Speaker 1 (00:00):
Lead sources and lead distribution, recruiting funnels and agent avatars, repeat and referral business threats and opportunities to the real estate team model. The Summit series continues with Renee Funk, Ken Ick, Jenny Weimert and Ben Lobby. Each shares the unique ways their teams are generating opportunities with agents, organic database, social content, PPC, Zillow and beyond. They share what they're most focused on in today's market. They explain how they define and manage team culture. They look ahead to the future of real estate teams and more. The Summit series continues right now on real estate team os

Speaker 2 (00:42):
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 (00:56):
Lead sources, pros and cons of different lead sources. You're all doing things a little bit differently. I guess we'll kick it off here. We've established that you developed a very strong media presence essentially via YouTube and other social channels. I assume that's your primary lead source. I assume it's primarily organic, but anything you want to share about your journey over the years of team building with regard to lead sources?

Speaker 3 (01:19):
Yeah, I mean early on it was, Hey, come together. We're all going to prospect together, expire. It's for sale by owners door knock. And then I got to realize if I wanted to retain people, I needed to create some sort of source of them to stick around beyond that. And so

Speaker 1 (01:31):
Yeah, if you're training me to do it myself, I'll just go do it myself.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
You just go do it yourself. Yeah, you can hire a coach and accountability partner, you're good to go. So then it became let's buy Zillow, realtor.com, pay-per-click, hire ISAs, all this kind of stuff, which became wildly unprofitable and so I swung back the other way and I was just like, let's figure something else. So we started with content and YouTube became my thing and then it became the website. Then short form and media and all that kind of stuff. So we have 27 different sources of business now and we track everything back to the first source of when they found us. And so yeah, but majority of what we do is content marketing base at this point.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
How did it become unprofitable and have any of you gone down that road? What was unprofitable? Was it conversion rate? Was it just the increasing cost? What was it that made it challenging to build around?

Speaker 3 (02:15):
I think anything can work, but we were trying to do everything at once and so it was like Zillow takes time and conversion cycles are longer than I was willing to make it, and so then we try, we're like, let's do radio ads at the same time and that takes a really long time and so I just mistakenly said, I've got some money set aside, let's just spend it all. What I should have done is built a pillar and kind of build on it from there, which is now what we've done.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Really good. How about you Ben?

Speaker 4 (02:39):
So we use primarily pay-per-click advertising through YPO as our main lead source and I would say in reality the more important thing from just the lead source is really the funnel that occurs and the leads experience after they enter the ecosystem and that took forever to figure out and refine because it's almost different per lead source. So how we engage with a potential seller who's clicking on a cash now offer ad versus how we engage with a buyer in the specific community versus how we engage with an investor who's coming through BiggerPockets, how we treat those customers and curtail the content and the follow-up for those customers. That's really kind of what took us to the next level is once we had those steps defined.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
When you say Y local pay per-click, I think a lot of people have a sense of what you mean. Some people don't. I assume that it's Google and Meta like Facebook and Instagram,

Speaker 4 (03:32):
So they have social ads and Google PPC ads and then you can curtail the ads toward certain segments or target audiences, whether it's neighborhoods, zip codes, some demographics depending on the type of the ad.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
What I'm hearing is we can tailor ads with different calls to action, reach different people, target different people, and we need to just make sure that we're matching up their experience from there in a unique way. How many different paths would you say you've developed as you started refining it to make sure that it was connecting with people and converting?

Speaker 4 (04:02):
We used to have too many and we've narrowed it down. We used to have 15 and we actually scoped it down because every different path also requires training for the sales team and the sales agents of how do you handle this customer? What do you say when you call them because you're saying something different to a potential seller versus an investor.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Are specific agents taking specific lead types or do you just distribute it across kind of evenly so everyone's trained on all the different

Speaker 4 (04:28):
Yeah, definitely not evenly. Okay. Yeah, so we do it based on conversion rate and we also do it based off of their likes and interests because certain people would prefer a specific client type that they can interact with, they know how to handle them and that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
How about you Renee? I heard organic in our repeat referral.

Speaker 5 (04:44):
I mentioned earlier that I worked together with my husband. I do not take credit for this. I'm just really darn lucky I'm married. Well, in 2007, Jeffrey Funn created a website, realty orlando.com and went into a backroom of an apartment we were renting at the time and started building that website by hand at a time where everyone told him he was crazy, including his wife. Obviously it's one of his forever I told you so. He was right. A large part of our business as a team over the years since then and to this day is sourced through our website, which is organically positioned over the last five years though our business has branched out as far as sources that are relationship based. We have a lot of agent agent referrals being notable in the industry and really helping agents stay lean and mean that you do not have to go out and buy leads.

