Leadership Development Do's & Don'ts ... How to Elevate Your People w/Dave Hooke

This is Real Estate Team Builders and I'm your host, Lars Hedinborg, the founder of Real Estate B School. The real estate team building world is driven by big egos who boast about how many homes they've sold or how much GCI they've earned. We don't hear much about their low profit margins, the long hours they put in each week, or the unbearable stress they endure. In fact, I discovered that most real estate teams are losing money when you consider the amount of personal production their owners must do to make ends meet. I believe that if you want to profitably scale your real estate team without working crazy hours, enduring unhealthy levels of stress, or coming up short at home, then thinking like a business owner, building sustainable systems and empowering your team are absolute musts. You won't find any smoke and mirrors or hype here on my podcast, just the real world tools, systems and strategies that work. So if you struggle to balance growing your real estate business with focusing on the areas of life that truly matter, then this show is for you. On today's episode, we have Dave Cook out of, I would just say central pa And I've known Dave here for. How long has it been? Five, six years?

Yeah, that sounds about right. Six years, I think.

Yeah. So. And I've gotten to know Dave personally and professionally. He's built an awesome, awesome business. We're going to dive deep into this conundrum in building a real estate team. When you're, you know, you're doing a ton of production, you surround yourself with people. You don't really have the time to develop systems and develop people and love on your people. And it's. It's always this vicious cycle, it seems. And Dave Hook broke that cycle and stopped. The insanity went from, you know, just working way too much in his business to now I think he works like six hours a month in his real estate team. Dave, I'm going to give you, like a couple minutes just to tell, like, the hours, the production, like, what was life like before you figured out, you know, leadership development at the highest level, and then, you know, what's life like now? How many units will you do this year? Give everyone enough information about your journey so they're not going to go to another podcast right now.

Yeah, for sure. So, you know, it was probably 2012 to 2015. I burn out. So typical, you know, just in the grind. 70, 80, 90 hours a week, sort of, you know, hiding to take calls. You know, I was the center of everything. Didn't have any weekends to Myself and that whole scene. And then, you know, over the last six years, you know, was sort of able to go from that and handling maybe 50 or 60 homes a year to now just having some really, really great quality people that care around me. I would. I'm honored to call them leaders that lead other people around me and have taken the business just to just a whole different level. So, you know, 325, 330 sides, 34% profitability, and I just consult with them. So, you know, 90 minutes, 120 minutes a week in consulting meetings with them so that they can run the business and continue to develop leaders, you know, and that's across all of our businesses.

So 320, 325 sides. You're running about two hours a week in that business, mostly as consultants. So you've reached ownership status and 34% profit.

Yeah, we're on track to do 34. It was 35% last year, about 34% this year.

And that's in like a 6, 7, 800,000 average price point market.

No, no, we're about 235,000 price point.

Awesome. So, I mean, there's enough to just pause the podcast right now. I mean, we could go in the whole direction of how do you build? I might have you on like three or four more times. So let's just save the how do you build a profitable real estate team without you doing half the production for another episode? So I will have you on for that one. But today we're going to dive into leadership development. Among the many things you've done that has just been so awesome to watch. And you've done it, I think, out of your heart of service or, you know, maybe the vision you had for your future. But you really didn't want to leave your team behind. It's this whole journey of leadership development. So let's really slow down and break it down into a few steps that our listeners can really act on. So I'm going to let you take over a little bit, but I'm going to challenge you and dig a little bit deeper as you. As you kind of lay this out for us.

Yep, sounds good. So, you know, the first step for me is I would say this is just foundational. I won't even call it step one, but just the foundation of everything is my mindset changed around what I was doing this for. Right. And it changed from it was for me to too. It was for other people. It got to the point where I began thinking every day, all right, there's people around me in my team, and they all have dreams and goals, and if I can help them get what they want, it's more likely that I might get what I want. And so just that mindset change around this is for other people. How do we help our peers, our leaders, our team members get to where they want to go? So that's just a foundational mindset thing. And then I want to say real.

