Uncovering the 8 Winning Traits of Real Estate Business Success with Stacie Peterson

Welcome back to Real Estate Business Builders. This is Lars Hedenborg, founder of Real Estate B School. And today we have a conversation with Stacy Peterson. Stacy Peterson was the first paid coaching client of Real Estate B school back in 2013. She's going to uncover the eight winning traits of real estate business success. She is a beast in business and someone that you would enjoy hanging out with. There aren't many folks that are, you know, check both boxes. I think the world of Stacy. She ran Real Estate B School at a point. Now we're partnered at EXP together and she is just crushing it. So this is drawn on actual research from the top real estate teams in the nation. And it's tons of actionable insights and a bunch of stuff that will help you transform your business. So stay tuned for Stacy Peterson. This is just a one part uncovering the eight winning traits of real estate business success.

So raise your hand. How many of you want to win in business this year? Me. Great. Three of us. Awesome. Well, the three of us are going to are going to win big. And the rest of you, I know you want to win too. So this part of Real Estate B School Summit is just a little bit different because I'm not taking what I've done in the business from but actually taking a study and showing you what other top teams have done and uncover it for you. But also the tactical stuff like Alan and Crystal did of how to apply it to your business. And so a couple things I want to mention before I get started, you know, with Alan and Crystal's presentation, one of the things that they mentioned, or actually a few, I took lots of notes, but they said you have to be able to articulate your story. You have to be the expert. Right. Honor your craft, you have to teach it to others. You have to get really great at making connections. You have to know your targets and goals and you got to focus on your health and your business. And oddly enough, you are going to see that show up in my presentation too. So quick little intro about myself. I'm a Christian, a wife, a mom, I have two kids, two goldendoodles, and we live in Sioux Falls, South Dakot. For those of you that thought I lived in Charlotte, I don't. I'm in South Dakota. I've been in real estate 21 years. I built a team from 0 to 300 transactions in 5 years and sold that for a 7 figure valuation. Tripled my business while I worked at Real estate feed school. I was the very first client Lars had and then became a Coach and then he trusted me with getting to be the CEO for a while, which was honestly a dream come true. My passion is to help agents build systems and give them leverage so they don't get bogged down. And I have an organization of 615 agents at exp and I get the pleasure of helping lead them every day, which is honestly my favorite part. So let's talk about the research. So 29 of the most successful team owners in the nation were interviewed by a top agent named Brian Gubernick. And the results were given at a Mastermind presentation the beginning of this year. So that's where some of this comes from. The goal of asking these questions was to uncover what these top teams are doing on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis that's led to their success. However, as you will see when I get into it, that, you know they're not perfect, right? They didn't do everything well all of the time. And so that is noted here. But I really want to point that out. There is not perfection here. There is just a consistency of doing the right things over and over. And also with a study like this, there had to be some parameters and that way it could be proven that these businesses were not just a one hit wonder. So let's look at how the research was compiled. So this is how success was measured for these teams. To determine they were the right ones for this study, they had to have five plus years of consistent year over year growth in revenue. They had to have five plus years of consistent year over year growth in unit count. And they also had to have positive brand recognition or reputation. So for the interview, the specific questions that were asked were compiled so that it could be organized in a nice way to be able to give it to you. So the questions were, what is it about your team that has led to your success over the years? What was the turning point in your business like when did it take off? What was the actions and behaviors that sparked this momentum or change? What is it that other teams do not do that they should start doing today? And what does a team owner and leader's day look like? So what do you feel is your superpower and what makes you different from your competitors? So as you can see, these are open ended questions, right? They're allowing answers to be fluid and not specific answers so that we can really get the answers from the teams and not just sort of, you know, guide them into the answers that we want. So here's the results and I'm going to go over each of these in detail. So the following represents these were the most common actions, behaviors and strategies shared by these teams. So number one is predictable environment. And the first strategy is standards and expectations for roles. You have to inspect what you expect. Living up to expectations are impossible if they're not agreed upon. So you have to create detail in things like team minimum standards. What are individual and team goals for production? What does success look like when you're presenting your services to clients? What are the team and client communication standards? What standards are there around new business development? What. All of these are so important if you want your business to run like a top team does. Also, who is holding everyone accountable and how often is that one on one? Does it have an agenda? Is it in a group setting and if so, how