How to Build Your Team Like The Business It Is

Welcome back to Real Estate Team Builders. This is Lars Hedinborg, the founder of Real Estate B School. The show exists to call BS on traditional teams in our industry that are built on this illusion of success which is all about the top line. Real estate Team builders is relentlessly, relentlessly pursuing those that have taken the hard path to build a business based on proper business principles and a sound economic model. And a business that doesn't rely solely on the team owners production to run that business. The guest I had on earlier in the week, Tim Pierce. The Pierce Group out of Hilton Head, South Carolina put together a business just like that. I had the pleasure of working with Tim in his business around 2018, 19 into 2020 and Tim made the bold move to break up a partnership, leaving a really comfy and cozy real estate team that was not built out the right way. No disrespect to his business partner, they just did not align on the vision of what Tim wanted for his business. He had a vision to build a business that empowered his team members, was built on the right economic model and it was a business that allowed agents to come into his world and, and actually have work life balance. And that was a lot of the focus that Tim brought to his episode today. On this follow up episode, I want to hone in on something that Tim said that he didn't go all that deep on. But he mentioned accountability, structure and systems and he took it down the path of this team exists so that agents that join me can have work life balance. Real estate can be fun. Again, he went through all these examples and you should absolutely go listen to that episode. The thing that allows him to build this environment, build this business that functions as a true business and an environment that empowers his agents to achieve at a level financially, which is something that they couldn't do on their own and they, and they can have fun doing it and get coverage from agents so they could take vacation and lower their stress level. The only reason this could happen is because Tim went down the path to build this real estate team out like a true business. And therein lies the challenge that most team builders have is that they don't employ accountability, structure and systems. You can't have the work life balance and agents having fun and this awesome, amazing culture where everyone backs each other up if you're not willing to build it the right way. So let's focus on that a little bit because this is where I think things go sideways. Tim was willing to remove himself from a functioning, albeit dysfunctional, yet functioning real estate team and pursue something different. Tim had a vision for the business to run without his production and for agents to be playing the game of real estate at a high level, a higher level financially, lower hours, lower stress than they could on their own. Now, this is not an easy thing to do, but it's not going to happen without, first of all, the vision which we spoke about, but accountability, structure and system. So let's talk about, let's break each of those down. Accountability is the toughest thing that team owners have to, or team builders have to wrap their hands around. It's the thing that they don't like to do. The challenge is accountability is not something you do to somebody, it's something you do for someone. I have yet to find a way in any area of my life that I claim matters to me to achieve at a high level without accountability, without agreeing to that. These are the metrics of success. And I need you to come into my world consistently to check up like, am I actually doing the things that are going to make me successful? That's all accountability is. And there's some simple practices that we put in place at real estate B school to help folks that maybe aren't used to accountability. For those folks to be able to do accountability and to engage in that act of love, not act of love, the way it came out. Accountability is love, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. I'm blushing as, as this recording is going on. So if you struggle with accountability, there is a right way and a wrong way to do accountability. And it's just entering into an agreement with somebody that, hey, in order to achieve your goals, your financial goals and maybe the amount of hours you put into the business and the amount of stress you want to endure, you have to agree to these things. And if I can get you to agree to these things and for us to partner together, I'll hold you accountable to the activities that it takes to achieve at the level you're telling me you want to achieve. And many team leaders don't get that agreement. They don't get the buy in from the team member. And the team member and the team owner are constantly at odds because the agreement was never made. The team owner, the team builder, wants the accountability because they know that's the mechanism. They never actually got the agent that joined the team to agree to enter into that sort of relationship. And so that's number one, is that you need to recalibrate your mindset around accountability and your feelings around accountability and just to realize there's no other way to help people achieve in an area of their life or business that matters to them. Then get them to agree that accountability is important and then hold them accountable. Next, he talked about structure. So what does structure look like? This is the next biggest miss for team builders. Structure is, could be something as simple as the weekly and daily cadence and time blocking and how that fits into your calendar. You let me just use me as an example again. I have not figured out a way to get the things that I want to get done to feed into the activities and the goals that I want to achieve. I haven't figured out a way how to do it without the structure of a calendar and the committing to certain activities that over time. Right. Success in anything really is task over time, committing to those activities to see the results that I want to see over time. So structure in a team building environment, you better make sure that you're modeling a. We call it the ideal week. Whatever the ideal week needs to look like for an agent to succeed on your team. We literally give agents that have joined our world and our B school members, we literally give them a link to a Google calendar that they could model as an ideal week for themselves and also for the agents that come into their world. And so that's a good example of structure. Another example of structure is the meeting cadence that you follow on your team. Tim talked about twice a month he does an agent one on one and that's a mostly business oriented