The Least Painful Way to Expand Your Real Estate Footprint w/Jennifer Murtland

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've 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 with focusing on the areas of life that truly matter, then this show is for you.

All right, welcome back to Real Estate Team Builders. This is going to be an awesome conversation. I have found the one out of a hundred folks that have been through the ringer in real estate that is actually willing to talk about her journey from a very truthful perspective. Building a big business. I put quotes around it because it's what. And we'll get into the resource that we both use to do this here in a second without disrespecting anybody but Jennifer Mertland. Welcome to the podcast. And especially, you know, before we hit record, just, let's just share your journey, right? You know, how you sort of thought you were supposed to build the team and, you know, what went well. But more importantly, I think we can learn so much from just a little bit of honesty from the folks that have been there ahead of us. So tell us like, the minute version of you and then let's get into like, okay, there I was hiring my first administrator and, you know, so let's get into the good stuff so people can really learn. But tell us a little bit about yourself and let's get into it.

Sure. Hey, Lars, thanks for having me on. So you want just like the short version.

Give your market, you know, and we'll get into all the good stuff. I already know where this is going, so you don't have to. Sometimes podcasts, like, it's the first 12 minutes is like, so then I left my corporate job and like, it's like, no, we're Going to get right into it.

Right into it.

Tell us about you and then we'll get right into it.

Got it. Got it. Okay. So I actually started my career off as a wholesaler. I was not licensed. I used to wholesale. Short sales. That's a grind, man. Back in like 2008, 9, 10. Then I got my license and I'm in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, and I joined a small boutique brokerage. But then I went straight to Keller Williams. Was there for 10 years. Did, um. My best effort at following the Red Book. The millionaire real estate agent had a big team, 12 people about. I probably tried that about six different ways, six different times, and left Keller after 10 years. Been at exp for the rest of the time. So, like three years and building. I think it's. My perspective has changed, and now I'm building a team that's, like, authentic to me and it feels amazing. And my bank account is so happy. It was very sad. It was very, very sad.

And the way that you. We're going to get into all of it because I want to. You know, I didn't mention this before we hit record, but the way that you view referrals.

Yes.

Coming from, like, not having it built, a business where it was, like, overly profitable. It's like. It's straight profit.

Yes.

You know, so we'll get into all that. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves. We got to get into all the crap first. Oh, God, let's lay out all the crap. As you look back on it.

So, yes.

I remember when I was out there, first year in real estate. Market shifted in 2007. I had left this cozy corporate job, got a little kid at home, all the stuff, and it's all burning and crashing around me. And I listened to the book 12 times. 12 times.

The Mrea book.

Mrea, right. And it doesn't really tell you how to do it. Like, it kind of. But it doesn't. And it.

Well, there's a chart, Lars. There's a whole chart that says, here's what you. Who you hire first in tier one, and here's their job. And I was like, what? And I'm like, okay, here's your job. Do your job. And they're like, okay, it just doesn't. It's not feasible. I love the theory, though. But it's like college, right? Like, I took a ton of philosophy classes, a ton of psychology classes, and learned all these co. Cool buzzwords and learned all the theories. And then you get out into the real world and you're like.

How do you actually apply philosophy to, like, a real world situation?

Right. Well, on podcasts, it's kind of philosophical, but yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

So. So let's get into, like, even just the lessons around, you know. So for someone that wants to go down the. The leverage and systems and people route, what could you tell them? Like, let's unpack two or three hard times, that if you had to do it over again, you'd be like, don't do this, do this. What are. What are a couple of those that come to mind?

Well, I think 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, but the top. And I saw like, okay, well, then I. 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. 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. 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 what's the lesson you would give? You know? Cause 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 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 100 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.

Yeah.

One.

One, one, one one admin. No, I was going to say so. So that's definitely one one part of it. It's. It's, you know, bringing people in but not know how, not knowing how to deploy them necessarily in a way that they, they can earn 10 times their salary. That's kind of our rule of thumb. If you're going to hire a $50,000 person, you only do it when you're making 500,000 GCI. And then you can only hire your second person when you're at a million.

Which is like impossible.

Yeah.

And. And if somebody is like that, where they're earning a lot of money trying to keep them outside of an EXP platform where it financially makes sense for the time that you put in is. It's painful. Like, it just doesn't. It's impossible to keep people. Once they're making a certain level of money, they're going to want to leave. And you as the team leader in most, in most brokerages, that is a problem if they leave. So you don't want them to leave. But as a person and as a friend of theirs and as most real estate agents were very giving, generous people, we want them to succeed and do better. But when they succeed and do better, there's no reason for them to stay with you.

Yeah.

It is a total conflict of interest.

Exactly.

And you know, they say you have to make your world big enough so they can fit in it.

Oh, my God. That's crap. It's bullshit.

It really is. Because most, most businesses don't have room for many people making in my market, multiple six figures. And that's where a good agent on a team, they're already making that, but they could probably make that or more and work as hard as we work them.

Yep.

