Gary Keller explains why most real estate teams fail: they hire salaried assistants and buyer agents, then overspend on leads and overhead. A profitable four-person team has one admin and three sellers handling about 50 transactions, with the lead agent generating most listings.
One of the first thing is about mindset. So for me, it was only that there was one way to have a team, and this was the way. And I think that when the book was written, which I don't remember the exact year, but when it was written, I think it was. There wasn't really talk about teams. So I think that perspective of, like, hey, you can leverage, I think was a cool idea at the time. But for me, when I was implementing it, it wasn't feasible. So, for example, I went and I hired an assistant because I could sell. And it said the first hire is an assistant. Now, knowing what I know now, I would hire a transaction coordinator that's virtual, that I pay per file. Because my problem was is I now am accountable for this person's salary. And I see a ton of agents make that mistake. And I also made that mistake probably four times, maybe five before I was like, you don't have to do it that way, you know, but you never know what you don't know until you talk to other people that know more than you. And so it was like everybody around me, like, I like at KW and most brokerages, they have like, a list of who the top realtors are. And I was at the top. Like, at the top for a while. Not the very, very top at the top. And I saw like, okay, well, then I must know the most, right? Like, who else knows more than I do? So I was like, this is how you're supposed to do it, but it's not. It's too expensive. Yeah, the whole thing is so expensive. And then you hire a buyer's agent, but then they want to list stuff. You're like, no, you are a buyer's agent. You only do buyers. And then you're like, where are all these buyer leads that I have to get now? I have to buy buyer leads. It's like, okay, now I'm paying salaries. I'm buying buyer leads. Now this buyer agent is asking me a trillion questions. So I'm not prospecting now. We don't have any listings for the buyer leads. So now I have to pay somebody to manage this buyer agent and market our team. And it's like, okay, I'm responsible now for five salaries, and I'm not making more money. I'm losing money.
Yeah. So. So what's the lesson you would give? You know, because there. I will say there is a right way to do it. And I painstakingly figured it out. And we're hundreds of, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people through. Through our system. But for you personally, knowing what you know now. And we're going to get to your approach on business now, which I think is amazing because I do tend to be that guy that's like, okay, I figured out this is the one way to do it.
There's a million ways meeting, you know.
I'm meeting more people that are like, now we have a different platform now you're in three countries. You couldn't have been in three countries on the other platform.
Right.
Gary will forever be in the hall of fame. So if you're hardcore KW and you love Gary, he is forever probably the top seat in the hall of fame.
Yeah.
But when he wrote the MREA, you know, he didn't have a hundred examples of $2.4 million teams that were netting a million where the team leader was not in production. I have, I've had a thousand conversations with team leaders and nobody has the right margins.
No. And they've. All the margins are terrible for that. The best margins that I found and when I do the math is a team of four people. So like an admin and three people that sell one. One of those three people being like the leader, I guess.
Yeah. Yeah. So like 50, maybe 50 transactions listings, mostly listings from the main person, a couple buyer agents, 80% buyers. You know, they're something like that.
