's a zoom. Those take place on a Tuesday in the morning, and that is an announcement. Congratulations as well as we do a quick round robin check in, what are you working on? Do you have anything that anybody needs to jump on or help you with? And then Thursday we do what we call our coaching call, and that's all hands on deck, all the agents on deck. If it's not hosted by me, we'll bring in somebody that maybe they teach a contracts class or maybe it's an update on insurance or something that's hyperlocal to our market, or it might be follow-up or we've done stuff on Follow-up boss on our tech stack on those coaching calls as well. And so that's the cadence we use. We don't have, if you're a high producer, you get to skip those. We want everybody in there because ultimately that is part of the culture of the team, who we are and those top performers, it's important that they're in there because they are leaders of the company and they are who a lot of the team members are looking up to be and wanting to be like and emulate.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
Yeah, I feel like that commitment to the team is one way that we separate a team from a traditional brokerage, a collection of people operating more independently because modeling that behavior matters to the whole team, participating, probably storytelling, supporting, sometimes even leading. Did they ever lead any of the topics?

Speaker 3 (05:27):
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, engagement is really, really important on a team. The difference between the team and being at a big box brokerage, so to speak, is there's a lot more going on in the team. There should be, should be a lot of opportunity. There should be a lot of accountability, and that requires engagement. You really have to plug in to utilize everything that's

Speaker 2 (05:52):
There. Yeah, really good. Take me to the moment of shifting from solo agent to, I'm starting to bring some people alongside me and characterize the solo agent experience however you like, but take us to that moment.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
Yeah, I mean, when I was a solo agent, a full-time agent, absolutely loved it. It was great. But I'm one of, maybe I'm sick in the head, but I love leadership. I love coaching, I love leading. I love being in that position. We were joking earlier, I get just as excited as somebody else on the team getting in contract versus myself. And so that's where my passion is. And so that's the path that I went down and that's why I did it. But there's definitely a messy middle that we get in. And so that first year, 30% of the sales were me, and the second year is when I really ripped the bandaid off.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
I'm sorry, 30%. How many agents?

Speaker 3 (06:48):
I think we had about seven. Okay.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
Yeah, it's definitely, definitely overweight.

Speaker 3 (06:52):
Yeah. But of the a hundred million we did in production our first year as a team, 30 of that came from me. And so that's hard to walk away from, and that was a scary moment. A mentor of mine put me in front of a room and he is like, Hey, man, if you're serious about going where you want to go, here's what you're going to have to do. And you got to make that commitment right now. And since then, I haven't looked back. I think that that's that messy middle, that's where it gets messy as if you're still working with your clients. You can carry a handful of agents probably on your back as a team, but as that team grows, you can't truly really focus on the team to the best of your ability when you're having to deal with a lot of clients. That's just my opinion. Others may have a different opinion, but that's the way I look at it.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yeah. It's being able to support the agents more effectively so that your time's not split. And it's probably hard in both of those situations, delivering 30 40% of sales while also being responsible for supporting answering questions, recruiting, et cetera on the agent side. But then it's also equally challenging to make that shift for you. I mean, besides where is that sales production going to come from if I'm not doing it? Any other fears or missteps or things that you, in hindsight, you're like, oh man, I'm glad I did it that way. In that shift out of production, what went well, what went poorly?

Speaker 3 (08:27):
Yeah. I think that you need to set, my advice would be set a number. Okay. When we have this many people on the team, I'm going to need to cut back or completely cut out doing personal production because something magical happens when you pull out a production and you tie a hundred percent of your success to the success of others. Something magical happens. You start realizing who's really on board, who's really using the systems, who's really plugging into the CRM, who's really doing the work and who's not. And you gain instant clarity on who you want on the team. And so I learned real quick when I did that. Okay, this isn't the avatar. A certain person is not the avatar for the team. I know exactly the avatar that we want on the team, though I know exactly what it looks like. It's kind of an interdependent personality, not too independent, not too dependent, but they're independent on the team and on the environment that we've created.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yeah. Very specific question, because I understand this interdependent finding that balance. Are you doing personality profiles or anything? Is there anything that can probe interdependence and reveal it with some degree? It's always a little bit of a guess when you bring someone on, but how do you suss that out a little bit in advance to, or is it even more obviously cultural when you and the agent are trying to figure out, is this a good situation for both of us?