Speaker 5 (05:30):
It's so easy for agents to come into the industry and hear a shiny object. Certainly when you're at a level of a team leader that's built, it's perfectly acceptable to look at all different lead sources, but oftentimes agents hear that of others and think, I need to go do that. I need to do the PPC when the reality is you don't. When you're aligned with a great team who's focused on building a database, protecting the content that's going out through email campaigns and really honing in on those relationships, you can build a business lean and mean that lasts for your whole career.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yeah. The term that I hear there a lot is like plugin. Yes, you could go figure all this out, you could take the missteps, you could figure out that you don't have enough or you have too many nurturing processes or sequences or you could just plug into a proven system that works

Speaker 5 (06:15):
Right. And then on the distribution, I think you and I have talked about this in previous podcasts before. Round Robin is BS round Robin is not good for the consumer, so we're more aligned with what Ben is doing is identifying the passions, the skillset of an agent and partnering agents up with the type of consumer who's hand raising and saying, this is what I'm looking at. Having a team that is not focused on road warrior type service, which is I can serve everywhere from Miami to Jacksonville, Florida. Perhaps if those two markets are your specialties, God love you though being an agent who says, but I'll drive far if it's a certain price point, probably not going to be an agent for the funk collection. We're very focused on hyper-local specificity. So if you say you live and work in Windermere and that is your area of passion, then you can deliver a higher level of service to the consumer that is looking for a home in Windermere.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
Yeah, really fair specialization to the degree that it's possible given the size of the team and everything is ideal obviously. I mean why would anyone, especially at a particular price point that would attract someone to drive two hours away, they're making an even bigger purchase with more ignorant person.

Speaker 5 (07:24):
It happens a lot. I'm sure everyone here would attest to that. It happens a lot that agents will do that.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yeah. How about you Jenny?

Speaker 6 (07:29):
So we sold in 130 zip codes last year, so we have road warriors. No, we don't. My answer is going to be complicated, but I think it's important to go back. I was a farmer at the beginning. As an agent you can generate easy, generate enough business for yourself without having to go to paid lead sources and so on. The reason I ended up in the Zillow and realtor.com game is because they came online 2008 ish, nine 10 and gave the consumer the ability to do research now and see data and see other properties, and so I joined them for defense because I had farmed these communities, but now they're not just relying on my newsletter to get real estate information. They're going to Zillow and realtor.com. So if they go to three, two H two eight, are they going to see my face on the same face that they're seeing on the newsletter?

Speaker 6 (08:27):
We're like, oh, she is the right choice. So it all started by playing defense and then I bought into the zip code and it's producing leads and I was like, oh my goodness, this is wonderful, and then all of a sudden we have too many leads and then we needed an agent and then we had too many leads. We needed an agent. We're still in that a little bit where I think it is important to note that our business is 50% repeat referrals, so it is not our only pillar, it's not our only game. It feeds the pipeline. It allows us to bring new agents in. It allows agents to go in, get a lead when they're down and backfill their businesses. The challenge with that model, and it's changed over time. There's been the heyday of Zillow realtor.com that it was a great return on our investment.

Speaker 6 (09:13):
The testimonials people would come and choose us to be sellers because they read our testimonials and I mean there was a heyday period there. Now it's changing a bit where Zillow and realtor.com want a little more control over our businesses. They want to make sure that the consumers being taken care of because they're getting a bad rep because agents aren't answering the phone or they're not specialized in the area, whatever that may be. So we have to give up a little bit of control in the area. If you're on the lead team, you have to be much more accountable because we have metrics to hit now and you could lose the opportunity over time. We have gained the opportunity to become maybe the flex team in the top zip codes in Orlando or the VIP realestate realtor.com leads. Basically what just is happening right now as we speak, these top teams are edging out the small guys. They can't buy those leads anymore. You have to join one of our teams to be able to get those leads. For the most part, that has been earned over time and we've stayed in business with those companies because there's no better leads. They're bottom of the funnel. They're calling on properties that are actively listed. They do feed the pipeline. For us, it works because we have the repeat referral and retention.

Speaker 1 (10:29):
It's building a database and building a book, a business for a growing team of agents,

Speaker 6 (10:33):
Right? Then when you build the funnel, so those aren't our only two. We have several others. We have SEO behind us, we have website, we have farms still. We have our databases feeding, so we have a funnel of leads coming in every day from a lot of different sources, which are a huge challenge because you not only have sources that need specific updates and portal updates and you're counting on your agents to do that, which is challenging. So we have an admin of VA to do portal updates just to play the game. Distributing leads is difficult. It's hard to do. It's not equal, it can't be. We work a lot on trust where we teach the agents, you don't have to hoard leads, you don't hoard leads. It's a detriment to your business to have too many leads. Take the leads. If you have a three four A buyers go work them, you can come back and turn the lead source back on.

Speaker 6 (11:29):
We also allow them to refer to each other within the team, so if let's say they're on leads that day or they jumped for a lead or a lead landed in their lab somehow if they feel like I'm not a specialist in that area, I'm not a specialist as short-term rental, I'm not a land person, not they can take the time to build a relationship with the client, convert them and then hand 'em to another agent on the team for a 10%. So essentially they become the ISA in the middle of that where we don't want to penalize them and if we didn't do that, just human nature is like, that's not mine. I'm just going to ignore that lead. I'm just going to burn it. It's where if they can spend the extra time to convert it and hand it off, we have found that to be successful.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
So I hear culture and shared accountability is key to

Speaker 6 (12:15):
ROI. You have to trust because you're trusting these people with these big relationships too, and so one person could ruin it for all of us, and so it's important that we trust each other and if they're going out of town, they shouldn't be on a lead shift that week or they shouldn't be down on the Zillow jump balls or whatever it may be. Just turn yourself off and then turn yourself back on when you're ready to take on new buyers.

