Leigh Marcus: When High Level Personal Leadership Meets An Unparalleled Commitment to Sales

I just had the opportunity to interview Lee Marcus, who leads a team in Chicago selling $225 million worth of real estate. And reflecting back on that conversation, I have some things that I must go deeper on and just reflect upon. And when I think about the conversation, if you haven't heard the podcast episode, go back one episode. The cadence here on Real Estate Team Builders is to interview someone who is building a team at a very high level on the right economic model and doing it from a systems perspective. So there's sustainability in that. We go into the good, bad, ugly of their journey. And then the follow up episode is me just sort of contemplating the time that I spent with the guest and what they said and how it applies to my world potentially and my experience in real estate B school and the hundreds of of team builders that we've coached over the years and the more than a thousand team leaders that I've chatted with in the course of just having strategy sessions with folks over the years. So if you didn't hear the interview, go back one episode and make sure you, you get into it. Lee will sell 185 homes personally in 2020 and about the same in 2021. His team will do another 150 to 175 or so. And, and so he's running at a very, very high level, does not give his life away. I'm sure there was a time when he was building his business. He talks about that, what it looked like, how many hours he had to put in to be successful. He has one thing that really struck me. Nine administrators for nine salespeople and himself included. And I think four or five of those are just in the listing side, which was where he's focused most of his efforts. But just think about that. I firmly believe this is my first point, that there is enough administrative work, at least the equivalent of the hours that you're putting in right now. If you're not at a point where you're getting closer to time and money freedom and your stress is coming down and you're building a real estate team, if you're still involved in a bunch of administrative activities and you just need to be honest with yourself, you need more administrative help. You need more administrative help just the way that it is. I've heard a rough rule of thumb is that for every 50 transactions you need an administrator. They're not all going to do the same thing. Your first administrator is going to do 10 different jobs and your second one is going to do five because they're taking over five of what the first one was doing. And so let's see if that rule of thumb, 350 deals this year, seven administrators. So roughly it holds true. And so if you're wanting to go from 100 to 200 homes and you have two administrators, you're going to have to figure out a way to build systems that are tighter, that you can offload and leverage even what your first two administrators are doing to an additional to administrators. And so the thing that's back to Lee Marcus. The thing that struck me most about the conversation was his level of personal leadership and integrity. Personal leadership and integrity. And so what do I mean by personal leadership? We ended up the conversation. The question I asked him was something like, what words of wisdom do you have? And we got into a conversation about, you know, most people won't achieve at a high level in any industry. You know, we're just like any other industry where there's way too many salespeople in our industry, which are real estate agents, we're salespeople and they're competing for not enough business to go around for everyone to be monstrously successful. And so the question he asked, I can't stop thinking about it. And like I asked him, why do you think, you know, most people don't, they're not successful. And he said something like, you know, do they really want it? Because I asked him about like, golly, the amount of effort and time you put into your highest dollar productive activities, which I'll get to in a second. Do you really want it? So if you say that you want to double your income and work less hours, are you really willing to do what it takes to get there? That was the question. That was the big, like I'm even thinking for myself, for me to get to my next level, do I really want it badly enough? Am I really willing to do what's necessary for me to go from where I am today, which is really successful, to a whole nother level of impact on more people. And I was like, ah, coming out of talking to him is like, do I really want that? Am I really willing to do what it takes to get to that next level? And you need to ask yourself that question. Do you really want it? Start there. Do you really want it? The personal, that's the personal leadership. The personal integrity and leadership comes into a conversation around morning routine. Him and his wife Lindsay are getting up at 4:30am and they're doing a very strict morning routine until 5:30. Then their personal trainer comes into their home for an hour and 15 minutes to work out from 5:30 to 6:45. And then they still have time to, before the kids even get up, to do other things and to get ready for the day. And so they're getting ahead of the day by having a structured morning routine. I have said it a thousand times. There is so much freedom in structure. Let me say that again. Some of you are like, there is no freedom in structure. My ability to take off when I want to take off and work when I want to