Speaker 3 (09:59):
Yeah, we're always trying the interview process. It doesn't start with me. They go through an interview with our ops manager and we try to meet them in two different places in the office so we can see how they are around other agents and then in a coffee shop, because you can see how they treat servers or people around them, and that's important. And sometimes you can pick up on things there. And so we want to see if they're coachable. That's a big part of it. And so one, I'll tell you this, one thing I love doing is after I interview someone, I'll say, okay, I'm going to leave you with one action item. I want you to send me a selfie video in the next 24 hours of what you like about the team or the organization, why you think this is a good opportunity and why you think you're a good fit for it.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
And I'll tell you what, it's funny because I've left with people, I'm like, oh, man, this person's going to be great. And then just they couldn't do the video. They couldn't come down to that level. And then others that do the video have turned out to be fantastic. And think about it, after an interview, you got to humble yourself a little bit, say, Hey, I see the opportunity. I see what's here, and I'm ready for it. I'm the right fit. And so that's been a nice strategy that's kind of helped us get a good read.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
Yeah. Awesome. I mentioned some doubling, kind of playfully off the top, but it's an incredible achievement. I'd love for you to break that down a little bit and then we'll kind of talk about some of the how behind it

Speaker 3 (11:29):
Behind doubling the in

Speaker 2 (11:30):
Production. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just share a little bit of how the past few years went with the team growth and the sales growth.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
Yeah. So 20, 20 18, about 9 million in personal production, really frustrated with that. Not that there's anything wrong with that number, but I was just really frustrated with that. And so I put myself in a different environment as far as where I was hanging my license, who I surrounded myself with, and just opened myself up to strategies from people that were in the field doing the work. And the following year I was able to triple my business and do about 30 million as a solo agent. And I really wanted to be one of the top performing solo agents in our local market so I could build a team. That was the star I was chasing was not to be the top agent, but it's like I'm not going to be able to earn people's respect and lead them if I haven't done this masterfully myself. And so that was really the drive to do that. And then our first year as a team, we did a hundred million, and then we were able to double that the following year and hit 200 million. And so yeah, it's been fun.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
Nice. Has the ratio of agent to sales production gone for you? Do you feel good about that ratio?

Speaker 3 (12:53):
Yeah, if you want to get specific, last year we averaged seven transactions per agent that was on board well above the average for our market.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
Your market. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
So that's a good number. There's too much wear and tear if somebody is not performing on the team, it's too much wear on the staff, the office, the training, the retraining. And so you've really got to approach real estate in general. You just got to dive in headfirst this industry time and time and time again, rewards those that are bold that just go for it.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
Yeah. Talk a little bit about structure. How have you thought about and what have you learned over the past few years on, obviously there's the opportunities lever that says, well, we could support, or maybe we even need to add an agent or two or three, and then as we have transactions and as we have agents, then we need more admin. I assume profitability is in the constant management of those three things. You can maybe get ahead of yourself one way or the other. So talk a little bit about the structure of the admin side of the business and how you've kind of built that coinciding with agent and sales growth.

Speaker 3 (14:16):
Yeah, this is a great question because I think a lot of us team leaders get ourselves in trouble. Sometimes we grow too fast and you bring a lot of agents on and you're not prepared for that. You're not ready for that. And so I think it's important to always try to stay one step of ahead of your business. One of my favorite quotes is don't hire for where you're going, not where you're at. And so if you believe in that, you're going to take the risk on the staff and hire the staff the support that you need for where you're going. And so everybody's different as far as support staff and how many agents, but it is definitely something that we've really, really got to be careful with. I've been very fortunate with my operations staff, even the people that aren't here on the team anymore, part of the company, they were all amazing.