Speaker 3 (12:38):
We started doing that. We call it pausing yourself and it's actually very alleviating for the agent. They feel like now all of a sudden they don't have to be on that. It could actually control what they've got. When I introduced that, which it seemed at the time this was some novel thing, but now I hear a lot of people doing it, it was like, oh, actually the clients are going to get better service. The agent doesn't get overwhelmed, so that's a really good

Speaker 6 (12:56):
Point. Throughout the years I've been to a lot of team trainings and they're like, our agents have to call three hours a day and they have to prospect, and I'm like, what if they have active buyers? I'd rather have them hunting for property negotiating deals and opening doors or going on listing appointments, provide the leads. I don't need them to continue to do that when they already have enough in their hands, go work those and then when you get one under contract, come back to the well and open the door again. It's worked well for us. It is a beast though. We have some on jump balls, we have some on round robin, we have some on a lead shift, whatever comes in during that shift, they have to manage half of it's admin because people are calling. They don't know how to open doors on central lock. There's a whole bunch of, it's very complicated. It's super

Speaker 1 (13:43):
Complicated because you're all doing repeat and referral business obviously, tactically. I mean, it's easy to say, yeah, give 'em a great experience, stay in touch over time. What's something that you have trained your agents to do that is key to either providing such a great experience that repeat and referral is more likely to happen or following up well after the transaction in order to get that in a way that's maybe been earned. Give me a couple ideas on things that you learned in your own process of selling that is now something that your agents are learning to do such that you can get repeat and referral business.

Speaker 4 (14:23):
Ask for the referral.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
When do you know that it is? Okay? All the time. All the time.

Speaker 5 (14:29):
When someone says thank you.

Speaker 4 (14:30):
Yeah, when someone says thank you. When you've delivered a good service and the customer says thank you, you should be asking for their referral, so hopefully multiple times throughout the transaction and post-close

Speaker 5 (14:40):
And how it's asked for is key, right? Because put it out there. Most agents don't like to ask, but that's because in our industry, the industry has trained us all to say, who do you know is looking to buy, sell or invest real estate? That question is BS also. It doesn't work. When was the last time you asked that question? You actually got an answer. It's probably few and far between because what is happening in that moment is you're putting the responsibility on the other individual to do your work for you, but rather when you think of, there's one family in mind that has transacted with the team many, many times. They currently live in Keens Point. They live on a golf course property with a sunset view and specifically came to the team on their fourth trade of a property to say, Hey, we want to live on a golf course with a sunset view. Now when they talk to us and we see 'em and they say, oh my gosh, the kids have been in the backyard with the sunset view, the question can be, well, fantastic. So glad that you love that. Who else do you know that loves playing golf?

Speaker 5 (15:37):
So getting a referral is going wrong by many agents because they're trying to say, who do you know that's looking to transact? When we know that most people don't transact a primary, what now it's getting closer to every 10 years, why not just ask for a connection to someone else that's similar, who will then be an echo chamber to the great work that you did with them?

Speaker 1 (15:57):
Really good.

Speaker 6 (15:57):
I love the question, do you have any real estate plans this year that you'd like me to keep in mind while I'm out in my travels? Are you going to invest? Are you thinking about a condo on the beach or you thinking about upgrading? Because I may run across a buyer that would love your home or I may run across that perfect listing that you want me to keep in mind for you. Just asking the question, do you have any real estate plans this year is an easy question to ask if you're a realtor.

Speaker 3 (16:22):
I think for us, it's training our people that it's not a transactional one-time one and done. It's like how else can we bring them into our community and stay in front of them with valuable information and valuable information is not the house that I just sold. It's actual valuable information around the community and the community that they live in, what's going on with the schools. And so anytime that we can interject that we do use systems like fellow, so when people are looking for their home value, it's like we don't automatically assume they want a list. It's just like, Hey, I noticed you came through looking for your home's value. Just curious. Have you done anything to your house? So I can kind of narrow that in for you. So get you the equity update that you're looking for. Oh, you're looking at selling? Okay, great. So we try to hit them a little bit of content that's relevant and then also keep them real estate forefront as well.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
And I also heard they're responding to their actual behavioral cues,

Speaker 5 (17:12):
Not trying to sell them. To your point, it's trying to get into curiosity and being a consultant to you're the keeper of the information because we use fellow as well, and that's awesome. That's a great solution. However, it's a computer generated assumption of value that has a massive swing on it, which is amazing for us.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
Absolutely. It's a conversation starter.

Speaker 5 (17:33):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
Yeah,

Speaker 5 (17:34):
We find those computer generated valuations to be very helpful.

Speaker 6 (17:39):
From a team perspective, how do you keep your agents engaged with your past clients? One of our value propositions is the fact that we have a marketing director, so we will develop the program, whatever it is, so maybe it's like we're coming into St. Patrick's Day, we will create the cars, the Popeye's, the agents will go get the scratch off tickets and then they'll drop 'em off or mail 'em to their clients. We'll tell 'em what to do. We provide everything built ready to go. They just have to go do the work. We will write the emails for homestead reminders and they just have to go make the calls and send 'em to the client. We do shared client experience stuff. So a couple of weeks ago we rented out movie theaters where each of the agents could choose how many tickets they wanted to purchase for their clients, but together it was easier to do than it would be to have one client party. So basically we just serve it up to them on a platter and then they just have to engage.

