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 (00:16):
Renee, I'm so excited to talk with you. I appreciate you making time for it and I want to start where I'm starting with everyone, which is a must have characteristic of a high performing team. When I offer that to you, what comes to mind

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Must have characteristic of a high performing team, especially in 2023 and beyond is curiosity. Curiosity to understand that we at times can be wrong. So when we show up in relationships, whether it be as a team leader, a team member, a real estate business owner, to have that moment and say, could it be possible that I'm wrong and that there are a few extra questions we could ask that might gain a little gift of additional context and understand a deeper level who we're serving.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Love it. Why is curiosity, I agree with you that it is a superpower. Why do you think it's under leveraged maybe or is it it, I mean the idea that we have to speak about it consciously and explicitly and openly mean to me one of the implications of that is that it's kind of undervalued or underplayed. Sure. A, would you observe that's true? If so, why not?

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Curiosity is undervalued. I think because we have such a customer service orientation at heart in the industry, we are community ambassadors. It's much more than helping a family achieve home ownership. It's about helping families understand what's possible beyond a home. It's in lifestyle and so if we think about curiosity, we can often forget that someone asks us a question and we just want to give the answer. We just want to go right to, but we're experts. We're the pros. We've done this before. Every individual we are serving has their own individual needs and wants and goals and dreams and as I mentioned showing up and asking, I could probably gain a little more context for this individual by leveraging that curiosity.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Yeah, so I mean I hear that as I'm thinking about how I am I curious, I think about layers of why and so in this client scenario it's like that is a great question. I get it from time to time and there are usually a couple reasons why. Can you explain why you answered that way or why you asked that way or whatever the case may

Speaker 3 (02:33):
Be? What makes you say that? Yeah. One of the simple swaps that's very effective, and this is a bad habit I've done for years and years, I like to blame it on the fact that I'm a nineties, I have bad lazy words I use sometimes why? I'll say to my kids, why conscientious to make a change and say, what makes you say that? What brought that to your thought process? Share a little bit more about that is a different approach than saying the why I'm working on it.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
How about this is very specific, but I know that you care about these things. What do you mean by that? Is that a good one or is that one? It feels like, as I say, it feels a little bit potentially like

Speaker 3 (03:14):
What do you mean by that? Yeah. Well, with every question we ask, tonality is going to be super important, right? And a conversation that's needed in the real estate industry is the difference between the communication we have in the verbal and in person form as compared to how we communicate in text in the written form, in emails, and so that question perhaps might not land the same in the written form in absence of our tonality, in absence of our body language to lean in with that curiosity because curiosity can be conveyed by our body language as well. Sure. It's not a bad thing. I'd say test it out and see how it lands. Yeah. Low risk situations though. What

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Do you mean by that,

Speaker 3 (03:53):
Right? What do you mean by that?

Speaker 2 (03:54):
What do you mean by that?

Speaker 3 (03:55):
If I ask my teenagers that they would probably respond sometimes. That's what I get back to. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (04:00):
That's awesome. How do you describe your leadership style?

Speaker 3 (04:04):
Describe my leadership style in a way of first understanding what's most important to the individual. The leadership style that I display has definitely changed over the years. I wake up every day with the goal to be better today than I was yesterday, and I make errors every single day, every day when I'm leading others, I want to understand where they're seeking to go. I think that a misconception with teams in the industry is that a team should have one collective goal as a team, we're going to achieve X, Y, z rather than saying that the individual goals that exist within the team that are important to each one of the team members in their life. As an example, one of the team members of the Fun Collection this year for the first time ever had the ability to take their family away for a two week vacation. That was one of the goals and metrics they were measuring their hard work by and when they came home and we asked the question, well, how was the two week vacation and what would be most important to you to achieve as one of your next goals? It was determined that what was important to them wasn't necessarily about the income. It wasn't necessarily about the unit counts, it wasn't necessarily about the volume. It was that by summer of 2024, this agent wanted to be able to make those two weeks, four weeks.