often? As you can see the the examples that I'm giving, the more detail you have, the better strategy. Number two for the predictable environment is cadence to your day along with resources and training. So the speed of the leader is the speed of the pack. If you use things like we have the business Freedom Planner here at Real Estate B school, it allows your whole team to speak the same language when it comes to time and goals and income producing activities. If you all aren't on the same page using the same cadence, it's really, really hard to hold people accountable. Right? And it's also hard to be an effective leader if you yourself are not in congruence with the standards that you set. The third strategy for a predictable environment is something simple. I think it's a team calendar which includes meetings and events. You can do this super simple on a Google calendar that's shared with everybody. You also want to make sure that each of your agents calendars are also on this same block, right? Just use Google Suite. Then you can see all the appointments. You can see time blocking for new business development. Again, the whole goal is to have a predictable environment so that your business can run like a well oiled machine. The second trait of top teams is successful teams keep score so they score lead activities like appointments, lead generation agreements, things like that. They also track lagging indicators such as closings and commissions. Most teams could define what winning and losing the day looks like. So again, think business freedom plan or dominate your day expectations versus agreements. People know if they got a star for the day or if they didn't. And then lastly, all teams visually display the score for their team members to see. So think of like the NFL, right? They have stats on everything during every game. They're like repeating all these stats. You can get it online, we can see it. The great players study their stats, they study game tape, they do all these things to get consistently better. So why would we expect teams to be different, right? You have to record your calls, you have to role play, you have to visually display the results, right? No one likes to be in a contest without knowing where they're at, right? So it's easy. Just make it visible for everyone. We also talk a lot about a scorecard, especially here. And this is why. Think of it like if you were on a Beach for 30 days, how would you know the health of your business? That is what keeping score is all about. Understanding what numbers can do for you and that they matter to you. Number three trait is team leaders actively plan and manage their time. So successful team owners plan their days and weeks. They leverage a calendar to block their time, and they mostly honor their time blocks. And that was one of the things that I thought was really interesting because I think a lot of times when we're looking at people that are more successful than us, or maybe just where we want to be in business, we assume that everything they do is perfect every single time, right? So if you have trouble like I, I have trouble following time blocks, I kind of have this like dual personality where part of me needs structure and then part of me needs freedom. And so if you are just transparent about that with your team and that you're all working on it, that just shows them authenticity. So while for these teams there was some random unplanned work that occurs, for the most part, they followed that regular schedule and it was stated that they do openly share their schedule with others. So again, this is how you can encourage your team to get on the same page. You're transparent about your time blocks, you're transparent that you're not perfect, and you're transparent with what you do for money making activities. If you expect your team to prospect or new business development, you may have to show them what that looks like. And if it matters, that time is in your calendar too. Maybe you're calling different types of people, maybe your appointments look different, but you're still generating business. The fourth top trait is team leaders leverage personal work time. So what does that mean? Most all successful team owners have a weekly and in some cases daily chunk of time block exclusively to work on their personal projects which are related to the team. So personal projects include like strategic planning, data review, writing, training material, planning meetings. Some also block thinking time. And thinking time is a personal favorite of mine. It comes from Keith Cunningham, who wrote the Book the road less stupid. And during thinking time, there's two ways to do it. You can either start with like a formula formal question that kind of gets you thinking about, you know, what you want to accomplish. Or it could be an informal session like mind mapping. And if you've ever seen Walt Disney's mind map of what Disney Corporation looks like, it is fascinating. And it might just spur you to kind of think of your business and the different avenues you have and how to map all of them together. Another part of personal work time is where you work on the business. So each week you block out time to review your one year goals and then you work diligently on those quarterly projects to see them to completion. So ultimately you're achieving that one year goal. There's really no magic around it. It's just creating time to work on the business. The fifth trait is team leaders and their key people understand the team's financials. All successful team owners not only reviewed their monthly financials, but they understand what they are reviewing. They all had a slightly different process to it, but they arrived at the similar degree of awareness. And all of them have more than their own eyes on their financials. So here are four key numbers that I think every business owner should know. And these are numbers