Speaker 3 (18:39):
Yeah, we do four community events a year and we do it all for them, which is all they have to do is invite their people. So it's Easter event in the park. We have a thousand people show up, and the whole thing is like, how do I engage our clients not to just engage with us, but with each other, each other and find community? And one of the things that we found is that when you move somewhere new, it's actually kind of lonely. And so how do we connect people like, oh, you're a mom with kids. They're a mom with kids. You guys should get together or you like theme parks, they like theme parks. Let's get them together. And so we've done a 5K, we've done a brewery tour, we've done a whole bunch of other kind of things to kind of build that community long-term

Speaker 5 (19:10):
Leverage, right?

Speaker 3 (19:10):
Yeah,

Speaker 5 (19:11):
Everyone's talking. We could all give a long list of what we're providing to give the agent leverage, like social media, buyer, seller, guides, events, all of those things. Those are all great reasons why agents should consider joining a team and take that leverage run with it.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
What role have you carved out for yourself right now? Obviously it's changed it a little bit. In our first part of our conversation, we talked about some of the market dynamics and how that's changing things around the business. I'm sure your day-to-day role, but the process of building the team is one of you going typically from being a very high performing agent to taking off hats or That's the language I like to use around, okay, I'm going to now hand this over to somebody else. I'm going to take this role off, I'm going to take that role off and now I'm in my best role. You all have been doing it long enough that you've taken off a lot of hats and are probably in a role that really suits what you think is your highest value in your organization. What does your role look like today?

Speaker 3 (20:06):
C-E-O-C-M-O-C-O-O? My goal is to hire the COO this year and actually work my way into CMO. I'd love to have somebody else running the company and just focus in on marketing and content.

Speaker 6 (20:17):
Are you still in the field?

Speaker 3 (20:18):
I sell one to two houses a month as well

Speaker 6 (20:21):
That are 15 million in. I

Speaker 1 (20:22):
Mean

Speaker 3 (20:23):
Sometimes,

Speaker 1 (20:25):
Yeah. Talk about that process of finding a COO.

Speaker 3 (20:27):
We started with our network first and I just put on LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram and we had hundreds of resumes come in. Now I have a job of actually going through resumes and that kind of thing, and so understanding that I'm not the greatest at that. I can hire creatives really well. I can hire agents really well, but I've not ever hired a C-level kind of person before. We hired a recruiter recently, and so we've been going through that process trying to find somebody, but I was trying to hire somebody within the company first, and I just didn't see that with who we currently have. So we're going outside.

Speaker 1 (20:59):
Cool. What kind of role are you in and or would you like to be in?

Speaker 4 (21:03):
I'm taking a step back into systems building because that's my strength and that's what I like to do the most. So revisiting the fundamental structure of our business and operating procedures to see how we can provide a better customer experience through the shifting market. So that's my focus right now.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
And are you producing?

Speaker 4 (21:21):
Not really, no. Okay.

Speaker 5 (21:23):
Left full-time production. January, 2021. You and I have chatted before on TOS that it's a redefined version of what production can look like. So Jeff and I have about 10 to 20 top level top advocate customers we keep in our database, but other than that, we're non-compete team leaders. We don't take production credit in the MLS for our team members and we're here solely to help lift them as the team continues to climb. From a current moment role as a team leader, you have to be malleable and under the hood is where I am right now. Support coaching training is key because we are literally looking at everything and saying, pretend you knew nothing and start on day one regardless of how long you've been in the industry. But going under the hood and making sure that every email, every text, every system, every processes is calibrated to what it's going to take moving forward is key. And whether you're a consumer or an agent, partnering with agents in the industry who have seen multiple seasons is critical. If you are with somebody that is an agent who just received their license, you better be darn sure that agent is partnered up with someone who's been around for many, many years to tolerate and navigate and help them thrive through what the industry is doing right now.

Speaker 1 (22:40):
So is that a formal or semi-formal mentorship program? Are you pairing people up

Speaker 5 (22:45):
Through the onboarding process? There is an eligibility phased approach, right? Agents have tracks so to, I think everyone on the panel's point is a newer rising up agent is not going to be paired up with a consumer who is seeking a true experienced agent, and if it is an agent that's rising up, they're going to be partnered together with an agent who knows how to serve that moment and sometimes that even over the last couple of months has been with Jeff or myself.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
You both mentioned systems and revisiting them. Is it because they worked for a season and we're in a different season so I need to revisit it, or is it, I was so busy in 2021, I knew I wanted to fix this thing, but now I have a little bit more mental space for it. What systems or processes are you looking at and why?

Speaker 5 (23:31):
Action plans is big action plans, and I've mentioned it a couple of times about emails, texts, every word that is being used right now matters

Speaker 7 (23:40):
Because

Speaker 5 (23:40):
There's a sea of sameness that's going on with agents where agents, whether they're using chat GPT or they're just using some old language in the industry, it's not going to cut it. So looking at everything going on in our action plans is key.