work, it all comes down to structure. I could never have the calendar that I have. Lee and Lindsay could never have the life they have if they didn't structure their calendar right. They know to succeed at a high level in their business, they need to make sure that they are physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually ready to compete at a very high level. And so all of that is taken care of before 6:45am that's before many of us get out of bed. Lately, I've been sleeping past 6:45am so all this was hitting me as Lee was talking, like, are you really in the game anymore? Are you really pushing yourself? Are you really challenging yourself to get to the next level? So I thought that was just awesome. The reminder that we have to commit to feeding ourselves physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually before we even get into our day if we want to succeed at levels that are abnormal. Like, we want to be at the highest levels of our profession. So that was it. Morning routine was a big, big takeaway. We all have to reconsider and think about, like, are we really wanting to invest in that time that's going to fuel us for the rest of the day, for the rest of the week, for the rest of the month, for the quarter, for the year, for the decade. Right. This all stacks on each other. Second thing was the amount of time he's willing to put into his highest DPA dollar productive activity. What's the highest dollar productive activity a salesperson can do? Let's take it out of real estate, because this is going to be offensive to a lot of us. And this was not. Let me back up one second. This was actually not the approach that I took in my business. That's why this whole conversation was fascinating. He's now coming into a conversation about e myth and getting out of some of the technical work and giving more opportunity to his team, where I went really quick into team building. So it's just an interesting sort of contrast between the way I built it and the way that he built his business. But he was willing to put the amount of effort into his highest dollar productive activity as many hours in the day as possible. And he decided like if I can make $1,000 an hour being on the phone and having conversations with would be buyers and sellers, why wouldn't I do that? More hours per day. And some of us are like, I want to prospect as little time as possible every day and just hope everything's going to work out right. So whatever you think your dollar productive activity is, you need to do more of it. And then you need to build leverage around you and systems around you and have people come around you and do the things that are not dollar productive. This is a baseline philosophy of for sure real estate team builders and real estate B schools that you're not making the kind of money that you want. You're not spending enough time doing activities that make you a lot of freaking money. It's not rocket science yet. It escapes most of us most of the time. So that was the second big takeaway is that he's willing to to spend up to eight hours a day in the one activity that most agents are refusing to do. And then we had a conversation around. So this is real estate team builders. So let's take this conversation into team building. Are your agents, are you coaching them to put more time into their most dollar productive activity? Do they even know what their time is worth? Do they know their numbers? Are you really holding them accountable to a higher standard? If you're not succeeding as a real estate team leader, it's likely you're not holding your agents accountable. You're. You don't have written standards. You're not coaching them. You're not increasing their skills on a regular basis. And that brings me to my next point. Is that the amount of skills building he had to. He talked about his journey in the beginning when you're first talking to people. Let's take circle prospecting. Just listed, just sold. You could have 250 conversations before you get a listing. 250 conversations over the course of over 10 years. He got that down to this year. It's five. Five. But it's mostly referrals. Granted, he's got a different business now than when he started. But his newer agents can go from 250 to 100 conversations in a period of a year because they're getting so many reps in and they're role playing and he's pushing them and he's showing them how he did it. And so are you willing to master the skills to get good Enough at a thing where you can generate so much business that you have to surround yourself with other people. There's some of you that are running teams now where you may have to take a step back and retrench into those activities so that you can build a different business on a different foundation. Brings me to the last point that we talked about. It's this, and it relates directly to real estate team builders. I do it, we do it, they do it, I do it. Is you're willing to do the most dollar productive activities. You're willing to put the reps in on meaningful contacts. You're willing to build skills around different scripts and all of that, all of that to get yourself to the point where you're completely dialed in in your daily routine. Your minimum three hours. I was three hours. Lee said he did some days, he was eight hours. Minimum three hours of direct selling. So conversations with buyers and sellers that have not had a conversation with you yet about real estate on a daily basis. Then you make this shift to, okay, I'm