Quick, I want to ask you on that, because I have struggled with that in the past. Were you at a point where it was so heavy on you and you were so overburdened, where it did feel like, hey, you're coming into my world to make life easier for me, and then is there anything that you did to shift it over time?

Honestly, Lars, I think it was more. Less two things, reading books on leadership. And the more I read, the more I learned. Leadership is not about me. It's about others. It's about empowering others. It's about serving others. You know, Craig Groeschel podcast, Andy Stanley leadership podcasts, you know, the Gino Wickman stuff, how to be a great boss. All of that stuff beats the drum of servant leadership and leadership for others. So I think it was just a mindset change. It was a training issue for me. I needed to get educated on how to be a better leader, and that's where my mindset started, to focus outward instead of inward.

Awesome. Really, really good. Okay, so let's go to step number one. What would you have us learn about your journey?

Yeah. So step number one in just the leadership development process, if you have that foundational mindset, is first, start thinking about how to identify talent and learn where they want to go. So who are my team members? Whether it's one team member or five or six or 20, or who are the people nearby me that I know are talented people, and I know that work hard. If you have core values in your business, they're aligned with your core values, and you can tell that they're going to go far. They have a track record on their resume that they've proven in some way, shape or form historically or currently that they're going to go far. Who are they in your world? So first identify them and. And then number two, sit down with them and learn exactly where they want to go. And the way that I describe this on my team is, you know, if I'm talking with you, Lars, it's Lars. You know, if you think five, 10 years into the future, what does personal and professional and financial freedom look like for you. So we talk about their professional setting, we talk about their financial setting, and we talk about what's most important to them personally, whether it's family or fun or, you know, whatever it is. And what do you want those things to look like in the future? And just going really deep on clarifying that and then sort of getting a North Star, helping them come to the North Star of what personal, professional financial freedom looks like for them in the next five to 10 years.

Awesome. So I want to take you back a little bit to, you know, what I see in real estate is that everyone, let's say that they have one hire, you know, and it's. It's their administrator. Like, they're going to read a book like Rocket Fuel, and they're going to say, this person is my integrator, and they're going to, like, take over the whole world and build my whole business out, and it's going to be awesome. And, like, very rarely, you know, like, there are philosophies that, like, even if you're a solopreneur, you have to go out and hire the best talent as your first hire. I haven't seen that happen all the time for every team leader. So let's dig a little bit into. You mentioned core values. You mentioned, like, track record. You know, we've talked before about patterns versus potential. So let's dig in. How do you know if you have someone? Because the risk is you pour into someone and they're not the right person. And then the opposite risk is you don't pour into someone and they were the right person and they're just going to leave you and launch their career with somebody else. So let's talk a little bit about, you know, and it could be specific to your team members. What did you identify? Let's take Jenna, for example. You know, you met her, so she was really young in her.

Yeah.

So how do you identify? And now she runs half your business. Right. With Drew. So maybe take a real world example of, like, what did you see in her? How did you maybe take us through the crafting, the business journey and, you know, their mission and your mission with a real world example of, like, a Jenna, if that makes sense.

