A real-estate team grew from one agent to 118 closed sides in two years by hiring managers and building systems. The speaker closed 60 sales in 2010 with one admin handling everything, then bought a ReMax franchise and hired a sales manager to scale further. Key lesson: learn to lead before you hire.
Questions this video answers
118 sides
About 120 homes
Chris ~27 sales; speaker ~60 sales
December 2010
Listing manager hired January 2011; Keely licensed April 2011 and active by June 2011
The next phase of it. So I had Tia and Chris and the next sort of phase was to. I had never managed anybody before before. So it's not the easiest thing to get up, to meet with people and to share their vision and to help them sort of make the decision to join you. But to learn how to lead and inspire is that next phase of your growth. So maybe you have a couple agents and an administrator, but to really scale this thing is where you need to learn how to become a true leader and to inspire others to take action and to bring out the best in them. So honestly, those next 12 months or so, so 2010, it wasn't really the smoothest. Looking back on it. I mean, Chris, I think he sold 27 that year. I sold 60 or so and 25 or 30 deals. We have probably had two or three agents that started and stopped in that same year. It wasn't pretty, but it worked. And really I learned how to run a meeting, a team meeting, how to stand in front of people and train them and tell them what I did and how it worked. I learned the importance of accountability and how to bring out the best in people. At that point, with two, three or four buyer agents, I was able to fully focus on building our listing inventory. And there's a huge, huge shift for the teams in terms of lead quality. Leads from listings, specifically signed calls, are some of the best leads you can possibly get. 2010 wasn't a bad year. We sold almost 120 homes. The key here, and what I'm noticing as I consult on a higher level with agents, is that hundred sale hump is a big deal. The infrastructure that you have to get over the hundred sale mark, it's not that much different to go to 200 to 300 to 400. So the key there, looking back and having the ability to look back and connect the dots, is getting over that hundred sale hump. So the next challenge was getting more help. One other important thing to note here is that through the end of 2010, we closed 118 sides and TIA was the only admin that we had. She did all of the closings, all of the listing management, listing coordination, that sort of thing, and all of the sort of marketing admin and advertising admin functions. She was also running signs around and really just doing everything. I see some agents, before they're even at 40 or 50 sides or 60 sides, they're leaning toward hiring a second admin. But it's usually based on the fact that they don't have good systems in place. And I can't say we had the best systems in place back then, but we were working toward it. So if you're hiring a second admin, you know, you're not close to the 100 deal mark. You probably need to look at your systems and your internal processes before you look to just throw a person at the problem, which is ultimately just going to lead to inefficiencies. But anyway, at that I knew we were growing. So the next challenge was getting to you more, getting more help. She was bursting the seam. So was I. So our next staff hires. You know, when I look back, 2011 was one of the most exciting years as our team really took form. Real quick side note, I bought a ReMax franchise, a new franchise, in December 2010. Mostly because I was just kind of bullied out of my other franchise that I was in. They just capped the amount of growth that they wanted me to do, which is just weird. Within two weeks of a meeting I had with my former broker, I owned a ReMax franchise, but I had no intention of running it like a franchise. So I don't have independent agents. We just have our team in my franchise at this point, our listing inventory was growing. I just added radio and lead Gen was up. I hired a listing manager in January 2011 and then a seller, Isa, who's Keely, who's now my sales manager. And in April 2011 she got licensed and she was up and running in June 2011. This freed me up to just focus on really two things at that point. So I was working with some buyers, but mostly I would let my buyer agents show my buyer clients homes and I would just pay them as a showing agent. But really my focus was on taking listings and growing the team. At that point, ReMax required that we have a physical office space. We took a key man space up till the end of 2010. So through 120 sides, we were 100% virtual. We met once a week as a team in our broker's office in a conference room. But we were 100% virtual up to that point. And we only opened the office we have now. We opened that office in July 2011. So that's another thing I think. I think my ability to keep our costs down by not having physical office space, I think was a big deal and something that you're going to want to consider as you build this, build out your version of a sustainable business.