meeting. But he's done a better job recently here bringing agents out of the office for a cup of coffee or for lunch or to grab a drink to talk about like, hey, what's going well in your, in your business and your life and what are some of the challenges that I can help you with? He asked a profound question, which I promise you most team builders don't ask, including myself for most of my journey in business. What can I help you with? That's if you don't understand the concept of servant leadership, which really is the only type of leadership there should be, you probably aren't asking that question of your team members. What can I help you with? Most of the time, these teams aren't set up on the right economic model. It forces the team leader to be in production, super stressed all the time, out of bounds on their calendar. They're not time blocking. There's no cadence, there's no structure. They won't consider accountability having someone come in and hold them accountable. And as a result, their agents are modeling their, their team Builder, right, The team owner. They're not, they're not showing or leading by example how you have to, how you have to operate to be, how you have to operate personally in order for your team members to operate at a higher level. And so the cadence could include those, those meetings and asking your team members that question. The team meetings, what reporting numbers daily, you know, set meth, signed, meaningful contacts, those sorts of things. The non negotiables in your team that lead to this, this, this cadence or structure around like how things operate around here. You want it to be entirely obvious how things operate around your real estate team. So that's number two. Number three are systems, right? If you plug an agent into your team and there's no system, once you set a consultation, like what's the pre appointment system like? You send a bombbomb, what do you say on the bombbomb? You send a pre list packet via courier. What does that pre list packet look like? You confirm or qualify the appointment. What does that script look like? Right? You send brownies to a listing, what does that look like? Who sends the brownies? How are they sent? You get to the home. What happens at the home? What's your eight step listing system? Right? Your buyer consultation process, Is it virtual or is it in person? Does it happen at the first showing or does it happen in the office? We do them in the office, right? So those are the systems. Do you actually have a buyer consultation like an actual presentation or listing Presentation? Listing packets, pre listing packets, buyer packets, right? Do you have a system for showing homes? Do you have a showing agent? Have you thought of a showing agent and what that would look like? Do you have a system for getting signs out to properties, getting listings on mls, taking photos of listings? There are a full dozen jobs to do. As a successful real estate agent, most team builders, team owners, forget to delegate some of these jobs as they grow out their business. So it's this constant looking at what you're doing all day long and giving opportunity to those in your team, but also giving them opportunity not just to take on additional tasks but, but also to bring leverage into their world so that they can delegate tasks perhaps to a virtual assistant in a different market. So accountability, structure and systems. So any other examples of systems? So a system is just something that happens in the business that repeats itself. So an easy example is showing homes. If there was a system built for showing homes, maybe you don't have to be the one showing homes. If there was a system for putting a yard sign in someone's Yard, a seller's yard, maybe you wouldn't have to be the one doing it. So a system is. It's literally everything in your business. A business is a system of systems. And it's mostly mindset, it's mostly wrapping your mind around how to build your business out in a way where it's a system of systems versus one or two or three people just sort of putting everything on their shoulders and hoping that things are well coordinated and that the client gets a good experience getting referrals. Is a system. Right. We have a lead gen lever in real estate B school called client care as a lead gen lever lever with checklists and scripts throughout the transaction where an administrative person, a marketing coordinator, a listing coordinator, a closing coordinator. Typically the listing coordinator and the closing coordinator are scripted and there's a checklist at various points in the process where they're checking in on the client to ask how we're doing. And if the answer is positive, we're looking for a referral and we have very specific scripting around it. If the answer is it is a crap show, you guys are horrible, then you have an opportunity to improve the system around client care. So client care is a system and the result of that system being done the right way are referrals. And so hopefully there's some goodness in this for you. Accountability, structure and systems. And just rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 5. 1. You know I am a master at accountability. My agents love me for it. 5 or 1 I suck at accountability. 5. I've mastered it, you know, know structure on my real estate team. 1. No structure at all. I come and go as I please. My agents are clueless because I'm not modeling what I should, what I want them to do versus five are structured down, super clear. All meetings are held same time and very consistent. Systems 1. No systems at all. Everything's willy nilly. 5. We're super tight on systems. Grade yourself on each of those three. And if you're two, two to three on average, you need to have a conversation with somebody that can help you look at your business as a systems of a system of systems. That's the biggest shift we need to make. If that is you, go to realestatebschool.com the only thing we can offer you is a conversation about your business. So go to realestatebschool.com and like right on the homepage there's a big orange button that says either book in a strategy session or apply here to fill out a few questions about your business specifically, and then we'll have a conversation with you about your business, how you can grow your business, but also scale your business. Scaling your business means you're, you're growing it without your involvement in it. And it requires a lot of foundational elements to be put in place properly in the right order for you, for you to be able to grow from 50 to 100 to 200 to 400 transactions. So go to real estate, bschool.com, booking for a strategy session. There's no cost, no obligation whatsoever. And, and we'll see you over there. Be good.