Speaker 4 (23:55):
We're building a talent acquisition funnel is the big thing. How are we going to acquire agents and more and better staff and what that process is like? So really having it documented out and having it break down step by step.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
How about you, Jenny? What role are you in today or are you looking to change or evolve it in any way?

Speaker 6 (24:16):
Yeah, that's a loaded question. Am I going to go play pickleball or am I going to ramp back up and build something?

Speaker 7 (24:23):
Yeah,

Speaker 6 (24:25):
No, I think that, I mean that's a real question. I, I'm too young. I got to get to 55 so I can be the homecoming queen of the 55 and older community, but besides that, I am team mom, so I am very much in tune with what the agents are doing. If you read the book Rocket Fuel, I'm kind of the innovator and then Emily is sort of the implementer. So together we are constantly looking at how to improve things. What are we missing, what do we need to add, what do we need to fix? So we're in the weeds a little bit on the systems firefighter. I help the agents solve problems in transactions and help them price when they get stuck. Call sellers, call brokers, that type of thing and teach. I teach and coach,

Speaker 1 (25:13):
You mentioned a recruiting funnel both for staff and for agents. Do you all have a formal system for that already?

Speaker 3 (25:20):
I mean, yes. We've got our careers page that goes right into our CRM and it gets tagged as if they were a lead and then it goes over to, yeah, they're our director of growth or my assistant depending on what we're looking to hire. And then there's a follow-up system and process for each person.

Speaker 5 (25:32):
Yes, careers page as well. And though the funnel approach is going to depend on the avatar, so for example, I do a career event once a month, which is on Zoom, and it allows those who are raising their hand to come into a group-like setting and learn about the opportunity. Those that are at a level where they want to one-on-one, they can automatically come through and schedule with me personally, but really creating a few different pathways for agents has been key. Not everybody wants to meet one-on-one, not everybody wants to have a Zoom. Not everybody wants to have a phone call. So providing different opportunities based on the agent's preferences is the way that we found success.

Speaker 6 (26:10):
I approach recruiting, sort of how I've approached my business from the beginning. I always wanted to be a marketing agent where people called us where we didn't have to call them. I'm not a prospect, I don't even know how to teach prospecting. We do things on purpose to put out information about our team kind of so that the community feels our culture, they get a feel for what we do, how we feel about the clients, and so it's more of an attraction model than a prospecting model, but we do have the career page as well. For

Speaker 1 (26:40):
Anyone who heard that Jenny is not a prospector, you need to go back to the first part of the conversation here, talking about dragging a wagon. Yeah, that's right. I dunno if we call that prospecting, but that's out there. That's out there. Things happen.

Speaker 6 (26:54):
Yeah, the cold calling the scripting. But prospecting, I, that was marketing to me because I was doing the neighborhood, the newsletter meeting people that was marketing to me.

Speaker 3 (27:04):
What Jenny mentioned though as well, in terms of putting stuff online with successes from your team, that's probably the best and biggest way that we get people that want to join us is when I take one person a month on my team and tell a story about them, not how great we are now. It's literally this person on our team crushes it. They're a mom of two, and yet they're still able to sell five houses a month and here's how they've done it. That makes the phone ring every time.

Speaker 1 (27:27):
That's good. I had the chance to deliver a presentation on how agents can find the right team or brokerage and how teams and brokerages can find the right agents to fit essentially an agent avatar type of conversation. One of the gaps I specifically talked about closing was that turn it into, at the end of all these steps, turn it into a promise statement. We're designed for blank headline of an avatar with at least two or three proof of efficacy statements behind that. Lemme tell you about one of them. So and so and so. That's it. I mean, it's just evidence of our claims.

Speaker 6 (27:58):
Yeah,

Speaker 1 (28:00):
How much of the market is affecting your production and how much can you just plain out muscle the market? A lot of people say, well, the market conditions don't matter. I can grow 50% if I just do the right things and I just muscle my way through it. I think the reality is somewhere in the middle I've heard people, I can do whatever the heck I want. And then there are other people that of course are a little bit more, I don't know, victims of the situation in their own minds. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. I'd love for you to talk about that however you're experiencing that right now. I've said

Speaker 6 (28:34):
So much. I feel like we can muscle our way through it. Are we affected by the market? Yes. As far as units go, we were down last year, but volume held and volume was up so we can fix this with more agents and a higher conversion rate and getting more on purpose about our leads and pulling in our budget. It may not look like it in top line numbers, but bottom line, we're fine. Even when the market went to, I mean in 2007 I was selling $18,000 condos for 2% and I'm like throwing in the boat, throwing in boat. I buy three of those. I had to triple my volume that year, but you just muscle through it. So yes, I do believe we can muscle through it because we know what we're doing

Speaker 5 (29:23):
Well that speaks to experience and seeing many different seasons in the industry and in the markets, right? Say the same is this is opportunity. If there's a narrative or negativity going on in a direction, the agents who will thrive are the ones that are going to literally ignore it and go the opposite direction. What do we see in 2025 as a team? We see incredible opportunity unfortunately because there are a lot of people who are in their own head and there are some who won't acknowledge. It may not be as rosy as it was the last few unicorn years, but it's absolutely possible. One of the more, and this may be more tactical, but if we look specifically in database right now, what we're seeing as a team is we categorize hot, warm, nurture. However, A, B, C, however you categorize in our database, it's hot, warm, nurture.

