Speaker 1 (00:00):
The agency team is the number one real estate team in Hawaii. They recently achieved their first a hundred unit month. They've expanded from the islands to the mainland and they've grown to 150 agents and they've done it all with zero recruiting. In this conversation, team leader Dylan Naka explains how crafting a culture code on day one and committing to consistently use video over a period of years has attracted agents and clients alike. Why? He's not looking to entertain anyone with his videos, why he'll always do his social media himself. Why he looks at marketing attribution conversion rate and ROI in a global way and why it's disingenuous not to and how phrases like your vibe attracts your tribe, who not how and the devil lives in the white space fit into his philosophy, approach and successes. Enjoy this time with Dylan Naka right here on Real Estate Team os

Speaker 2 (00:55):
No matter where your business is today or where you want to take it, you'll get there faster and more profitably with an operating system. Welcome to Team Os, your guide to starting, growing and optimizing real estate team. Here's your host, Ethan Butte.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Dylan, I look forward to meeting you in person finally at Unlock in a couple of weeks where we'll be on a panel together. In the meantime, congratulations on your first a hundred unit month last month and welcome to Real estate team os.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
Thanks man, thanks for having me. Appreciate it and looking forward to unlock also.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yeah, I'm so glad we connected earlier this year. I of course know a little bit about your business because of some of our past conversations and of course your pretty great at putting content out online as well, so we'll definitely be talking about that. But I'll start where we always do, which is a must have characteristic of a high performing team, maybe even reflecting on a hundred unit month or the builds to get there. What are some key factors to high performance?

Speaker 3 (01:50):
Well, I think there's three main factors to a high performance team, but the first one and most important is having a strong foundation. And I think it's maybe a mistake that a lot of leaders overlook in the beginning, and what I mean by a strong foundation is simply having a culture. A culture code is something that we have that we built really when I was a team of one, how I wanted to treat the business, treat our clients, treat each other as a team, and then having a vision and a mission for what you're doing. And once you have that and you're clear on that, I think everything else can be built from that. And then you have something to look back on to solve your problems, overcome your challenges. I think everything can be dealt with if you have a really solid foundation. And then of course that culture then creates the thing that attracts the right people. And that's a big belief that I have is that your vibe attracts your tribe and we're very clear on who we are and what we do and the people who want to be a part of that and resonate with that come to us and the people who don't don't. And that's what keeps it special and keeps it productive.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
I love it. We've definitely chatted a little bit, not you and I, but guests on the show in the past have definitely talked a little bit about the self-reinforcing nature of both positive and negative cultures. In this case, you of course is positive, but I love that you started with essentially mission, vision, values and what I'd love for you to do, I mean you're the number one team in your state. You're an incredibly high performing team ranked nationally depending on however you cut it, whatever for whatever that's worth. They just want to establish that you're a very high performing team with a great deal of success and a great track record. And you started this conversation on mission, vision and values. And I know that there are people that listen to this show who are like culture whatever. It just kind of is what it is. Give us a little bit of tactical, practical on mission, vision and values. I want someone who thinks that this is all kind of hocus pocus or something to know the real value in the way they could maybe do it for themselves.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
For me it was really important because, and the genesis, a team of one maybe not be the right terminology, but the way this all started in my real estate career was I joined the brokerage that my mom and my stepdad were at. And my stepdad had ran that brokerage for many years. And then my brother, my second year in real estate, I got him licensed and he joined. So we kind of had a little family team of four people and we weren't like a real estate team in the sense of what I think people think a real estate team is, but because it was a family operation, I really wanted to be clear that the business would never get in between or cause conflict amongst the family. The family relationships were more important than any profitability, money, strategy, any of that stuff. And so that's really where it started.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
And so I just took the time because I had that desire to write, actually write a document out on what our values were and what our principles were and how we would treat each other as family. And it wasn't my intent at that time to scale this thing up to 150 agents, but because it was rooted in that value of how do we treat each other as a family and make sure that those relationships are a priority over the business aspects of real estate, I think it created something special where we all still feel that way. I mean that's the core foundation of how we operate is kind of family first, relationships first. And so that's really where it started. That was the genesis of it all was starting there and it's really helped us along the way When there is conflict, when there's miscommunication, when there's disagreement about something, we can always look back to that. And that's something that's written in our contract, what our team contract is. There's a dispute resolution kind of clause in every contract and the dispute resolution clause basically is we're going to look to the culture code and solve it via the culture code. And I've pretty much that's worked every single time and that's really been the core aspect that has led to our growth and our success.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
You started with actual family members, you're now 150 agent ish team. What was the transition there from small team, not a team, I heard it was a team, but not really the way we think about teams today. How did your business go from being a part of that to what it is

Speaker 3 (06:25):
Today? There was a clear change and it was basically a brokerage change. So we were at a traditional Coldwell Banker franchise brokerage and it got bought by another franchise and I immediately didn't vibe with the new ownership and the new leadership and I try to stick it out for a while. I'm a company guy. I was obviously loyal to my stepdad who was still the broker there, but it got to the point where I just felt like I didn't feel like it was where my heart was in it anymore and it was where I wanted to be. And so I had a discussion with my mom and my stepdad and I was like, Hey, I had just got my broker's license at the time. I had been in a business three years, so I was a relatively new agent, had a good deal of individual agent success at that point, but nothing blockbuster.