Yeah. So to answer your first question about the extreme version of, like, your first hire should be this massively talented person, and they're going to run my whole organization, and I'm sort of going to go to the beach. Right. That's this example way over here. Here's what I found early on in our growth journey when we're just getting started, we're not influential enough and we haven't proven a track record of our own to attract those types of individuals into our world. That's a real hard thing for someone to be attracted to. Not saying it hasn't ever been done. It's just unlikely. Further on in our growth journey, when we have a track record of helping people get to their goals, developing leaders, we've developed some bigger businesses, it's much more likely that you're going to attract super talented people in your world who want to be part of that and learn what you have to offer because you just have developed more value to give to them. Right. So I think that that's more likely later on in somebody's growth journey. So, you know, if you go back to my early in my growth journey when I'm not influential, I have no proven track record. I'm not going to. Nobody's going to affiliate with me. That's super top talent because I'm going to learn more from them than they are from me at that point. I've always had early on in my growth journey sort of a thought process around and I would say on that spectrum of hire this great person so they can build everything. And then the other side of that extreme being like, I'm just going to recognize that the people around me may or may not be great talent, but I'm going to invest in them to help us both along in our growth journey so that eventually one day they are. I would say I would have been further on that end of the spectrum. And my thought process was with Jenna, for example, she was earning close to minimum wage, sort of answering, answering phones. I had no idea if she could be a leader or not. But I've always maintained the philosophy, right or wrong, that if somebody can do a job about 70 or 80%, as you think you can do it, number one, they're probably doing it better than you. And number two, it's just worthwhile to hand that off to them and move on. Number the second philosophy I have is that there's three issues in business. There's people issues, process issues, and training issues. We almost always say that something's a people issue. Jenna's not doing this right. It's her problem and we get emotional about it. And more often, I would say, almost all the time. It's not like a people issue. A people issue would be they're malicious, they're lying, they're a massive core value misalignment. It's Usually a process issue or a training issue. So if Jenna in high school doesn't know how to like do something that I'm asking her to do, I probably need to take responsibility. I probably shouldn't say early on in my growth journey, they're not talent. I need to go find somebody else to run the business. That's a total cop out and I'm casting blame. Instead, at that point in my growth journey, I'm going to be like, okay, it's maybe a training issue or a process issue. So this thing that I don't think she's doing well, let's start with is there anything that she needs trained on that I need to be clear on to show her how to do the thing that I want her to do? Create clear expectations and is there a process that needs changed? And so the whole time, from when Jen is answering phones in 10th grade to when she's now running a company, you know, a multimillion dollar company, it's conversations around me investing with her over time. How can I be clearer on the expectations of the job? How can I train you a little bit more? And, and then do we need to train any process? You know, process changes and those usually solve the problem and slowly the person can be developed into, you know, a leader. So that's sort of been the journey with Jenna. And then later on in the process, you know, that was to train her as a technician. Later on when she needed trained as a manager and eventually a leader, we assigned. What I had said to you here is identifying talented people in your organization and then learning where they want to go. And for me, that's not necessarily done in the technician role. That's all training and process. It's not even necessarily applied in the management role. That's a lot of management training. How to deal with people issues, how to use radical candor, how to challenge people directly. It's actually when we're empowering people to take a leadership role, that's where I'm going to say, who's the most talented people and how can I learn where they want to go? And that's step one in that leadership development process.

And that's awesome. I want to make sure that we don't miss this because I have certainly struggled. My knee jerk reaction probably until two years ago, if I'm being completely honest, is that how could you not know how to do this? Even if I'm faking it and I'm like, okay, well let me show you how to do this. I'm thinking and I have seen it over and over again where overworked, overstressed, you know, team leaders are constantly lashing out at their people and they're not treating their people with respect, but ultimately it's on them because they have no process. They haven't slowed down in their business to make little pockets to work on their business. And there's certainly no training.

Yep.

Right. So, man, there's so much I want to dive into there. And it's probably our fourth podcast that we need to do. Here's one thing I want to dig in on. So, and it's specific to, like, agenda taking someone in their sophomore year of high school making minimum wage, she's now running a multimillion dollar company for you. And you read the bookie myth again, just all the, all your virtuousness compared to me. I read it and I'm like, this is awesome. Like, this book is for me to get out of the technical work to make a system, have someone else run it, and I'm just going to be the entrepreneur. And you read it and you're like, okay, well, in order to do that journey, I need to take people along that journey for themselves. Yeah, that's a major distinction. I don't want that to go unnoticed. And let's, let's talk about that a little bit. You know, so she doesn't know how to forward a call to somebody. Right. So someone has to teach her how to use the phone. Right. That's her first job. Yep. All the way to the point where now you're teaching her how to build systems as a manager and then you're now teaching her how to have tough conversations. You had that tough conversations with her and now she has to have tough conversations with, with others. So talk. Is there anything more to talk about? E Myth as it relates to developing somebody?