that can help you understand quickly again, the health of your business. The first one, gci, we all know gross commission income, right? But it's the total amount of commission paid into the brokerage. Now you may have also heard sort of terms interchangeably like top line or total team revenue. It's the same thing. Total team revenue is GCI and admin, admin fees added together. So if you hear those, they all mean the same thing. The second thing is cost of sales. So this is another term for what you're paying out in commission to agents and any brokerage fees, right? So this is the second number that you're looking at. Gross margin or gross profit again are used interchangeably. Margin just refers to a percentage, profit refers to a dollar amount. But this is the money you have to pay your expenses. So how this is calculated is you take your GCI minus your cost of sales and that's your gross profit number, net profit. This is the final number. And this is what's left over after expenses splits everything, right? This is the amount you pay taxes on. It's also your profit as an owner. And this is measured by taking your gross margin minus your expenses. So those are four numbers. If you run any kind of, you know, QuickBooks, if you have your P&L, you'll see these numbers, but it's just an easy way to know for sure to look at these four things. The next trait is team leaders teach nonstop, right? And this is something that Alan and Crystal also mentioned in their presentation. But while the content varied on what each team leader felt was most important to train on, it was concluded that team leaders are always teaching. So they're not just talking about sales skills, but they're talking about things like leadership, investments, life skills, motivation, and it's delivered either in a group setting or one on one. They may have also put modules together recordings so people could look back on it. But some common topics were team development as well as recruiting and image, which means more like branding, becoming a business athlete. So no matter who your favorite athlete is, right, you have to think of yourself as the CEO of your real estate business. And CEOs and top athletes are similar. So for example, Tom Brady was always in the media about his daily disciplines, right? How he focused on his body and his health and what he ate and also the game. If you haven't watched Tom vs Time on Facebook, it is so worth it. It was so interesting to see how he focused on his health, how he had every agenda from every meeting in the NFL he was ever in in binders and how he studied it. So great athletes study on and off the field, right? Look at what are their habits, what do they do to analyze, right? What do they do to prepare? So this study found something similar that these top leaders also focused on their health and energy. They're committed to personal development and growth and they're purposeful with their circle. But they also all had stories of when they were not. So when they didn't focus on these things, when they weren't exactly committed. But as you can see, even when they weren't perfect, they came back to what they knew would give them the best results. And lastly, number eight, top teams concentrate on having the very best value proposition and they always have recruiting on their mind. So team leaders know what value they bring to agents or they're at least confident in what they bring to the table. And they're always thinking about bringing new people into their world. They're confident in what they offer and they also fit people into the process and not designing the process around people. So when you think about your own value proposition, do you have it outlined? Do you have examples ready to go? Do you know what you offer and why that benefits other agents? Because if you can't articulate that well, no one is going to Want to join you or top talent is not going to want to join you. Top talent wants to know that they are in the best place, that their dreams fit inside of yours, and that also anything they want to achieve is going to be done with you on your team. So if you're having a hard time, you know, retaining people or recruiting people, this might be the avenue that you really need to focus on. People have to be resold on the benefits, right? Think about something that you're a part of. Maybe it's. I'll use peloton as an example because it's one I can think of. How many times are you emailed or, you know, you see on social media something about peloton trying to draw you back in or buy one if you haven't. Right. They're constantly reselling the benefit, right. I think one of their taglines is like, on average, peloton people are still working out a year later, Right? That's reselling the benefits. Who else can say that? No one. No other exercise company is saying that. So there are people out there right now looking for leadership. They're looking to help. They're looking for leaders to help them when the market isn't producing the opportunities that they thought they would have. And opportunities don't mean purchasing a whole bunch of leads. It means providing a structure for them, helping them sharpen their skills so that they can make the income and have the life that they want to. So what you can do is by your value proposition and constantly reaching out to people, you're giving them the gift of good leadership, which is your leadership. So one of the things I want to make sure that we get from this presentation is that you can emulate what these top teams are doing. Even if you currently do not have a team. You can do this for your clients, right? You can be a leader in your community. You can be a leader to just others around you in the office. And remember that while they were consistent, they were not perfect. So I hope that you've learned what you can do to emulate some of this, and I hope that 2020 year is your best year ever.