Speaker 3 (07:16):
I mean, I was in my market probably a top 20% agent. I wasn't a top five or 1% agent at the time. And I had a discussion with them about this and they agreed, I mean they felt it too, but their opinion was we're close to retirement here. You and your brother are just getting started, figure out what you guys want to do and we're good with whatever you want to do. So it's funny, I was an unre recruitable agent. I mean my stepdad ran the brokerage, nobody would ever call me to recruit me away from that. And so at that point I started looking around for other options, potentially opening my own brokerage. I had just gotten my brokerage license takes three years in Hawaii, so I just had hit my three year mark and got my broker's license and I stumbled upon exp. So I was actually pretty deep into talking to a KW broker that wanted to open a franchise on the island. And in doing my due diligence and doing research online and YouTube and stuff, I stumbled into this exp, which wasn't really a thing in Hawaii yet. There was a very few number of agents on Oahu, not on my island.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
What year is this approximately?

Speaker 3 (08:20):
This was the end of 2018.

Speaker 1 (08:22):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (08:23):
I'm going to skip the long story of how I got here, but I made the switch, it made sense to me. I had always approached the business with the abundance mindset and even in our Coldwell Banker office, I would hold weekly lunch and learns for the other agents and teach them technology. And there was a lot of seasoned agents that weren't looking at where the business was going. And I was very much came from a background of using databases and understanding marketing and digital marketing and stuff. And so I just looked at what the core values of exp were and what looked like a different model and a way to run a real estate business. And it made sense to me and it was somewhat of a risk. I mean people were like, what are you even doing? We haven't even heard this thing before.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
And we took a jump and my brother and I switched brokerages and a couple of my friends in the local community were looking to do something different too, and they're like, Hey, whatever you do, we're going to do it with you. And so they came with me. So we started off with four or five agents and we weren't even a team at that point. We were just kind of a tribe. We just came together and we were hanging out and we decided we'd come up with a co-brand, which is what our team, the agency team is called now. And at that point, if you understand kind of the revenue share model of these brokerages, I felt like I had a personal responsibility if people were going to join me at this brokerage. And I was the broker at the time. I needed stuff to support them, I wanted them to be successful.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
And I saw that in my first couple of years, and I learned this from my stepdad and other brokers in town was the real estate business model is basically you recruit 10 agents, eight of them will fail within two years and then you hold on for dear life of the other two and hopefully somebody else is to steal 'em from you. And I just thought that was the stupidest business model. I'm like, that is insane. That's how you guys do business and try and recruit agents. I mean, it just didn't make any sense and I just thought

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Sounds exhausting and frustrating for everyone.

Speaker 3 (10:21):
Yeah, yeah. And I learned from my own experience, I'm like, this is not that hard of a business to figure out. I mean, I'm not that smart of a guy and if I figured this thing out in three years, I'm sure the things that I do I can help someone replicate. And so that's the way I looked at this new venture we were on was I was like, I'm just going to start to work on building systems and resources and things that other agents can use that maybe are brand new or have less experience in me or just need more structure in their business that they can replicate the things that I do that I know work. And so that was kind of how it started was just like I started doing those things and then I was always better at lead generation than I was at every other part of the business.

Speaker 3 (11:06):
And I think that was something identified early on was that's what most agents struggle with is lead generation acquiring leads and what do you do with them? And so I learned also quickly my first couple of years here that if I spent more time and energy on lead generation, I could provide more opportunities to the agents that were coming with us and paired with the systems and support they could be successful. And that fed the bigger mission of building a revenue share group and fully leveraging this new brokerage model. And that's really how it started. The first couple of years it was just like somewhat loose. I was still very much in production, so everything I did for the team was really in addition to my own personal business. And that just started to grow. I mean end of year one we had nine agents and the year two we had 20, and the year three we had 40. And now I'm like, oh my goodness, this has turned into something insane here. It was getting somewhat out of control based on what I was capable of doing

Speaker 1 (12:07):
By the way, in that growth path, when did you bring any staff in to compliment what you were doing?

Speaker 3 (12:12):
Well, and this is an interesting aspect of our team is we really don't have staff even to this day, we really don't have staff. Everybody's a partner, so everybody who holds a leadership position in the team gets a piece of the revenue. And so I've never had to deal that does two things, and I've had a lot of debate amongst my peers about that model because somewhat some people say it's not scalable because if your expenses grow with your production, and I agree with that, that's not a wrong way to look at it, but you also only get people to take on leadership positions and positions of responsibility who are focused on the outcome of success versus I'm here for a paycheck and if someone else is willing to pay them more, they leave and here their earning potential is unlimited if we continue to grow and we continue to scale.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
And so that was kind of how it was from the beginning. My brother was my first partner and he got a piece of everything that we did. And then I brought on a leads database manager who became our sales manager and she gets a piece of everything that we did. And then as we expanded and took on additional regions, leadership leaders in those areas, we get a piece of that. And then even scales down to, we have an internal mentorship program, so senior agents take on new agents as mentees and they get a piece of that revenue. And so I dunno if it's complicated or it's simple, but it really, one, it reduces the amount of fixed costs that you have dramatically and just attracts the right people. That's the biggest thing is everybody is bought into the overall success of the team and the program and the people that they're responsible for. And that's definitely a highly contributing factor. And I can't say that was something I designed, it was just like what made sense in the beginning so I didn't have to take on a bunch of additional costs. And again, we've just kind of scaled that.