Speaker 3 (15:13):
And so I've been fortunate with those hires to get people that are really all in and see the vision and they want to be there and they understand that the agents are the lead singers of the band on the operation staff. We're the backup singers and we're happy to be the backup singers. We want to be backup singers, and we want to cheer them on and let them be the face. And so we've been fortunate with who we brought on board, and that's always a balance that we have to look at. But I think it's smarter to err on the side of be more conservative and bring on the staff because if someone has a bad experience on the team, the first 60 days or the first 30 days, all studies have shown the first 30 days at a new job is going to dictate the work ethic and kind of the cadence of how things move forward in that working relationship. And so I think onboarding and support and really getting expectations across those first 30 days are imperative.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
Talk a little bit about what you would share with an agent who is approximately in the shoes that you were in at somewhere in that nine to 30 million range or whatever it is appropriate for their market. Someone who's producing well, they find themselves, how am I going to grow? I'm exhausted and I want to do more, but I know I physically can't do it. A few tips from your own journey for someone who's thinking about, I want to bring some people alongside me. I have the opportunity to do it. I have the business to do it, whether it's hiring sequence or roles from your own experience or any other advice you'd have for that person.

Speaker 3 (17:02):
Yeah, great question. I really feel there's two paths to take. One is to hire support staff to support what you're already doing. And so if I'm a successful agent and I want to be a mega agent and do more business, then maybe I need a licensed assistant that's going to help me show homes. And so if you're showing 15 to 20 homes a week consistently, you should look at hiring a buyer's agent, a licensed assistant that can help you show those homes after you've created those relationships. Showing partner is what we would call that or someone on the back end to help out with all the paperwork and the transactions. And so if someone's looking to build a team, that first hire should be one or two people that are on the team. Then they've got to look at hiring someone on the operation side, somewhat of an operations manager to help with implementation and overseeing everything that comes along with that. But then we get into the psychology of going from solo agent to being a team leader. And so it's not for everybody. Some of the best athletes didn't turn out to be great coaches.

Speaker 3 (18:17):
Some of them have turned out. I

Speaker 2 (18:18):
Have like three in mind as you say that.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
Yeah, I know. Me too. I was going to say a couple. And then you have players coach Kerr on the Golden State Warriors that have turned out to be amazing coaches. And so that's really a mindset, and you have to really want it. You have to be passionate about that. I've got friends that love sales, love real estate sales. They don't want to deal with other people. They don't want to deal with a team. They want to run their business, and that's absolutely the perfect decision for them. And then I'm on that other category where I'm passionate and fired up about helping others achieve their goals and get to where they want to go with their real estate career. And so team lead is where my passion is. So I think we've got to look at that passion, and that's what that person needs to lean into.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yeah, really good. How about advice for a solo agent? Who's wondering, would I be better off, whether from a lifestyle or a production perspective, joining a team questions for that person or advice for that person?

Speaker 3 (19:21):
So we look at this when we're interviewing agents all the time, and for some, being a solo agent is absolutely the best decision. And for others, joining a team is absolutely the best decision. And here's how you make that decision. Are you wanting to be a part-time is real estate your side gig? It's just a side thing that you do a couple hours a week. Well, then you definitely do not want to be on a team. But if that is part-time, then solo agent, you have a lot of freedom. Freedom is number one to you then solo agent. Because what happens when you join a traditional team is it's like joining a workout class or a workout community or group like Orangetheory or something. And so you've got a coach, you've got a trainer, you've got people showing up at the same time, and we're all doing this and we're doing it this way. There's opportunity and there's accountability, and you've got to implement. You've got to take action. And it's a whole nother world nowadays. It really is. If you're looking to go full time and really get your career rocking, get in front of as many people as you can. Let 'em know you're a realtor and stay in touch with them and help them get across the finish line. A team is definitely the path to take. There's no question about it. It's tested, it's clear, it's the path to take.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
It's awesome. Great advice. This has been awesome, Jeremy. I appreciate you. Congratulations on your success, continued success to you as you build the team. Before I let you go, I would love to know either your favorite team to root for, besides your own real estate team, or the best team you've ever been on besides your own real estate team.

Speaker 3 (20:59):
So favorite team, as in my favorite team that exists in real estate?

Speaker 2 (21:03):
No, any team, a sports team,

Speaker 3 (21:05):
Any all timer who I root for? Well, right now my favorite sports team is the San Francisco Giants. Okay. So All Bay Area teams. San Francisco, 49 ERs, giants, warriors. Yeah. Cool.

Speaker 2 (21:18):
Awesome. Thanks so much. All

Speaker 3 (21:20):
Right. Awesome. Thank you so much. Enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
Thanks for checking out this episode of Team Os. For email exclusive insights every week, sign up@realestateteamos.com.