Awesome. Awesome. So, questions for sure. We have Stacy for another 31 minutes, and we will take every bit of all of that time. Stacy, did you get the cheat sheet of the questions I might ask you?

No.

You didn't? All right, well, I got some questions for you before I move on to my questions. What questions do we have for Stacy? So this is someone that went from, you know, 0 to 300 in a handful of years you didn't tell a story about. You took half a year off and still you're pregnant.

I took that out of my slide. I don't know.

Part of it. I love that. How many homes did you sell the half year that you worked as a solo agent?

Yeah, So I sold 41 homes that year and then had a baby and took the rest of the year off. And what's funny was I didn't think that I was that busy, but now looking back, I didn't have an assistant. It was just me. So that was, that was. It was pretty crazy. Probably why I needed the rest of the year off. Right. I had to sleep. I just had like, thank God this.

Baby'S coming because I need a break. Right. That's awesome. So questions that you guys have. I have got some questions. So tell us about a failure in the journey, because it probably wasn't a straight line up journey and a lesson you took away from it. So a clear failure point. And what did you learn when you moved past it?

Yeah, when I was building my team, at first it was all about me. Like, what can I gain? How these agents can help me? How can we sell more homes? And what happened was ultimately, these people that entrusted their business to me, like team agents, I ended up feeling like not. Not like I hated them, but I was constantly disappointed. Like, they don't know what I'm doing. They don't know all the risks I'm taking. You know, they don't even understand how much I'm pouring into them. And so what happened was I wasn't keeping the people on my team that I really wanted. Right. Because they're like, well, it's, it's like if you have like a parent that's mad at you all the time, I mean, you're just like, whatever. I might, I might as well give up. I don't even know what I'm doing wrong. And that's how my agents honestly felt. And so when it actually was, when I started working with you, Lars, and we just started talking through, like, you know, what are you trying to achieve? What do the agents know? Like, what are their standards? What do they have to do? And once I shifted it from me to we, the team just, it changed. They were happy. I was happy. I had a new goal of I wanted their lives to be better because they were on the team instead of, I want my life to be better because you're on my team. And it just shifted the whole culture of really working together instead of kind of working separately but saying we were a team. And it just, it just shifted a lot. We really started to grow as well because they, they felt valued, they felt heard instead of just talked at and commanded.

Yeah. And Dave Hook has a question about the. The study as it relates to predictable environment. I'm not sure if you know this, but you spent more time in it than I did. Did the study or did you learn anything around like, you know, structure to the day is important, but as it relates to, to the team, is it like Legion as a team in the morning together? Was that something that was mentioned?

So they didn't publish like that level of detail because they were trying to find what most of them sort of the parameters were. But I would have to imagine just from having so many teams have come through real estate B school, that the most successful consistently were teams that did it together. Because if you talk with agents and they're like, I can't get my team to prospect, or we're not hitting enough, you know, conversations, or we're not hitting enough closings, I guarantee you it's all around communication. So they're either not having enough conversations, they don't know that it should be a focus of their day, they're worried about it, they don't feel like they don't have scripts. All of that can be solved by doing it together, either in person or on zoom. Whatever it takes, mute yourself, but just be in it together. That's why you're a team. Right. That's why you're working together. So great question. No specifics on it, but that would be my answer from just seeing lots of teams come through here. Yeah.

And. And you're trying to do the impossible. Right. You're trying to take agents that, you know, couldn't on their own, they probably couldn't sell 30, 40, 50 homes a year. And the only thing you have is, is that running partner. You know, like when I. There's no way when I was training for that silly marathon I did, there's zero chance I would have gotten up and done done intervals at like 5:30 in the morning when it was raining and cold. If John the. My running partner wasn't going to meet me in my neighborhood to do it, and he was faster than me. Right. So that's another part of it too. Doing it. Like you'll have agents that are setting appointments, and maybe you're not setting appointments that. That day, or a newer agent, they can see like, okay, that guy's a little faster than me, or that that girl's a little bit better on the phone. You know, she's two years on the team and you know, she's sending, you know, five, six appointments a week, you know, consistently, like that's what it's going to take. You know, it's, it's just like anything that's, that's worth getting good at, it takes time.