Speaker 1 (14:03):
I love it and I love that you go back and forth with other folks on it. It certainly is. I mean, just in my seat, I am not a practitioner, but I've talked with hundreds of team leaders over the past couple of years and it definitely seems atypical to me, although variable comp is always part of the equation. In fact, the episode that just released last week, we talked a little bit about finding your first operations person in different ways to comp them. And of course variable is a great incentive, but I love that it was just intuitive to you. It made sense and it is predictable. I mean, it's as predictable as a salary in a way. You know what? It's not fixed, but it is predictable and I think the predictability of expenses is probably more valuable to modeling the business than whether it's a fixed or a variable cost.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
If you could predict it one way or the other, I think you got a good handle on it. Okay. So we've already talked a little bit about your culture and the types of people that you want to attract and the way that you think about the business. We've talked a little bit about production being the number one team in the state and doing a hundred units last month. Congratulations. Again, we've laid out about 150 agents or so, but is there anything else you would like to share to characterize the agency team for context for folks, whether that's again, market size, structure, culture, anything else you want to share?

Speaker 3 (15:22):
Yeah, I think the culture thing, I didn't fully answer the question earlier. You wanted some specifics on this, and I'm not going to go through the whole entire culture code, but there's two kind of foundational aspects. The first one is the abundance mindset that is very, very clear. I believe there's plenty enough business for all of us to succeed, not just amongst the team, but in anybody who wants to succeed in our marketplace. And that's a big one is we always go back to, and that's a foundational aspect of the culture code is like when conflict arises, I always ask, is this a scarcity mindset perspective or an abundance mindset perspective? Because that can a lot of times solve and just shift the way we're looking at things and create a different perspective for folks. So that was a stated part of our culture very beginning is everything we do is abundance mindset.

Speaker 3 (16:04):
And then a thing that I didn't really design but took on a life of its own is the pay it forward mentality. And this is something that's been invaluable to our team is that when there was a few of us, we helped the newest person and when they became somebody who's been here for a while and then another person came in, they felt a moral responsibility to help the next person and that person help the next person. And there's just this really amazing culture of the pay it forward mentality where people are looking to give back as soon as they possibly can because they've been given so much when they started. And that's something that I kind of put a price tag on when you don't need, going back to staffing, you can walk into the office at any time or you can come on a Google meets and we have agents all across the islands and we meet in many different ways and agents get to know each other digitally.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
But if you're thinking, Hey, I need help in this specific niche area of real estate, you know, can call somebody and they will drop everything and spend an hour with you and coach you up on it and inform you and share everything that they know because of their abundance mindset. And so the group think the group learning is just out of control. And when you're at 150 agents, I mean the stuff that goes on and the little side groups that pop up and the little hui we call in Hawaii, it means group these little groups of, Hey, I'm into investors, or I'm into luxury, or I'm into first time home buyers. There's all this cool stuff that happens. And that's something that I wish I could say I was the mastermind of, but I wasn't, and my brother really was. The root of that is he's such a caring, giving patient person that is something that he gave to agents and still does to this day, but really set that foundation.

Speaker 3 (17:40):
Like the first 15 or 20 agents, they experienced that. And then that was easy to scale because as more agents started to join, everybody felt that responsibility. And one the coolest things for me is we have agents that are one or two years in the business that have seen a ton of success and they immediately want to become a leader, want to become a mentor and give back. And that's not something that you see a lot of times where agents think they got to have 10 years of experience before they can play those roles and there's no shortage of those folks now.

Speaker 1 (18:06):
It's really good once you normalize that behavior. And I like the attraction mindset of people will come when they talk to an agent, maybe they're on the other side of the deal or something.

Speaker 3 (18:18):
I do no recruitment at all. Our growth is 100% organic. It's people who either see what we're doing and want to be a part of it or have an experience with one of our agents, spark up in a conversation agent says, Hey, you should meet with my team leader. And we have a deeper conversation. But yeah, I do zero outbound recruitment.

Speaker 1 (18:34):
Man, you know what this reminds me of? And I'm reminded of it all the time in part because I have a bias toward it, so I look for it or I see it anytime I'm in conversations and things or whether I'm reading or watching something or whatever. But so much of what has been foundational to your success is kind of immeasurable, intangible. It's the way people carry themselves. It's the way you make other people feel. It doesn't show up on a spreadsheet, it shows up in the results, but you can't draw a line from this thing to that thing. And I think forever, even someone like you who's got a background in digital marketing, for example, the revolution that digital marketing introduced a couple of decades ago was we used to run these ads, but we never knew which customers were related to the ads and the ad impressions or whatever.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
And so we could start to draw some of those lines a little bit better with digital marketing, but what we still can't do, there's no magic attribution model to what produced a sale. And this is the same thing for you to get to 150 agents with no formal recruiting. I'm sure you're smart about who's having the initial screening calls or conversations, how those are structured, but the idea that you don't have to go out and run indeed ads or events or webinars per se, people want to talk about what it's like to work there and you have a system to handle that.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
Yep. And one of the key aspects to that, and we'll get into this is social media. That's one of the reasons I'm so active and I put so much time and energy into it is you get exactly what you see. So one of my core philosophies of social media is nobody does it for me. All of that stuff is we talked earlier about you, you edit this show yourself, which I totally respect because if your fingerprint is on all of it, it's exactly what you want it to be. And so when people ask me about, Hey, who should I hire to do my social media? I'm like, nobody, you should carve out time. That should be something that you should do. Every word, every misspelling, every misuse of grammar, it's me on my social media. And so when somebody finally raises their hand and wants to meet and talk about the team, if they've been following me on social media, which most of the time they have been or they've been watching YouTube videos, it's just the validation that I am who I say I am and that what they see is what they're going to get.