Speaker 3 (05:28):
If I wasn't coming to the team as a leader asking strong questions and understanding that each individual has their own perspective and their own needs, I could miss an opportunity, which then of course overall impacts the team as a whole and where the team is continuing to move the needle.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Love it. So the goal of the team is the sum of the goal of the individuals? Correct. And the team supports what it looks like to get there, especially if it's a growth goal. For example. I have not been there before. How are we doing that? Talk about the shared accountability is obviously critical for any of us finding success. It's important to say things out loud, it's important to maybe have people come along our side. It's one of the benefits of being in a team environment or a healthy team environment at least. Yeah, so talk a little bit about the tracking and accountability there. How is that functionally really practically tactically nuts and bolts executed inside your organization? I know you have to generalize a little bit, but

Speaker 3 (06:34):
I'm glad you're asking this question. Accountability shows up different for each individual as well, and when you asked me about leadership, I would say an area of opportunity that I continue to grow into and hope to have next levels of strength in is understanding what accountability looks like to every team member. For years and years of the fund collection accountability looked like Pull up your follow-up boss leaderboard. How many calls did you make? How many texts? What did that convert you into? Appointments, how many appointments led to contracts? You know the drill that has nothing to do with the human. And what we have determined over time and as we continue to grow into the next level of leadership with the fund collection is I made a proclamation in 2023. I will never ask an agent on the team to make a phone call again, I will never ask a team member to make a call again, in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
Well, there's metrics we need to measure and grateful to follow up boss that we have so many amazing metrics and the data that supports our behaviors. The reality is, is that what drives humans is helping them get to their next level of greatness and a part of that can be their own personal goals. So rather to be able to check in with that same agent and see how the needles continuing to move forward and what we're doing to get them closer to the four week vacation instead of the two week vacation. That's what is important to me as a leader is really helping them make that kind of impact in the most important ways. For some of the agents, it might be their level of philanthropy, they're focusing in on 2023 with the proclamation of accountability being in the eye of the beholder. One of the other exercises the team went through is a rehab and a reset on our why. Have you ever been asked what your why is?

Speaker 2 (08:17):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
And when we're asked that question, isn't it easy to be stifled? It's such a big question. What's your why? My kids, my family. Of course, what we've done to help understand what accountability could look like to the individual to actually move the needle forward is to get really true on our why's to say how much of what by then, and it doesn't always have to be around phone calls and unit counts and volume. It can be around something as a part of my why is I'll be buying a second home in Park City by January 1st, 2020 and going through the how much of what by when, even as the leader of the team and sharing my vulnerability of what I'm going to do to get us there and to get a part of my why has been so impactful to see the agents, they have a new perspective and we don't have to continually talk about Yes, I know calls are important, we all know that that's table stakes. Let's talk bigger.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
Yeah, I really appreciate that. I also appreciate your direct participation and modeling in that. Couple things there. What I really want to go back into is breaking down. I really appreciate this. I'm not going to ask people to do it again. I assume that if people need help, I'm struggling. I'm not pacing well. You can get into things like, well, how many calls did you make? But it's the second or third or fourth layer behind the thing, and I feel like you personally will be aligned with me on this, which is that a lot of those structures like, well, if you want X, you need to make seven x of this, and the precursor to getting seven x is 10 x of the thing that precedes it. It implied in that structure of you need X number of calls in order to have X number of appointments set to have X number of appointments, X minus number of appointments held X minus, X minus, X minus. Sorry to turn this into a fun algebra game.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
And by the way, I'm not that good at math. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (10:19):
But you're following off. I understand

Speaker 3 (10:21):
What you're

Speaker 2 (10:21):
Saying.