I just think you, you know, when you're developing people and you're working on training and process issues, before we get to leadership development, we're talking about technician development. We got technician, they do the job manager, they get results through people, and then leader, they empower people to get results. So that's motivation. And so when we're talking about that technician and management role, for me, it does go back to is it a training issue or process issue when there's a problem? And then it's. Most of the time it's a training issue if it's people oriented. And so we're just going to look at I do it. I think sometimes we skip the I do it and it's, it's just, you do it right. So it's, I'm, I'm literally going to do it and you're going to be with me for a longer time. And I would just use the rule of thumb, do it three times longer than you think you should do it yourself with them watching three times longer than you think you should. You know, a good example is when I transitioned out of listing production. You know, I made sure that Drew, who was a buyer's agent handling 40 or 50 transactions, went personally on a minimum of 25 listing appointments with me before she could go and do 20 with me watching. And so there was 40 to 50 into it before she was doing it on her own. Right. So just can give, you know, I would encourage you to give people grace and do the training. I do it a couple times longer than you think you should. The temptation is going to be to walk away. And here's the thing, it feels really good in the short term to walk away immediately and say you just do this and then you go look at something else. And that's getting it done at like 20, 30, 40% efficiency. And there's like a rush in that. And I'm going to move on to something new. And it's the shiny thing. The reality is, is that if you do that in your whole business growth journey. What I've learned for myself anyway is that in the long run, it costs much more time and energy to do things that way. And so if I can just have the discipline to do it myself and allow them to watch and train. Not until they get it 30%, 40%, 50%, but they're at 80 to 100, maybe even 110% and go super deep on that thing before I turn and move to the next thing. That is really hard to do. It takes patience. And yet in the long term, over a five year business growth journey, I've experienced that things are tighter, they're better run, and you just don't have quite as many issues as if you do it the other way.

Yeah, it brings up like my first, well, not my first exit from a position, but when I exited listings, it was exactly the wrong way. Like it was textbook, exactly what you said not to do. I remember I hired like this guy. He was just, he was a seasoned agent and, you know, he was just going to come in and take all my listing appointments. And I think, I think I showed him like, like once. I don't even think I took them on a listing appointment with me. I'm like, dude, you're, you're an agent. You have a license already. You've been practicing for 10 years. Surely you can do this. Yeah. Here's our listing present. Like here's the paperwork. You got it. I let him go out on. This is embarrassing. 105 listing appointments. 105 listing appointments. And I, because I was like so happy at this point. I was doing like 8 to 10 a week. I was just out of my mind with production. And you're just pulled in all these different directions. And I remember he listed like 30 of them. I was doing 70 to 80% conversion. So I would have brought in 75 to 80 of these. 105. And the business missed out on 40 times 8,000 at that time, like 300,000. Just from an economic standpoint.

And it's so tempting. It's so tempting when you're in the moment.

Yeah.

The cost is enormous and you can't.

Expect like if you're going to exit buyers, there is a 37 step system that you use with buyers that you may not have documented, but you just naturally do those things. You exit listings. There are just things that you do or things that they'll have to do to transfer authority or, you know, so man, it's, there's so many lessons that, that I have learned the hard way that you don't want to learn the hard way. It's. It's hard either way.

Yeah.

You know, it's sort of like choose your hard, so to speak. Like it's going to be hard to go on 50 appointments with somebody.

Yep.

But it's harder to lift your head up and you're going to have pain.

Yeah. You're going to have pain either way to choose the one that makes better sense.

So good. So good you mentioned grace. Anything more? I feel like when I heard that word, you know, there could be more of a. Examples of like, you know, I am learning, I'm wired or my life experiences or my jacked up childhood has led me to a point where I don't have a lot of empathy. I'm super like driven and I'm just running fast all the time. When you say the word grace and to give people grace, talk, talk more about that. What does that look like in the day to day?