Speaker 3 (20:48):
And that also helps with the right people is because nobody comes with a miss. I don't have to sell anybody because they're already sold by the time they get here on what their experience is going to be. And then we're just talking about nuts and bolts, details of comp plans and things like that which have to happen. But yeah, that makes it a lot more efficient

Speaker 1 (21:05):
The way that I describe that to people, that dynamic of I feel like I know you before I meet you when we connect, you are who I thought you were and I already have this kind of parasocial relationship established with you from looking at your stuff for two hours yesterday or looking at your stuff a little bit every day for the past two years. And it's the same way with clients as well. And so feel free to go to either side of this and continue to share some of the strategic and tactical in addition to the philosophical, like you say, do it yourself. And I'm sure people have pushed back on you the same way as they may be pushed back on letting everyone participate in the upside of the business, which is healthy debate. I mean that's what a team is today or how to make your team more successful comes through beating up ideas and developing them and trying other things and getting exposed to different ideas.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
It's one of the reasons we do this show is to introduce lots of different people from lots of different places doing the same approximate thing, but in their own completely unique way. So on the client side, the one thing I'll observe about Hawaii is that it reminds me a little bit, I don't know if you're familiar with Ken ick in Orlando, but he's created a ton of YouTube content about Orlando and the parks and now the city and a lot of other topics, and there's tons of new construction and new development and it's kind of an inbound type of market. I think the same thing is there for Hawaii, obviously, which is like it's this magical place. I want to know more about it. I'm looking around online and I start coming across some of the content that you and your team have made about living in Hawaii. And so I'm sure a lot of clients come to you. So when did video in particular YouTube and social media occur to you and how did you get your feet wet? When did you get validated in whatever your gut instinct was about it? And then maybe we'll move into some follow-ups that get a little bit more tactical.

Speaker 3 (22:58):
Sure. Yeah. Most things, my video game started very differently than how it turned out and just like the team did. And so I was a Tom Ferry disciple from the very beginning. I used to watch lots of his videos online and he was my first coach before he was a coach. I would just consume that information as a new agent. And he talked a lot about video and the power of YouTube and I was like, oh, I looked around and I had an instinct that I want to do things because there's a lot of agents in every market and I just wanted to do things that other agents weren't doing and there was nobody doing video in our market. And I was like, okay, I don't know anything. I'm a new agent, but I can talk and I can record myself on a laptop. And I was like, I can just make videos about Hawaii real estate.

Speaker 3 (23:45):
And the original intent wasn't pure. The original intent was I always say I'm lazy, which people say is not accurate because very hardworking, but I'm efficient. I love to be efficient. And you get a lot of the same questions online about Hawaii real estate because there's so many unique aspects to it. And so when I started to think about video, one of the core aspects was be consistent. And so I sat down one day at my desk and I said, if I wanted to make a year's worth of videos, 52 videos, one a week, what would that take? And I saw in some video somebody said, well, one a month is taken up because you can do a market report, so you just do a market report once a month and you just got to come up with three other topics. So I said, okay, so 52 minus 12, now I need 40 more topics. And I said, could I come up with 40 topics to talk about? And I did in two minutes. I mean, there's so many things you can talk about in real estate communities, lifestyle.

Speaker 1 (24:40):
It's just frequently asked questions,

Speaker 3 (24:42):
Frequently

Speaker 1 (24:42):
Asked questions, and things you're excited about that maybe people wouldn't think to ask.

Speaker 3 (24:46):
It's so easy, I mean, to come up with content. So I just made a spreadsheet out of everything that I had been asked in the last, and I started maybe a year and a half, two years in. So anything that I felt like a buyer or a seller would want to know, I just started, I made a list and I went to work and I would go in my conference room and with my cell phone on a tripod and I would just shoot. I usually put a little bullet pointed script on a piece of paper that I would tape to the tripod. And so I knew kind of what I wanted to talk about and I would just talk. And the videos were terrible and I mean the lighting was bad and there was no production value at all, but I just started making those. And then what it allowed me to do was send those videos out to somebody. If I got a question about lava zones in the big island, I could send a video out explaining lava zones, or if I got a question about leasehold property, I could send that video out. So it made responding to people more efficient than having a write along email back or spend a bunch of time on a phone doing a consultation

Speaker 1 (25:45):
And way better than sending a link to a blog post, in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (25:48):
Absolutely. Absolutely, yes. And they get to see me and vibe attracts your tribe, and if they liked me, they would continue to communicate with me. And then I saw somewhere I'm use the videos as part of your email marketing. So I'm like, okay, this is easy. So I make a video once a week and then I email the video. So it's not just you having to find me if I get a code lead from anywhere in my database or just contact my contact list from my phone, I would email that video out every weekend. That was my email newsletter. I didn't do newsletters about what the farmer's markets were and stuff like that. That takes too much time compiling all the information. I would send one listing that I thought was cool and I would send a video of the week out, and I've done that for every week for eight years now. And that in and of itself is a huge lead

Speaker 1 (26:32):
Conversion. Do you still record your own videos?

Speaker 3 (26:34):
Yep, yep.

Speaker 3 (26:35):
Every week. Yeah. So I think I've missed one week in eight years because I was on army reserve duty and I didn't batch enough ahead of time to, and so very consistent though at the end of the day, just super, super consistent. And that's gotten better over time. I mean, I've brought on editors and I've done things and production value has gone up and optimization of the YouTube descriptions and tags and things like that. But I tell everyone, don't look at what I'm doing now, just go look at the beginning and just do that and start. And then it was months. I mean it was probably six, eight months before I really got something I would consider a lead off of one of those videos. And my brothers to this day teases me. He's like, I always thought you're such an idiot. You go in the conference room a couple times a week, I hear you talking to yourself.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
But now he's a believer. But it was never about lead generation for me in the beginning it was just about efficiency and communication and then having a piece of material to send out. And that's a big part of our overall lead philosophy is you use social media and video as a conversion tool, not necessarily a generation tool. It'll turn into a generation tool over time, but in the beginning it's about validating who you are, building a digital relationship, having valuable content to send out, doing those things, providing people with value. So that's how it started really. And my intent was, again, something that video I watched online was, what is your client avatar, right? That's always a question is what is your client avatar? Who do you want to be contacting you? And I just felt like I wanted thoughtful, researched people who were looking for valuable education online.