Speaker 5 (30:10):
We are seeing, even though we use warm, which is a three to six month timeline, likelihood almost no client is an actual warm stage with more curiosity. What we're doing with that warm stage as agents is we are leaning in to find out are they a nurturer or are they a hot, it is like a fence. So that is a skillset. Agents are going back to rediscover is how do you go into curiosity with the people in your database and say, well, you once articulated the following, but now let's go a little deeper and find out how specific that timeline is. And we're finding that that has been a great sort.

Speaker 4 (30:50):
I think you just have to be focused in a season like this, especially when now there's so much more noise in the world and in our market, and so maintaining that focus and deciding what you're going to focus on makes a big difference on whether you're going to grow or you're going to retract and it's so much easier to be distracted than it was five years ago.

Speaker 6 (31:13):
Stay in your lane, right? Know what you're good at and stay

Speaker 3 (31:16):
There. It's good

Speaker 3 (31:18):
For us. I feel like as long as there's home selling, we're going to try to take market share. And so I think that, yeah, it's harder today than it was and it's also different. And so last year when the commission conversation was coming out, I was like, you know what? If things really get effed up, we need to be very listing based. And so we're super buyer based right now in terms of the content and the call to actions and the ERs that we have. Let's shift to listings. And so we started putting out more listing based content and that started bringing in more listings, but then listings are taking longer, and so it's all these new skill sets and we're just constantly looking at what's actually working. Let's lean into that. Okay, now that's not working as great. Let's shift. We have a test bucket where we're like, Hey, let's try some stuff that maybe we don't know if it's going to work and that's okay. But yeah, I'm in the full mindset that every year we're going to grow and so far so good.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
So you can, it's a little both, but mostly adapt for the season. Stick to the plan, revise plans as necessary. Keep going

Speaker 5 (32:14):
And repel any yeah buts.

Speaker 1 (32:17):
Yeah,

Speaker 5 (32:18):
Yeah. But is going to be key to you are not agile and you're not open to be coachable

Speaker 1 (32:23):
And that's your mindset piece of what are we focusing on. The other one I wanted to go to is culture, and obviously you're for to rocket fuel or traction or whatever, whether you're doing that formally or not. Certainly one of the steps is being very clear on your vision, your mission, your purpose, your values, et cetera. Some people are very formal about that and other people, it's more of a vibe and let's protect it. This person supports it, this person doesn't. Where are you on the scale of this is super fundamentally important. We've heard both on this show more to the, it's super important and it's been key to our success, but I've also had on the other end, it's just a thing we're here to do business. We do it a consistent way. We've got some standards you would identify. I mean you're just going to identify culture regardless. I mean, I would argue that cultural exercises are branding exercises. You're trying to influence it, but it's ultimately up to your agents to carry the culture. The agents do carry the culture, just like our consumers define the brand. All we can do is seek to influence the way that they would define or think about or talk about the brand. I don't know whether it's a scale of one to 10 or whatever, but culture, how formal and important has it been to you?

Speaker 6 (33:38):
It's everything for us. We train culture, we preach culture, we teach it, we remind them constantly of the power of the team. So we have a couple of things that we do on our team. One, we're we merch, so we call ourselves we mates, and that sticks. But that doesn't just mean it's not just a fun word. Actually, we mate stands for something in our world and it's we never I. And then the M stands for masters of our craft. We want experts A is accountable for our actions. We're going to say when we do something wrong, if we do and fess up to it, T is teachable spirits, E is elevate others. So we're going to take care of each other and take care of our partners and take care of our co brokers. We live by those standards and we remind the agents constantly. That is what we want a we mate to stand for. Which is kind of funny because I'll get calls from friends out in the industry and they'll be like, I just dealt with one of your agents that she wasn't being a very good we mate. And I'm like, well, gosh. So I'm like, okay, what's going on?

Speaker 6 (34:43):
So that's important to us and we will have bad days, but if we elevate each other and we assume the best in each other, we can get through those. And then we also have something called Ubuntu. Ubuntu means I am because we are, and so on our team, if somebody's helping each other or they supported each other in one way or another, they'll be like hashtag Ubuntu. And that just reminds everybody that we are stronger together. We are building this brand together that we are winning because somebody else won last week from the team.

Speaker 3 (35:14):
I love that.

Speaker 6 (35:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (35:16):
I'll go next. Culture. So culture for us, it's everything as well. It's what we hire too. If we decide if we're to stay in business with you or not. For us, we do feel like we're undergoing this kind of, we said for the longest time we're a family and we have family get togethers, we go to dinners together, but I want that family atmosphere, but we're really not a family because I'm stuck with crazy uncle, maybe I don't want to. So we're shifting into more of an elite team and I've heard this said a couple of times online and we've kind of adopted it. So for us, sometimes we're trying to hire to that elite kind of team. Are you an elite team member that you're going to stick around? We'll keep veterans even if you slow down, it's okay, people put you on the veteran contract and you'll hang out. But for us, we're trying to build that Super Bowl winning team and that's what our culture's about.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
Formal value statements and things.