And that was like a hard conversation with one of my team members because we were great as a team. Like, we had three sales agents. We had. I mean, we were a team of four. Just like I described. It was great. I was making a lot more money than we. When we're a team of 12. I was like this. They were making money. But I was like. But for her, I was like, based on what her personal goals were, I was like, you are gone from your family more than you like. And in order to do make more money, you're going to have to be gone more. And it just isn't going to work for you. Like, I want to keep you on the team, but it, like, doesn't make financial sense for you to be on this team. And it doesn't make financial sense for me to provide you resources for less. And so we, we had to break apart.

Yeah, they all leave. That's. That's the sad truth. And most of it's on good terms, but they all leave.

But I think, like, for me, one of the biggest mindset shifts was I'm a child of the 80s. I had a picture of what success was and success meant you're the. You're the boss, you're the hbic. You know, you have this big. All these people, like, look up to you. You, like, have all this power and control and stuff like that. Right. And that's kind of what the REA book is. And I was like, that's it. That's successful. This is what it looks like. And you look around and there's only like, four people doing it. And then you're like, wait a minute. I don't like managing people. I don't want to like all the customers to be, like, calling me, like, I like to play and have fun. You know, I was like, this is not going to work. So I had to change my level, my idea and definition of success. And for me, success now is having money in the bank, traveling when I want, and doing what I want. Chasing pleasure, basically.

Yeah.

And let's talk about it, you know, with respect to. And not to pick on Gary, because I'm sure he doesn't care, and he's got a gazillion dollars. But there's one other example, man.

He saw an opportunity.

There's. There's one other example I'll use. So when he rolled out eso, so his legacy was going to be expansion systems. You know, ESO was expansion systems orientation. And there was an agent in my local market who. I mean, I saw his listings. He only had, like, six or seven listings in this market, but he had expanded into, like, 12 other markets.

Yes.

And it was the most ridiculous thing ever.

So ridiculous.

And I remember this post. It was so sad. One day I saw a post on Facebook. He said, essentially, he's coming back to selling, you know, because he really misses working with clients.

Oh, right.

I knew that all of these expansion locations had. And then Gary shares at a mastermind. You know, seven years after ESO launched that his, you know, his core henchmen, it took them seven years to make it work and be profitable. So you had all these people going out and just expanding. Right. Using his. His footprint of franchises to. To expand. So when I think of that now, you know, versus, you know, the platform that we're on now, if you have a growth mindset, and this is not an exp pitch, but there are easier ways to expand your footprint. So talk a little bit about that when you.

Yeah.

You view how much it sucks to have. You made no money. You had 12 agents.

Yes.

Now your travel, six months. This year, you have 44 agents.

Yeah.

And talk about your referral strategy as well.

Yeah.

So you're exactly right. We had an expansion team in our market that their total volume for all their expansions was my individual volume. I was like, how are you? What are you doing? You're spending so much money. You have to support these people with Signs, lock boxes, like all the crap that real estate agents need. Right? Plus your time and support people and blah, blah, blah, like all this madness. So when we saw the EXP model, because I was actually traveling and I was still at Keller Williams, I was the productivity coach. It was 20. It was pre Covid, about a year before COVID And I was like, hey, I can still be the productivity coach and travel. We just need to make all this crap online. So all this stuff was kind of headed there, right? And I think this was be. Well, EXP was around, but I didn't know about them, so they were like, no, we can't do it. We. We have to. Everybody needs to be here. I was like, nobody comes to the office. Nobody comes. So whatever. So I was like, fine, then I won't be the productivity coach. So I'm traveling, traveling, and we get. We hear about exp and right now. So even while I was at Keller Williams and I was talking to real estate agents, because there's Keller Williams around the world, and I was talking to real estate agents in different markets, there was no real incentive for me to, I guess, like, recruit them to come to Keller Williams. Yeah, we have. We have profit share, and I still get profit share. But at EXP, it's like, way more fun because you get revenue share. And I find, like, if you know the difference between revenue and profit, it's a much bigger number and it's more fun and it's better for the agent.

And I'll ask KW agents, you know about Keller Williams revenue share program.

Oh, right. They don't have it.

And they. But I said, no, no, there is one person that has revenue share. Did. Do you know who it is?

Yeah.

And they're like, no, we don't have it. I'm like, well, who's the only agent at Keller Williams that takes money off the top regardless of whether your business is profitable or if the market center is profitable? Who's that one person? They're like, nobody. I'm like, well, where the 3,000? I'm like, the 3,000?

Yeah.

6% of sales up to 3,000 for 160,000 plus agents. So the model is awesome. Right? And now you've got 44 agents in three different countries, and I don't know how many states, but. So tell us a little bit about, you know, going back one step or. No, actually your referral strategy. So.

Oh, yeah.

Building. Building A. Well run. So I'm not pitching real estate B school here because we do teach how to run a really well, run, run real estate team. But it is not for everybody. No, it is not for everybody. But because of the way you run your business now, you'll do like 60 transactions, right? You basically you pick your profit on every transaction.