Speaker 3 (10:21):
There's a scientific formula,

Speaker 2 (10:23):
But there's no how in that does it really take

Speaker 3 (10:28):
What happens to the agent, especially nowadays who prospecting for certain agents looks differently if I as a team leader are harping on everybody about how many calls you made in the last seven days. The phone calls are important, but could it be possible that the conversations, the engagement, identifying the critical conversations that could possibly take place on Instagram dms is important. There's other ways we can prospect. There's certainly numerous ways that we can identify the critical conversations that show up on repeat and make sure that we're being intentional. So I love the question around accountability. I love the question about do we utilize the leaderboard and follow boss? Heck yeah. Look at it all the time. I've just made adjustments in my leadership this year to be focused more on the holistic view and realizing that it's not all about the phone calls. There's a much bigger picture at hand, and I think that it's alleviated some of the pressures too, and it's certainly made it a lot more fun for me as a leader to not have to go in and go, okay, congratulations. So-and-so made X amount of phone calls today. There's a bigger thing that we can help each other with. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (11:38):
Yeah. I wanted to ask you about, and you basically just teed it up and it's really just in who you are and the way that you've been present with me here already in whatever we're at 12 minutes or something is earn the relationship first come from contribution always. When did that occur to you, like that language in particular? How has it served you and your team? How does it come to life?

Speaker 3 (12:03):
I earned the relationship first and come from contribution always. I didn't grow up and I certainly didn't have an earlier part of my adulthood living the same lifestyle as I do today. And it was in certain identifiable moments throughout my adulthood and throughout my career and certainly the hugest gift I've ever been given, which is this thing we call real estate to operate within the industry to realize that the more I contributed, the more I looked around at who was sitting at the table, seeing what value I could deliver to them to help them get to where they're going. The more I found that true authentic collaboration existed. That's not something I was always aware of as an adult. That's not something I was aware of in the earlier part of my real estate years. And the moment I made that switch to identify, oh my goodness, those that are growing and becoming their next best version of themselves are the ones that are sharing the most. It became a not so secret sauce. It is another superpower is you can't compete with me because I want you to win too mentality. That's a quote, and I don't know the author. I've heard it said on social media a number of times, and yet it's just very true. There's enough business for everybody and the reality is my vibe is going to attract certain types of customers. My vibe is going to attract certain kind of agents and recruiting. It's not a competition. It's about truly lifting others as we climb and coming from contribution always.

Speaker 2 (13:33):
Yeah. And so it was something that you learned by observing, listening, watching, talking. You're like, I'm just going to adopt this. And

Speaker 3 (13:45):
Probably

Speaker 2 (13:45):
It obviously struck true to you. Yes. And so it was probably also part of your I can win as myself.

Speaker 3 (13:52):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
Process,

Speaker 3 (13:53):
Which is a whole other thing I hear in many rooms we're in as real estate leaders and certainly we're here at Fcon and it's present everywhere is the imposter syndrome. Let's put that on the table and recognize that every single one of us has that. I have it. I had it today. I have the gift and the ability and opportunity to share for an hour at Fcon this morning, speaking on the stage, that's a big responsibility. Serving that moment, showing up and thinking about every seat that is filled with somebody who invested their time to come and learn Imposter syndrome sets in sometimes, and it did in that moment. And we do our best to think about. Well, when we sat down here today, one of the questions I asked you is, who are we speaking to today and a goal and commitment to, as you and I share this conversation, hope to give as much contribution relative to those who are giving their gift of time to listen to this podcast.

Speaker 2 (14:48):
And that should never be taken for granted, especially these when our time and attention is beg, borrowed, stolen, precious, and earned.

Speaker 3 (14:55):
Yeah, earned. I love that

Speaker 2 (14:57):
Word. Want to be on the earned side.

Speaker 3 (14:58):
We do. We earn it. We earn it.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
Yeah. Tell me about a little bit of change pace. Tell me a little bit about when you left production, what was going on in the team at the time? Obviously there was probably some fear around it, but you moved forward. Just talk about that dynamic a little bit. What did you do well through that? What didn't you?

Speaker 3 (15:21):
So I worked together with my husband, Jeffrey Funk. We have been married 23 years. We've worked together the better part of a little over 20 of those 23 years.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
I assume he's in your top five realtors.