Speaker 3 (36:00):
Just the hungry, humble career, curious and smart. And if you're going to stick around, that's you got to exemplify all four. Cool.

Speaker 4 (36:07):
We started with a saying in the beginning when we launched the team, which is my personal mantra, which is to constantly evolve. So we constantly want to grow and get better at our craft. And so we've gone through that as the leading source for the first two and a half years, and then more recently it's more so where I'm reevaluating that to see how can we more formalize different aspects of our culture so that we can use them in our standards for recruiting and attracting new talent. So we're kind of going through that transition period of really defining what our values are

Speaker 5 (36:42):
When it comes to the service we provide in the community. There's a north star and it's what's best for the customer. That question alone has been at the forefront even before the team existed, when it was just Jeff and I. And then you get into the next layer is, okay, well we're a bunch of team leaders sitting here, and it's important to say, well, what's best for the agent experience so that the agent has the ability to put focus on what's best for the customer. A lot of years, a part of our model was to be very heavy on metrics around phone calls. And I found as a team leader, it almost put us in a position where we were not a whip, but you feel like you're whipping. Was it enough calls? What enough calls? Let's look at the leaderboard, right? And actually it was at Fcon in 2023 as a speaker at fcon.

Speaker 5 (37:26):
I stood in front of that room of what, 2000 team leaders and I made a proclamation that I was never going to ask another real estate agent to make a phone call again, because that type of metric within a culture of a team, number one feels like table stakes. If you're in this team, a part of the culture is we're here to grow, thrive, serve the community. So standing in that room saying, I'm never going to ask an agent to make a phone call again, and this is why big move still stand by that though. When we look at culture each year asking the agents, what does culture mean to you? I'm a team leader. It's not my position to say we have good culture. Just like I don't put on social media or put out into a marketing message that we're a trusted team. The consumer chooses if we're trusted, the agent chooses if and what culture means to them. So just like vision and other things we've talked about here today is having that reset gut check every single year is what does it mean to you to make sure this culture of what we're building is important and it's happening in the way you want it to. That in itself defines the culture that continues to be on the team,

Speaker 1 (38:35):
That the add there of like you can go out and tell the market how much integrity you and your team members have, but the more you declare it, the less sincere, or even honest it feels. Then this is why we use the word experience, agent experience or customer experience or consumer experience. There are things you demonstrate and they feel then they think it and then hopefully they say it and behave in accordance.

Speaker 5 (38:58):
And it can be in testimonials, it can be in the testimony of the consumer and the agent. It's not something that comes from a team leader to be proclamation.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
Yeah. Future of the team model. Obviously they've been emergent over the past 30 years. They've been on a rapid come up the past eight to 12. Will that momentum continue? Will it be a bigger, I think most of us would agree that it'd be very difficult for a new agent to enter the business into a traditional brokerage without some of the support that a team provides. But what do you think is the future of the team model in general? You can take it any direction you want.

Speaker 3 (39:35):
I think we're going to see more consolidation. We're already getting teams that are either not profitable or just kind of tired and just unsure that are reaching out. Can we merge with you? Can we join you? And I think that teams are just going to continue to get bigger and take more market share. And I agree with you, the individual agents going to lose out, just just how do you keep up with juggernauts that are just kind of built their own thing. So that's where I see it going.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
So you think like a proper mid-market enterprise that has 2000 agents dominating a region?

Speaker 3 (40:06):
I don't see why not.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
Okay. Well certainly that it already exists. I just wonder that's going to be more normal, you

Speaker 3 (40:12):
Think? Yeah. I mean, look at, I think the team bridge model is actually probably the most profitable and the most dangerous to disrupt a lot of the other stuff that's going on because it's either you have a lot of lower end producers and there's a ton of them, or you've got really great services and culture and I think market share that you can dominate. And I think that that's actually the model that's going to be really interesting to watch.

Speaker 6 (40:35):
And you're a broker getting sued all the time. That's not fun.

Speaker 1 (40:41):
Well, I mean, I think that's the biggest hurdle for a lot of folks when they look at the, should I go independent? I think the brokerage piece itself is the biggest hurdle. You've been at it for how long now?

Speaker 6 (40:53):
It's 2016.

Speaker 1 (40:55):
Okay, 10 years basically. How real is that?

Speaker 6 (40:58):
If people ask me that all the time,

Speaker 1 (41:00):
I'm very curious, Jenny.

Speaker 6 (41:01):
People ask me all the, yeah, I would say to do it again, I would do it again. But we left Keller Williams. We had 45 of us at the time, so we just picked up and we opened a brokerage and it was successful because we had enough people. The reality is though, when you leave that environment, if we don't have somebody to cover an open house, we don't have somebody to cover an open house. I can't stick my head out the door and recruit from the other KW agents or the exp agents that are out in that brokerage. That was a piece that we missed. The other thing is we are virtually invisible to the new agents. So the new agents are going to know about the EXPs, the Coldwell bankers, the Maxes brand new agents don't know who Weimer Group Realty is. Experience agents in the market know us and will be attracted to us, and it's easier to recruit, but the new agents we're invisible to them.