Yeah, Lars, that's a good one. I, I don't know why I'm a little bit wired this way, but I think it's a real fortunate blessing for me. You know, my faith is really important to me and empathy and compassion happens to be one of our business's core values. But even long before we develop those, you know, when my wife. I'll just use this as an example. Was going through, and I don't think she'd mind if I share this. She was going through a different difficult time with a family member who was. Who was sick, and her mom had Ms. And her mom was having her health taken from her and her identity. And it was one of the hardest times in my wife's life. And, you know, as. As she had stuff taken from her as an adult, she would get angry in ways that it didn't seem like there was a good reason, like, for what you might. You and I might consider just sort of something silly. She would sort of lash out. And it was really hard. And my wife and I said a prayer one night, and it was around empathy. It was around this idea that, you know, as hard as that is, if we just put. If I put myself in your mom's shoes, and I had my whole life in front of me, and I was a thriving adult with kids, and then I had a health issue, and it took first my ability to walk and then my ability to feed myself, and then my ability to work, and then my ability to do basic things like cook and give value to other people as that was stripped away from me. And I. And I was sort of lonely and couldn't sleep, and I was aggravated. I would probably lash out the moment you tried to suggest, like, I should do this with my money. I might be like, it's mine. Like, I'm not. And I would if I put myself in that person's shoes, like your mom. Like, she didn't wake up one morning at 2am and be like, I want to be aggravating to my daughter. Like, that's not what people do. Your assistant didn't wake up and be like, I want to upset my boss today. Your buyer agent didn't wake up and say, I just want to piss off all the clients so that my boss is upset with me, or, I want to screw this presentation up. Like, that doesn't. Nobody wakes up in the morning or is sitting around when they're four years old and says, that's what I want to do when I'm an adult. Right. And when we put ourselves truly in the shoes of other people, my guess is, is if we had the same life experience as them, if we had the same conversation with our spouse the night before, if we had the same upbringing and parents and life journey as them, we'd probably feel and do some of the exact same things as they did at the moment that frustrated us. And I think that there's just a lot to say about having generous assumptions with the people around us. We. When they make missteps. Because I know in my own experience I've made a lot of missteps and it goes a long way for me to do better when people have generous assumptions about me. So there's just a lot to say there.

And no, that's, that is just so, so good. So let's, let's land the conversation here. We talked about, you know, making sure, you know, identifying talent, really learn where they want to go, putting their mission in line with your mission in terms of their business and personal growth journey. How does this thing land in the week to week or the quarter to quarter? Like, what's the cadence of getting somebody? Because I know my plan with the guy Keith that I hired, I'm like, here's the playbook. Go have fun. You can go on an appointment this afternoon. That's not effective. So what does it look like to actually take someone through this?