Speaker 3 (28:12):
So my YouTube strategy has never been entertainment. I've actually had people tell me, your YouTube videos are boring. And I'm like, thank you very much. That's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for somebody who's a nerd who wants detailed expert advice about buying real estate in Hawaii. I'm not looking to entertain you and jump into a pool and do all kinds of crazy stuff. I'm not looking for views, I'm looking for responses, I'm looking for conversation starters. That was the strategy all along on the client side was, and I started to get that. I started to get people who were actually researching deeply researching Hawaii real estate. And those clients were always easier to work with because they came here with an understanding about the basics and there was less education, there was less surprises during transactions. They knew exactly what they wanted, so there was less shopping around because they did a bunch of research before.

Speaker 3 (28:59):
And I started to see, wow, this is a really efficient way to lead generators. I'm getting the right people off of these videos. And that strategy just is transferred over. Like you asked about client and agent recruitment side, I just transferred that same philosophy when I decided I wanted to provide more content to agents was I'm just going to provide you with information about how to be successful in real estate. I'll be your coach, your mentor, your broker long before we ever meet. And if you use it, cool, and if you never join, that's fine too. But then if you use it and it's helpful and you want more of it, then you can reach out and you can get the whole package and not just what's posted on Instagram and YouTube. So yeah, it's the same philosophy for both for attracting clients and attracting agents.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
Really good. It's going to be hard not to title this episode. Your vibe attracts your tribe because that's what I heard. It's the same thing for me doing a show like this. I would love to have a couple extra zeros behind every number that I can see. At the same time, I don't want to do this shallow thing. I want real people real stories. I want the nuance and the feedback that I get is much more substantial than that was a sick video, bro. It's like, no,

Speaker 3 (30:16):
I've watched a ton of

Speaker 1 (30:16):
Your episodes questions and I hear from guests all the time, Hey, I've had so many people reach out to me. And by the way, if you're watching or listening and you want to connect with these people, I always include contact information in the descriptions down below. And a lot of people do reach out and it starts relationships, it starts conversations. Sometimes it even starts business partnerships. And so same as you, I'm looking to do something substantial. So I love hearing that. And for the folks that are like, okay, that's really nice, it took you a while to be consistent six months or something before you could definitively say, I generated an opportunity here even though lead generation isn't the primary goal or the sole purpose of doing this stuff. Talk a little bit about for the person who's like, how do you know that this is worth your time and money mean or time I guess more than anything because as you've established, you're not outsourcing much of this, if any of it. What do you say to folks that are like, how do you do attribution? Where does this fit? When you think about attribute A, how much do you think about attribution

Speaker 1 (31:19):
B so that you can track someone five years through the database to figure out what are actually the, or do you even not care because you just trust that doing the right thing the right way according to the culture code that things are going to work out? So how much do you care about attribution? Where does kind of video fit into this and what are some other channels that you're using to generate opportunities where video is a compliment to that to help bring people through the funnel?

Speaker 3 (31:45):
So is, I don't know if it's an unconventional opinion, but I really think it's disingenuous when someone talks about attribution and they say, I get 12% ROI from this, or I get a 7% conversion rate from that. Because unless you're doing that one thing in a absolutely controlled environment and running the exact same message to 'em, the exact same scripts, exact same effort on every single one of those opportunities from that one source, I think it's very hard to definitively say what the ROI is or what the conversion rate is on a specific source. And so the way I look at it is just a global strategy where, and this is where video kind of fits into all of it. Going back to the principle of video as conversion tool, not generation tool is it's easy to generate leads. I believe it is open houses, Facebook ads, I mean door knocking, there's lots of ways you can generate leads and you can collect contact information, but how you convert those leads is where all of the money is made and all of the ROI happens.

Speaker 3 (32:54):
And a lot of times I think that video is the key to actually converting those leads because if I can collect a hundred email addresses on Facebook ads over the course of a month and I call 'em all with the same message, some of 'em answer, some of them don't. But if I can drip on them with a quality video for the next six months, the next year, the next three years, one day that person will decide that they want to buy or sell and they're going to reach out because we've built that relationship over time with them. And that's really the way I see video fitting into the strategy is it wasn't really the YouTube video that generated it, but it could be the YouTube video that converted it because the lead was generated from some other source, some other place. We got this piece of contact information.

Speaker 3 (33:43):
And so globally, I think that's the way to really think about it. And it's hard to say exactly what ROI is on these things. I just know if you are absolutely focused in on collecting contact information and getting as many people in your database as possible, if you have a strategy to communicate with them and provide them with value, they will convert at some point regardless of where they came from. And that's the value of video and being consistent about it is you prove who you say you are, you a professional, you display your expertise, you display your personality, and the people who are looking for what you're offering in all of those aspects are going to reach out and they'll become a conversion even though that's not exactly where they were generated from.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
That's great. I remember from our first conversation that you talked a little bit about other agents being able to participate in the video opportunity, share a little bit about how that works within the organization.