Speaker 6 (41:59):
So recruiting is difficult, and if you're a small team, it is hard to have a big enough value proposition to be able to grow a brokerage. Your value proposition is built over time and shared leverage and shared experiences. I wouldn't open a brokerage unless I was just going to be a mom and pop just me and maybe one or two people, or I'm coming with a large group already. I wouldn't do it trying to grow a brokerage from scratch. No way. I think we're going to see a lot of consolidation just because of all of the lawsuits and nobody wants to write those big checks. But I don't know. Here we are,

Speaker 3 (42:39):
Jenny, Jenny out there writing big

Speaker 6 (42:40):
Checks. Here we are. We're not big enough, but we keep growing. We could be

Speaker 1 (42:46):
Future of teams,

Speaker 5 (42:47):
Future of teams

Speaker 1 (42:48):
Or team mergers.

Speaker 5 (42:50):
The first thing I think of with that question is the need for the industry. So NAR especially, to step up and recognize what a team actually is and what it means not just to the industry, but to the consumer. Teams have revolutionized

Speaker 5 (43:05):
The service level that consumers receive. Teams are making it possible to help agents lift them up and say, don't worry, you're not experienced yet. Come with me instead of being out alone. It's a shame that NAR hasn't picked up to create some real space where teams can have true identification within the membership that the MLSs still have such discrepancies there. So maybe it's a wishlist, but I do wish that our realtor boards and our NAR association would come together and say, we recognize the power of a team. Teams will continue to thrive. The teams that are smart and focused on, we've touched a little on profitability. Profitability needs to start the moment. Someone has a real estate license, not enough people will tell a new agent, turn off the shiny object syndrome, put your blinders on and just go forward. So those kind of conversations are not happening as frequently enough, early enough. But they do happen within teams and that's why you see teams continuing to grow and help other agents grow.

Speaker 3 (44:05):
It's interesting when you say nars, I mean it's almost punitive

Speaker 5 (44:08):
When

Speaker 3 (44:09):
You look at, oh, you're a team. Oh, we're revolutionizing what we're doing. It's

Speaker 5 (44:13):
2025. If that topic came up even five years ago and certainly 10 years ago. But why is it that in 2025 we don't have true space within the MLS To have an organization to actually have space around another underbelly with teams is there's no true protection. If we call it what it is to team agreements, every single one of a team agreement is the team leader will honor it. Outgoing team members, that's a whole other story. And there's no protection to us within the association whatsoever. You have that as a brokerage teams a underbelly often not talked about.

Speaker 1 (44:53):
No, I certainly haven't heard that in my seat in this production. I've certainly heard I was in this brokerage and it was just a chore because they made it really difficult to blah, blah, blah. And that's a story from 15 years ago inside a brokerage that still maybe isn't as team friendly as some of the other ones. But that piece I had not heard yet.

Speaker 5 (45:13):
But overall teams, they'll continue to thrive.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
Any thoughts to add, Ben?

Speaker 4 (45:18):
I think there's a need in the marketplace for teams. I'm curious to see the development as what the large brokerages will do because they can typically implement enterprise level benefits at scale across an entire brokerage, and so that makes it kind of hard to compete with them as a team or as an independent brokerage. And so it'll be interesting to see if that gap in the service offering between certain brokerages and teams becomes larger over time.

Speaker 5 (45:47):
Well, not all brokerages are

Speaker 6 (45:49):
Conducive for teams.

Speaker 4 (45:51):
That's true too.

Speaker 6 (45:51):
Well, and the brokerages to provide those top level services to be shared are going to have to change their split. So the a hundred percent companies can't be a hundred percent and provide all these

Speaker 3 (46:02):
No, it's either or. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (46:03):
Right. So the teams have a margin built in for that to be shared. In the broker world, it's just the agents just keep wanting more and more and more and more and they want the split and they want the services. So that's That's got to change too.

Speaker 1 (46:19):
Yeah, that's what I hear the most about the attraction of teams is you can design your model in a way that allows you to provide to agents what you want to provide in a way that still gives you some margin on it and works for everybody and to do it independently. You have even more flexibility than I think probably anyone else does. I've certainly heard people going dependent specifically because the way they were aligned and this large team they've built didn't support the speed or flexibility that they needed to go forward.

Speaker 6 (46:47):
Yeah, it's nice being able to pivot quickly.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
Well, I appreciate all of you so much. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day. This was not a small commitment on any of your part. I hope you found something useful and enjoyable about getting together. I appreciate you all making this happen. Thank you for the

Speaker 5 (47:03):
Collaboration.

Speaker 1 (47:06):
If you missed the first part of our conversation with Jenny, Ben, Renee, and Ken, it's just a few episodes back and it's linked up right down below in the description. Be sure to check that one out. Next up in the summit series are Emily Smith of Weemer Group Realty and Geo Sansi of Poit Group, and they walk us through in detail end to end how their teams recruit onboard and retain their best agents. Get episode alerts and instant access to eight subscriber only episodes. Head over to realestate team os.com/subscribe. Thanks again so much for checking this one out. I hope you're enjoying this summit series format.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
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.