Speaker 3 (15:33):
He's my number one favorite realtor. Okay, good, good. Yeah. He earns that designation. He earns it. He's given me the biggest gift. I almost missed the opportunity and it was without him, I would not be here. He was the one who continued to say, you should really give this a shot. And yet I was seeing the industry as a box that I had to fit into something particular and have now come to learn that you can show up and do things in a way that speaks to you to fill your cup and find ways to give value. So fast forward to being co-team leaders of the Funk collection for a number of years being in production, the fund collection was much like a model that you see in many cases where the team leaders were the lion's share of the production in order to keep things moving in a positive direction and remain sustainable.

Speaker 3 (16:19):
For several years. Jeff and I, as co-team leaders, shared a conversation of what it could look like if we came. Now I put in air quotes out of production. I'm going to get to why I'm air quoting that phrase. We as husband, wife and business partners talked about it for about three years. And yet you've mentioned fear. There was hesitancy to what could that mean? What would that look like? Not only from a financial sustainability standpoint, but also for who we are, what roles we hold, what that could mean. Next for next chapters, who does Jeff want to show up as a team leader, who do I want to show up as? And then of course, the financial piece. After three years of truly getting intentional at our core about the lanes we wanted to stay in for each of us as we moved into the next chapter, he and I made the decision to conscientiously come out of production.

Speaker 3 (17:14):
Now, why I put air quotes around out of production, I like to define what things mean. And I like to get really clear when we use phrases over and over again. And the phrase out of production has been sitting a little bit uncomfortable with me in the two years that he and I have been out of production because the reality is we're not really out of production. Our definition as co-team leaders has been to redefine what out of production can mean. I'll give you an example. When an amazing fellow follow-up boss friend that we have here at Fcon says Fcon says Renee, there's a listing in Windermere, Florida that's in Keens Point, which is our bread and butter neighborhood that we love, and this particular seller wants to work directly with the listing agent. I'm going to serve that customer opportunity. And there are times we still actually are in production.

Speaker 3 (18:08):
Twofold benefit is number one, we keep our toes in the pond. We're relative. We can walk the walk and understand what it takes from the agent hat being on as compared to the team leader hat on. And the other benefit is, well, sometimes we understand the consumer does want to work with the team leader. How we've redefined out of production though is that at large, every incoming opportunity for business goes to the team. With the exception over the last two years of about five-ish transactions a year, keeping our relevancy being able to serve when dear friends and agent to agent referrals pop up, which they do. We're very blessed in that department and making sure the team knows that our goal and our model is to acquire as many business opportunities and help those agents into their next level of greatness, help them to lift as we climb. Our goal is not to be in production, and we measure that by the fact that the team does not need our production to be sustainable. Our team is financially viable and financially sustainable to continue to grow, whether Jeff and I do any transactions or not. So it's by choice. So all our referral partners out there just know that when you have that special customer that Renee and

Speaker 2 (19:26):
Jeff can still take care

Speaker 3 (19:28):
Of you. We do. One more benchmark to mention though is we're not road warriors. So we coach agents very much on being hyper-local specialists. It's served us very well over the last two decades. And so I also will turn those opportunities down. And that's one of the things about having a great team is you can say, this is the agent who's the hyper-local focused agent that is best to serve the customer and what they're needing.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
Love it. I especially appreciate there is no one way to do any of this. That's why I love these conversations. That's why I want people to listen to a variety of people with different experiences and backgrounds is that we can do these things the way that we want to and

Speaker 3 (20:08):
We can redefine, right, redefine what it means. I haven't yet come up with a word and maybe here on Team OS podcast, we need to come up with a word of what that toe in the pond kind of I still represent. The occasional transaction is I've used out of production. And I don't care for the message it sends because I'm not technically right. I still will keep a little

Speaker 2 (20:29):
Bit in. So the elements are just to spend a minute in that then we'll wrap. But some of the elements include very limited and focused transactions. Yes, sir. For a particular type of client. On the other side of that is we're going to give as many opportunities the vast, vast, vast majority of opportunities into the team in whatever way we choose to distribute those. Correct. I'm just trying to help come up with a language for it.