Speaker 3 (34:46):
So an opportunity that arose during COID, I had a good friend who was a tech guy and we would get on Zoom during COVID, it was super boring and nothing was going on, and we'd talk about real estate and he had another friend from another island and we'd bring him on and the three of us would talk. And one day I just said, we should record this conversation and just put it online. I think people would find it interesting. The three of us kind of just pontificating about real estate and COVID and everything that was going on, and he took it over the top and he's like, I got an idea. So he ended up creating basically a show and he would use Streamy Yard. He's the first guy I ever saw to use Streamy Yard. And so we started recording a show every Friday about Hawaii and Hawaii real estate, and we just talk about whatever, and then we turned it into a live show so people could ask us questions.

Speaker 3 (35:31):
And that started, I dunno, April of 2020. And we've done a show pretty much every single week ever since. And so we bring on agents from the different islands. We have a host. It used to just be myself and a couple of other agents and my friend Peter, and then he came to me about maybe a year and a half ago and said, this has been a fun passion project, but I'm never going to turn this into anything and make any money off of it. Do you want to just acquire this web property from me? Because we built it up to something pretty big and we got a 25,000 person email list. There's 11,000 YouTube subscribers. I mean, it turned into something that was significant. And so we basically as a real estate operation, acquired all of the web properties from him and he still participates in it.

Speaker 3 (36:18):
But then we started to expand that program. So now we do a live show every other week, but every single week agents on the team get together and they talk about a topic. So lifestyle topic, something that's top of mind. How do you raise kids in rural Hawaii? I mean really niche type of information, but it's really cool. You get to hear from moms who are raising their kids in rural South Kona and if that's something you're interested in, of course there's not a huge, it's not going to get a million views, but somebody who's really concerned about that, who's doing that search online. And then we turn that into, it goes on to living in hawaii.com, which is the website that all of this is housed on. They can find it on YouTube. We have an email newsletter that goes out to everybody who signs up.

Speaker 3 (36:56):
So that's another aspect where we've tried to operationalize that and make that easy for agents because all they really have to do is know ahead of time what the topic is, sign up for this show, they can talk about it and they show up. And then we have folks, producers on the backend that set all of the show up and record it, do the editing afterwards and optimization on YouTube, create clips for them that they can put on social media. So we've kind of made that easy for agents to participate in and then give them back that content to use. And then of course generates leads, those leads go to those agents who are participating and helping us generate that content.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
One thing that has been kind of in the background that someone's brain may have stitched together, you obviously started on one island, you're operating on all the islands, you're expanding into other markets. Talk a little bit about that philosophy and any kind of hard learned lessons from that process.

Speaker 3 (37:46):
The simple philosophy is who not how? There's a great book that I would highly recommend anybody who wants to do this read, but it was never my intent to expand. It was the people who wanted to be a part of it showed up at the right time. And so it started off with just island expansion. We started off just on the west side of our island and we would get excess leads on the east side. And we were actually sitting in a conference room looking through the MLSA and Hey, who can we call to help us and maybe join the team over there? And literally one of the best agents in the island called me during one of these meetings, my phone rang and I answered it and she said, Hey, I'm interested in exp and I see you online and I like your vibe and would you have me on the brokerage if it works out?

Speaker 3 (38:29):
And so she brought her friends who they were both very high producing agents and they've since built that operation up to one of our most highly productive operations because there's a lot of market activity there and it's relatively affordable. And then in late 22, we started to do an event every year called Level Up. And it was just a real estate conference where we'd bring the team together, we'd invite agents and I'd bring in a speaker or two from the mainland. It was just a real estate event where you come and you learn about tactics and strategies.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
I'm sure it wasn't difficult to get speakers from the mainland to come out.

Speaker 3 (39:01):
No, it's the easiest thing ever. Now it's like I have to balance how many people come from the mainland with local speakers because I could fill the whole room up with people from the mainland. But we had a couple of agents come from Maui to that event in 22, and one of them came to me and said, Hey, what you guys are doing is amazing. I would love to be a part of this. Did you ever think about bringing this to another island? And I said, not really, but if you want to help me do it, I'm into having that conversation. And literally three months later, we had 15 agents in the island and it was, so the same thing happened on Oahu. The same thing happened on Kauai. It wasn't intentional. It was like when the right person showed up and raised their hand.

Speaker 3 (39:38):
And in these cases it was leaders who said, we want to be a part of this, can you help us do it? We just said yes. And that has also now expanded to Vegas. We bought a month ago, launched our operation in Vegas, and that was really a relationship that I have had for years, which an agent that I really love and admire in that market. And she had always talked about doing something there like this and just the pieces came together. One other leader on our team who has roots in Vegas said, I want to be a part of this and help you do this from an operational standpoint. I can bridge the gap between the Hawaii operation in Vegas from there. And I know the Hawaii operation. And so it's always been driven by the who, not necessarily the how. And I'm just good at saying yes. When someone says, Hey, do you want to do this? I say, yes.

Speaker 1 (40:22):
Well, it's the right who this feels thematic throughout the story that you've shared with us is that when the right who shows up, I mean it is just a yes anyway, it's just a matter of figuring out the logistics. And that's probably, I mean that answers the question that I was going to follow up with, which is like how do you find the right business partner? But really what I think I heard was the right business partner is already there and it's just the opportunity that needs to be articulated or something. Someone needs to connect a couple of dots and then all of a sudden here we are. It makes sense. And so if you believe in the person, by the way, that book is going to be linked up right down below for everyone watching and listening. I do a pretty good job of

Speaker 3 (41:00):
Finding, following

Speaker 1 (41:00):
The product though, finding things that people might want to dive into. So if you're not looking at the episode descriptions on the website and YouTube or in the podcast player, I feel like I do a pretty good job of rounding stuff up. So you should maybe go down there if you're really enjoying any of these