super busy because that actually worked. And now we do it where you're shoulder to shoulder. You're doing it with your agents and you're also teaching them how to get better and you're coaching them. So it's this shift from player, top player to. To coach where you can't go on the field. Right. How would you think about your business differently if you couldn't go on the field and play? Right. You'd have to succeed through the team that you put out. And if you wanted to win at a high level, you better make sure those players know how to play their positions at the highest level. So are you slowing down enough? I do it. You're the best at it. Then you sit down shoulder to shoulder, or you stand shoulder to shoulder. You do it with them and you teach them how to do it. That's we do it then and only then after. You have hundreds of reps listening to your agents calls, you know, doing it with them. Right. You don't step out of lead generation or new business development when you get your first buyer agent. I've seen team leaders do that and I've seen team leaders that have no right to not do the core activity of new business development. They've got a couple agents and they come in whenever they want. And they expect their agents to. To do what the team leader says, not what the team leader does. Takes a long time to get through that we do it phase. Then and only then can you make the transition to they do it. We've got a fully leveraged business that has a culture of new business development, a culture of accountability, a culture of like, we're going to work hard because the industry demands it, because there are way too many of us. So that's my. That's. I was going to say that was almost my last point. The final thought here, we didn't spend a whole lot of time on it. It's worth. Worth mentioning. It's a conversation about core values. Probably one of the top three things I see off with teams. And Lee, like every other team leader, team builder, has suffered as a result of not being clear on their core values. Who do you want to be surrounded with? Like, who do you want to be shoulder to shoulder with? If you're going to spend a lot of time with somebody and you're going to teach them how to play a sales position at the highest level and make a lot of money and be able to have that skill forever, you better make sure that they're the right person. You know, he mentioned hustle and work hard, and then real quick, he said, I pinned them down to one core value. He said, humility, your ability to not bring an ego to be coachable, that's the number one thing that he looks for that is hard to see and always reveals itself over time. I thought that was really interesting. You know, the two taking it to my journey, the two that were like showstoppers, were embrace accountability and discipline, emotional and hustle and work hard, and then positive attitude is a version of humility. But those first two eliminates, like 99% of the population. Nobody wants to work hard and hustle and nobody wants to be accountable and disciplined. It seems like in real estate. And so get really clear in your core values. If you're an emerging real estate team and you're early on in your business growth journey, you're just starting building. Do not make the mistake of hiring just anyone who comes your way. Or, you know, if you're bringing on 50% of the people that you talk to, that's never going to work. You're never going to get in front of people that are that good a fit with your core values because it should be really selective, your process. Just take the time to truly understand who you're getting into business with. Look for their patterns versus their potential. A few podcast episodes ago, I went really deep on that. You know, make sure they have a pattern of hustling and working hard. Make sure they have a pattern of discipline and accountability. Ask them questions specifically, like Tell me, how do you hold yourself accountable to a higher standard or talk about personal and professional standards? You know, talk about how you, in college, did you work any jobs while you were getting your degree or did you just loaf and have a good time in college? That's okay. Yet the people you want to be surrounded with, they probably got a dual degree in four years and they were extracurricular activities and they probably, you know, worked two jobs while they were doing all of that. Right? So you want those people to come into your world. And if you're not living that way every day, that's where the disconnect happens. So that that's where you're out of alignment with your core values, then everything goes to heck in a handbasket. So if you're at a point in your journey where all of this stuff is just hitting you and it's like, yes, it hurts to hear some of the things we're revealing in these conversations. On the one hand, there is no shame in where you are at. I have been there. All of our members have been there. There's a journey that we all take that is very diverse and there's always a process to understand the business principles that allow you to have more money, more freedom, more impact. That's essentially what, what we're about at real estate B school. So no shame yet. Come into our world and let us help you do this. Go to joinrebs.com joinrebs.com we have world class coaching and training, all of our tools and systems in our community that you can get access to to help you do this yourself. So go to joinrebs.com and we'll see you over there. Bye bye.