Speaker 3 (21:00):
Right. Well, in other North Star for the fund collection has and will always be is what's best for the customer. Whether when you were just mentioning, there you go.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
That's

Speaker 3 (21:07):
It. Yeah. What's best for the customer? When you're mentioning how lead distribution happens and when customer opportunities present themselves through agent to agent referrals, any of the numerous sources that we have from a customer acquisition standpoint, our North Star with the fund collection is what is best for the customer. So practices you will not see on the fund collection and have never seen, and I don't say never very often, and this is one I can stand behind as a never is. We are not a team that does round robin. Round Robin is BS round robin is not. What's best for the customer round robin is because this agent is up. What happens when it's a $3 million customer who is in a neighborhood and that particular agent is up next and they have no context to understand what it's going to take to serve that customer.

Speaker 3 (21:51):
So we're not a round robin team. We are about understanding first and diagnosing as much as possible about the consumer who's asking, who's doing a hand raise and asking for the service and then pairing up the agent based on definitely region hyperlocal focused so that when the agent is serving that customer, they're saying, oh, well I know the pendings that went pending in the last 30 days. I know this house and I have stories here, here and here. That's what the customer deserves. So whether that happens to be Jeff and I, which at times an agent to agent referral will ask me and I'll say, I am not what's best for the customer an hour away from now. I do not know that market. And yet we have a specialist who does. So that's North Star.

Speaker 2 (22:33):
Yeah. Really, really well done. And this ties back to a theme that I speak to all the time, which is I typically talk customer experience, employee experience. In this context, it's agent experience and client experience. It's better for the agent to be put in a position to win too.

Speaker 3 (22:46):
Absolutely. Absolutely. win-win for all right. And more efficient. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:50):
Renee, you're awesome. I love your North star. I love your spirit. I love that you've found the way to do this in a way that works for you and for the people around you. And before I let you go, I would love to know what is one of your most frivolous purchases? Or you don't have to, you can skip that one.

Speaker 3 (23:06):
My husband should be here for that. Or

Speaker 2 (23:08):
What is a cheapskate habit that you hold onto even though you probably don't need to?

Speaker 3 (23:15):
Okay. Well, I will say a frivolous investment though I will say is at this very moment, Jeff, myself and our two boys have been homeless for almost three months. So we are in the midst of a full remodel of our house to make sure that we've fallen in love with their house again. And we went off the deep end. So what we will be doing as of November is it's called a Friday night with the Funks and we'll be hosting the agents at our house once a month to have fun. And you said frivolous purchase? I don't know if it's frivolous. I would say warranted. We work really hard, but did we go off the deep end on some of it? Yeah, we did. Let's not talk about the budget. It'll be fine. Very good. And when you're in Orlando next time, Friday night at the Funks.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
Awesome. Appreciate it. I will take you up on that invite. Let's do that. And I'm sure there are a couple of frivolous things tucked under there that drove that budget, but

Speaker 3 (24:09):
It's all good. It's as long as it's

Speaker 2 (24:10):
Enjoyed it, it's not wrong.

Speaker 3 (24:12):
No. And I'm a real estate professional, so I might have a little bit of input there. It's all good. We're loving it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
Appreciate you. Thank you for doing this.

Speaker 3 (24:19):
Thank you so much. This was a lot of fun, by the way. I love follow up boss. You're putting together a great community. This is one of the best communities I've ever been a part of. So thank you for lifting others as you climb.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
Awesome.

Speaker 3 (24:31):
Thanks.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
Feedback. So I'm privileged to have just joined it.

Speaker 3 (24:34):
It's going to be a fun ride. Put your seatbelt on. Very good. All right. Thank you so much friend. Thank

Speaker 2 (24:38):
You.

Speaker 1 (24:39):
Thanks for checking out this episode of Team Os. Get quick insights all the time by checking out real estate team Os on Instagram and on TikTok.