Speaker 3 (41:13):
Episodes. And one more who not how example, and this is a very, very important one that I breezed over earlier was

Speaker 3 (41:19):
When we kind of started to get to a crazy number like 40 agents. Another just crisis is turning into opportunity was COVID. And so my wife had been a school teacher for 16 years at that point. She taught fourth grade and COVID made it very difficult on us because she would have to go to her classroom at school and teach. My kids would be at home, we'd have to find childcare for them. And the real estate market picked up, I mean after late 2020 and 21 and real estate market picked up and we had this team that was growing. I said, I think we could replace your income in a month or two if you just helped me continue to build this thing and scale this thing. And she had never been interested in real estate. She didn't even care what I did. She had her own world and her own career.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
And because it made sense for our kids situation, she said, okay. And she took six months off. She took a sabbatical from teaching and dove right into it and brought that educator, really organized teacher mindset into the business and then took all of the crazy stuff that I had built over the years and organized it into a Google classroom and a Google website. And then that ended up being rocket fuel. I mean, we went from 40 agents to a hundred agents the next year overnight, but she operationalized all the good stuff that we had had and then also brought a beginner's mindset to it where leaders do this very common failure of leaders, and I do this all the time, is I talk at a level of all this experience and thousands of transactions when I'm talking to somebody who's on transaction three and my language is just not at the level that they need to hear that.

Speaker 3 (42:57):
And she really did a good job of reformatting things and dumbing things down and making it consumable for the beginner. And that really added a ton of value for agents. And so that was another who, not how moment where I needed that. I didn't even know I needed that person. Everything was kind of humming and we were doing all right. And then when she came and then she started managing me, which is like I'm the number one person that needs management and making sure that my time was allocated properly and I had a month out schedule and things like that. And so that was a big who aha moment too, that really got us. I think you talk to a lot of team leaders, there's that messy middle, right? That 30, 40, 50 agents, it's like that messy middle where it gets really hard to get beyond that.

Speaker 3 (43:42):
There's so many people that are stuck there. And to get to a hundred and beyond, you got to have some little switch that happens. And she was definitely that switch. And still to this day, I mean she's like our COO now, and I mean runs operations and onboarding and new agent support and our lead program it, it's amazing what she's taken on and doesn't have a real estate, has never sold a house. And I always joke with her that she's the number one real estate coach in Hawaii because everybody goes to her for advice and she's never actually sold a house. But that's not necessarily a requirement if you look at coaching in the world nowadays.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
Totally. Yeah, I love that. I love that so much. I don't know that you would've been, I mean, tell me if this is true. I don't know that you would've been able to expand to all the islands and to Las Vegas if you didn't have someone with that beginner's mindset who also had immediate access to all the details through you and some of the other folks around you to put it all together. That is a necessary precursor to being able to do that type of expansion.

Speaker 3 (44:43):
No, huge. And that's one of the just nuts and bolts things is our support system is all built on a Google site. It's all Google docs. So if you update a doc, it's all automatically updated on the site. But what we've created is kind of like team operation in a box. We can just copy that site to a nude market and update very minimal. 10% of it really needs to be updated because most of it is applicable to any market. How you do an open house is absolutely the same in every single market in terms of how you do a high level high ROI open house. So those types of things have, because she built those things, they were replicatable very easily in other places, and that's definitely one thing that's led to scale across the islands in other markets. Now

Speaker 1 (45:24):
Really good. I have a thousand more questions, but I am going to say we don't have time for all those questions. If anyone wants to hear Dylan's perspective deeper on lead sources and lead diversification, you should meet us at Unlock. We'll both be there. It's just a couple of weeks away. It's unlock conference.com. Dylan, I always like to close these with some kind of fun personal questions and you can answer one or the other. Sometimes people want to answer both. You could do whatever you want with these. So the first one is, what is your very favorite team to root for besides the agency team, or what is the best team you've ever been a member of besides the agency team?

Speaker 3 (45:57):
Yeah, that's an easy answer for me. I mean, my formative years and everything that I've learned about leadership was from the Marine Corps. And my favorite team that I was a part of is the one I went to Iraq with. And that's probably something we didn't talk about from a leadership perspective, but I view leadership as a life or death situation. I mean, I view it that seriously, and it sounds dramatic, but my definition of leadership when people ask me is it's not ordering people to go towards the gunfire, it's running towards the gunfire yourself and them following you because they have so much trust in what you're doing that they don't ask any questions and they're going to follow you in that mission. And that's something that the Marine Corps instilled in me and I learned. And when you've been through that type of situation, everything else is easy in life. And so I always look back on those days and it's formed everything that we do today and the way I view business in the world. And without that experience, there's no way we would be here. So definitely by far, I mean my Javelin squad in the Marine Corps and the third Battalion, seven Marines is my favorite team I've ever been a part of.

Speaker 1 (47:07):
That's an awesome call out. And yeah, we could do a whole conversation on leadership lessons learned in formal and informal leadership positions who will follow you is the definition of leadership. Now going to a much lighter question, what is one of your most, because it's the one I have next, what is one of your most frivolous purchases or what is a cheapskate habit you onto even though you don't need to?

Speaker 3 (47:31):
Man frivolous purchases. I'm a pretty simple dude. I don't really spend money on too myself. I like to play crops in Vegas, so that's probably something that's frivolous use of money. So I'll do that at Unlock in Vegas. But I always joke about this is I've never paid for a haircut in 30 years or 40 years. I shaved my head every Sunday with a pair of clippers I bought from Ross, which costs me $30 every four years or so until it gets dull. So that's one of the things that cheapskate things is I don't spend a lot of time on my personal experience. So it saves me a lot of money over time.