Yes.

You're like, yeah, I'll take 10% on that one. I'll take 50% on that one. So you're blended profit now. You're not out with buyers who sell. I'll let you tell the story. But I think your business model is brilliant because it fits into, you know, into the way you want to run your business at this point. So talk about that a little bit.

So right now our team is me and a partner who was on my team before. So when he first came into real estate, I was his productivity coach. And then he was on my team for like six years before we came to exp. We also have a transaction coordinator who gets paid per transaction. And then we have a VA and we're getting ready to hire another va. But now. So our business. I am really good at generating leads. And because we sold so many houses for so long, I mean, we were selling easily over 120 deals a year, me and him. So he takes care of the clients for repeat and referral business. He generates the leads through them, and then I generate new business. And in the. And I love it. I mean, it. It fills my soul. If I'm having a bad day, I get on the phone and call expireds and for sale by owners. Like, it makes me so happy, you know, which is weird. I know. But when I generate the lead, I don't want to service it. I'm like the worst customer service person in the world. Like, I'm good at the first relationship, and then like, I can't do the rest, you know, so we will, we'll refer it out and it's great. It's a win win. Because most real estate agents do not know how to generate leads. They hate it, or they don't know how to do it, or they won't do it or whatever it is. Right? But I also know that they'll pay Op City 38%. They'll pay, you know, referral exchange 30%. They'll pay all this stuff. They'll pay more than the 25% that most agents will. Will ask for, right? So it's like, hey, I'll give you this lead. And depending on who they are, depending on what the lead is, if it's a listing all day long, 50, 50. There's no reason, even if it's in my market. And it's a listing given how the market is now. Every single agent. I've never had an agent tell me no.

Yeah.

Because you should generate from your listing, you should generate an additional three deals that I'm not getting a part of. So you're welcome. And you get to keep the client.

Yeah.

But if you don't, I'm going to keep them and refer it back to you.

Yeah.

That's amazing. So I want to give you a chance to plug the podcast here for a second. And what's the focus of the podcast?

The podcast is real estate fight club podcast and our focus is like tactical things like should you use the bathroom during a showing? What did we do it on? You were on it.

Yeah.

We talked about the market, the shift, how the world is ending.

Yeah, the, the shift storm. Yeah, that was the best. Yeah. I've been using it ever since. I love that podcast. Yeah. How to prep for the things you need to know now in the shift storm, I think was your topic.

Yeah.

Things like that. And so we fight. The co host and I fight about different ways because like you said, there's a lot of ways to do business. There's a lot of ways to be successful. You have to find what's authentic to you once you start living your authentic life. Like what's, why do you work? What's important to you? What's important to me is traveling, having fun. So how can I fill that with my work? I'm going to tell you what, it wasn't working. Eighty hundred hour weeks, that wasn't filling anything up.

Yeah.

That's awesome. And I'm trying to think of if I have any other questions, I mean, my big takeaway, listening. And I think it's just with what you ended with, that's a lesson for me is that our work is here to serve our life.

Yes.

And it's just.

Yes.

So often, you know, it is totally reversed. Like a traditionally successful real estate agent, they're living a life that is not worth living. Like I just knew if I didn't crack the code on leverage and I didn't build a business. I mean we built it differently, but we built it in a way where we could still be in business.

Right.

You know, like I just couldn't, couldn't do it on a day to day basis.

Well. And I still get to coach and train agents, but it's not, there's no like commitment. Like I'm the, you know, I'm the productivity. I was the productivity coach or I had the agents on my team and it was like there was an accountability piece there and it would upset me because most people do not do what they say they're going to do. And that really, that is hard for me. And I was like, I don't really like managing people. And these people, this is their own business, right. So at EXP and the way we built it now it's like, okay, if the guys from Portugal need help, like I'm going to Portugal in a couple of months to like hang out with them, right? If they need help, like I'm there, we help. We have like calls and stuff regularly. But if they don't need help, then there's no like, well, what did you do today? How many leads did you get? You know, it's their business and they get around how they want.

Yeah, that's awesome. Well, Jennifer, this has been. I'll call you Jen now since we're on a, you know, we're sort of friends. I appreciate you just sharing your heart and, and what's worked for you. That's my dog chiming in. My dog really appreciated our time together as well. So if you guys want to get in touch with Jennifer, what's the best way?

My Cell phone is 513-400-1691 or I'm Jennifer Mertland everywhere.

Awesome.

Thanks, Jennifer.

Thanks for listening. Would you please take a minute to share the show with other team leaders who may be struggling? And if you look, you love the podcast, please leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts. If you want to learn step by step how to build a profitable real estate team that allows you to get out of the real estate grind and live the lifestyle you've been dreaming about, Visit us@joinrebs.com that's joinrebs.com Our coaching, training systems and support will help you get more high quality leads, increase your conversions and sales, improve your client experience and allow you to scale your real estate business, all while reducing the amount of hours you work and the stress you endure. Just go to joinrebs.com for more info now. See you on the next episode.

Sam.