Yeah. So just getting back to the tactical stuff. If we've step one, identified talented people around us, step two, I've sat down with them and asked questions about what do you want your professional life to look like 2, 3, 5, 10 years? What do you want your financial life to look like 10 years from now? What do you want your personal life and your family and your fitness and those types of things your faith to look like? So we've written all that down and then I've given it back to them and I've asked them to summarize that in their own words and we'll put that on a document. We have a one page document for that that they sign. That's step one. Once I've clarified where somebody wants to go, my opinion is that if I exist as a leader to help other people get where they want to go, that is sort of like the most empowering thing and a really great reason for them to be in my world. Right. So if we've both clarified that we have it written down now I can go to step two, which is take that document and help them boil it down to one to two pages. Right. That summarizes where they want to go. And then I'm going to take that and build in some things that align with my growth journey. So we all have a mission statement, a vision statement, and hopefully we have a business plan that shows our team members and ourselves and our spouse where we want our business to be and our life to be in five to 10 years. Now, if I can take somebody that's talented and that showed me where they want to be in five years, and it's crafted a plan that outlines that, and then I can put it beside where I want to be in five years, then the next thing that I can do. And this is the second part of step two. If I can align those two things and say to them, if you can help the business get here and here. Naming two benchmarks in my business plan. So let's say it's a sales leader. I know where I need sales to be in three years. If you can get sales, help me get sales to this benchmark and this benchmark by this date, then I know that financially your compensation can align with the motivation, the document that you gave me. Right. And so I'm going to put a target in writing with them that pairs their vision with my vision and put some benchmarks in place and, and shows them how they can earn the compensation that will get them to what financial and professional freedom looks like for them. And that's step two, right. Is just clarifying that in a basic document. That whole process, step one and two, is going to maybe take a couple months of three or four conversations in order to get to that point with the leader. And then step three for me is to inspect the process every 90 days. So we have something called a 5, 5, 5. You can call it whatever you want in your business, but essentially it's a quarterly conversation that reviews their responsibilities and their roles. It reviews any projects that they're working on. It reviews how aligned they are with the core values of the company. Then the last thing we go over is all about the document that I just explained. So, you know, a year ago, you said, here's where you'd want to be financially and professionally. And I had said a year ago that here's where we want the company to be. And if you can help the company get to these two benchmarks in the sales side of things, we can start to reward you and you can earn into your goals and objectives. And so we're just going to check on that progress every 90 days and see how they're doing against that timeline. And so that's the cadence. Then every 90 days, that leader is looking forward to growing and earning, you know, the right to step into exactly what they told me, you know, their goals were and their vision for their career is three, five, ten years down the road.

Awesome. So much good stuff. I Want to honor the clock a little bit, but I want to give you an opportunity for one last thought. So coming from, you know, you said 70, 80, 90 hours a week, you were just starting a team, you know, complete overwhelm, really deep in the weeds. I think at that point you were doing 80 deals and you were doing like 79 of them yourself. Like you had one buyer agent that was not selling because you couldn't really. I forget what it was, but it was how we all start out to the point now where you just have. And I've seen your team members and the way they, I mean, you love them and they just love you and they just honor you and they want to do well for you and themselves. And you'll do 325 transactions this year with the right economic model. And I know you're doing a whole bunch of awesome stuff with your project Lamplight and just blessing the world. And I know God is super proud of you and just looking down and smiling. And you've really served me and helped me quite a bit in my relationship with my spouse. And so I just want to add in all of that. What's the one last thought you would give for somebody that's in your shoes when you were four or five years ago, when it wasn't like it is now?

Yeah. I think the word that comes to mind is patience. I think the word that comes to mind for me is patience growth. The industry is filled with vanity metrics and everywhere we look, people are touting something. I mean, we even started the conversation. I'm glad we added in profit. But your philosophy is the opposite of vanity metrics. You tend to platform balance and all the right priorities. It's why I respect and admire you. And yet even on this, we talk about transactions growth in a holistic business. And life doesn't need to be oriented to top line revenue. That is one component. It might represent 15, 20% of the growth equation. And it's okay to take the pedal off the gas on transaction count and top line revenue and press the pedal on the gas of slowing down, building a system or two, scheduling a date night with your spouse and getting to the gym and getting in prayer time so that you can grow the spiritual side of your life, you can grow the fitness side of your life, you can grow the relationship with your spouse. And that goes for your business too. It's okay to slow down and work on expense reduction and grow profit because all those are business growth. And many times they're more important aspects of business growth. Than top line gci.

Man, that's so good. I remember the year I think you went from 102 transactions to 105 transactions. So I think technically you grew up. But when you were asked the question, I think you were on stage and you and you were asked the question about growth and you're like, yeah, it was one of my best growth years ever. Because you know, that's the year that I tripled my date nights. That's the year we had our third child and I was not working seven days a week. That's the year that we put these three systems in place that will run for a decade. The recruiting system or value based commit, whatever systems you put in. So there's just different ways to measure growth. Dave, I just have so much respect for you, appreciate your time today. I am going to reserve the right to have you back on at least every other month for just different topics that we can go deep on. So I appreciate you brother.

Awesome. Appreciate you too.

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