Speaker 1 (48:01):
Yeah, I love that. I mean, you can pull it off. Not all of us can. I don't know that I could just clipper my head every Sunday and have it work for me. How do you invest your time? What are you doing, Dylan? What does it look like when you're investing time in resting, relaxing and recharging, or what are you doing? What does it look like when you're investing time in learning, growing and developing?

Speaker 3 (48:21):
So in terms of investing time, I really look it going back to efficiency. I always try and stack my time. So I was just telling some agents yesterday. I don't ever drive in the car unless I'm talking to somebody business wise or I am listening to something to learn something. So there's no radio, there's no blank space. It's I'm always trying to consume information or convey information or discuss something with somebody. So that's a big thing that I'm always conscious of is I know time is the only finite resource that we have in life. We can always make more money, we can always make more friends, we can always do more things, but once time is gone, that's it. And so outside of work, I don't do that many things. I have two boys, 14 and 17, and so I spend as much time as I possibly can with them because my years with them are very limited.

Speaker 3 (49:08):
And then my addiction in life is juujitsu. So, and for me it's both physical and mental. I get a lot of physical activity out of it. And it's one of the reasons I'm a high energy person is I just do a lot of physical activity. I sleep well at night and I'm always exhausted by the end of the day mentally and physically. And I like it that way. I mean, some people don't like it that way. I like it that way. And it's a huge stress reliever in terms of if you're familiar with, I mean it's grappling on the ground, right? I mean, it's hardcore physical activity, but it's a release from the day and I go three or four times a week at night. And the reason I like it from a exercise perspective is you can run or you can swim or you can hike and your brain thinks about things so you don't fully release from what you're doing if another man is trying to choke you or break your arm.

Speaker 3 (50:02):
You have to be fully focused and engaged in what's going on at that moment. And so I don't think about anything else. So no matter really what happens throughout the day, I know at five 30 I can kind of check out till 8:00 PM and then I'll have dinner with my kids and then I'll go to bed and it's like it's a good reset for the next day. But that's pretty much it. I mean, I don't have too many other hobbies and things. I like to go to the beach with my kids and bodyboard and fish and stuff like that. But outside if it doesn't involve my kids doesn't really, it's not a hobby. I do what they want to do. They like to snowboard. So when we go on trips, we go to places we can snowboard, I go to their sporting activities, but outside of what they're doing, there's not a lot of time. And I like it that way.

Speaker 3 (50:40):
To me, I have a saying in business planning that I tell agencies that the devil lives in the white space. So if there's a white space in your calendar, that's where the devil lives and bad things are going to happen. And that's where everything goes awry. So you want your calendar as full as possibly can be with dedicated activities and the daily activities that you got to do. And even outside of that, my calendar starts at 5:00 AM We do a motivational call at 5:00 AM in the morning with agents, takes five minutes to start our morning routines, but doesn't really end until eight 30 at night. I know exactly what I'm doing every day.

Speaker 1 (51:12):
That's great. I just want to highlight just being absolutely completely present when someone's trying to choke you versus me. I run and hike a lot. For me, it's a lot of just movement, but you're right, it's

Speaker 3 (51:27):
Your brain runs, your mind can embrace of all things

Speaker 1 (51:30):
That happen. Yeah. So I don't really have that. I am just fully, I guess probably editing video is one of those activities where I feel like a flow state situation, but a lot of my physical activity, it does help me work out some ideas. Sometimes I go out and run with something in particular and I bring it to mind and let it work out. Sometimes I just see what happens. This has been awesome Dylan. Thank you for sharing all that. If someone wants to connect with you, they want to learn more about you, they want to follow you online or whatever, where would you send people?

Speaker 3 (51:57):
I'm easy. I'm the only Dylan Nonaka in the world. If you Google that, everything you need to find is going to show up from YouTube, social media, website, all that good stuff. But if you follow me at Kona Broker on Instagram or just type in my name on Instagram, you'll find me. But there's plenty of information there. My dot card is there with all my contact information in my bio and I post probably five, six times a week about real estate advice, life advice, market stuff. So I hope it's helpful. It just meant to provide value to the universe and mostly for agents. Nowadays most of my social media content is pointed towards agents.

Speaker 1 (52:29):
Cool. That is at Kona Broker on Instagram. It's linked up down below. And if you do like what he's sharing, just send 'em a DM and let 'em know. A lot of people are doing a lot of things in service of you and other people and 10 seconds to say, I appreciate what you're doing goes a long way. It's super validating, especially if it hits on the right day at the right time where you are fully exhausted. And all these, just some of the challenges we go through mentally

Speaker 3 (52:55):
And most importantly, something that I've learned we wouldn't have gotten here if there wasn't so many people that helped us along the way. And so many people that Ive reached out to, that's one of my talents in life is I have no problem asking for help and asking for advice. And I would just close with this if I can help you with anything, reach out. I'm not too busy, I'm not too high out people. Put you up with this pedestal. I can't call this guy because he's doing a hundred units in a month and that's definitely not the case. I try and keep my afternoon calendar clear for meetings like this, things like this. But absolutely if I can do anything to help, it is the pay it forward mentality and so many people have contributed to us that I have a responsibility to give that back every opportunity I get. And that's what we'll be doing at Unlock and every opportunity I have. But definitely reach out if I can help with anything.

Speaker 1 (53:37):
Love it. I love that you are walking the talk. He is at Kona Broker on Instagram. Dylan, I appreciate you so much and I look forward to meeting you in person.

Speaker 3 (53:45):
Thanks Ethan. Right on man. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
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.