Yeah. And even with, you know, when you think about that, that just proves that, you know, as a team leader, you're not perfect either. So you committing to these time blocks together also helps you be consistent at it. So when we first started doing call times together, at first we had, we called it hug your customer. So we did this, it was every quarter. And we do it from like 4:30 to 6:30 at night. And we bring in pizza and pop and some beer. And we would call our past clients in our sphere and just connect with them, ask them for referrals. And that started out great, but it wasn't consistent enough to get the results that we want. So then we started putting together a call time every morning. We didn't do a big one from 8:30 to 9. They had to be in the office in the morning because we were in an office. So they came in in the morning and they got their, you know, names ready to call, they got their scripts ready, we played music. And then quick five minutes before call time, we came together in sort of this big room. We had a whiteboard and we said, okay, how many, how many conversations are you committed to today? And each person would say, including me now. I was calling all the past clients for the team, all the kind of team sphere, and thanking them for their business while asking for referrals, they were calling for new business. Right. Just different kind of call types, but we were all doing it together. Then during the call time, which was one hour, which is all we did, but everybody was committed to it. So no, no texting during that time. No, you know, making appointments. I'd kind of walk around, make sure everybody is doing good, see if they have any questions. You know, we have this like stuffed fish we'd like throw at each other when you're on the phone, you know, just make it fun. And then randomly we would tape $100 bill on the whiteboard and just come up with like, you know, who won it that day. It wasn't every day. It was very random. They didn't know it was up there until we were done. Then when we were done with call time, we wrote on the whiteboard what our results were and Then we asked if someone was behind, like, is there anything I can do to help you get back on track? Do you need something from me? You know, what can I do to help? Nope. We're all good. Okay. Okay. Great. Boom. Onto our day. Now, I think a lot of teams have, you know, they put together more new business development time than that, but it was a good starting point for us and we just were consistent with it for, I mean, until I sold the team.

Awesome. And I'm going to get Dave. Hook is talking at 2pm I'm going to get him to tell briefly that story of how he took his agents that did not have any muscle around new business development. And it was a. It was a process. So, Dave, I'll have you start out your session with that real quick. Stacy. So there's two questions, Joe and Xavier, around the schedule. So honoring your schedule when it's. It's your, you know, you need to time block, but you're also a free spirit. And then how do you stick in those time blocks when you're distracted by texts and everything else that you could be distracted by?

Yeah. So I am still a recovering free spirit and time blocker. So I am not perfect. I am like, so not perfect. I'm constantly like time blocking my calendar. So two things that help me. All notifications are off of my phone. So, like my phone right now, it's always on silent and it's. There's no like, like, see how my home. Oh, you can't because I have a virtual background. Sorry. Anyway, my home screen has no text. There's no vibrating, nothing. Because for me, if I cannot focus during a project or, or a time block or something I'm trying to do and something's binging at me and buzzing. I. I'm like so off track so fast and it's almost like I'm looking for excuses to get off track because I'm probably working on something I really, you know, don't want to. So that's how I do it. I shut everything off for that time. I also use. Oh, here it is. Well, maybe you won't be able to see it, but I have this little timer from like Amazon and It's like a 15 minute. You can barely see it, but it has like little timers. So I, I challenge myself all the time to do. I just do it in 15 minute blocks. So I'm like, okay, I have 15 minutes to write a strategic plan. Seems crazy. It is so weird what you can get done when you just like give yourself A small amount of time. And then of course, if I need longer, I just add that to my timer. Right. Take a breath, add it to my timer and it fits in within my 60 minute time block. But for some reason I can handle this little timer. So I don't know if that helps, but that's just how I do it. I shut off all notifications, I shut my email off my calendar, off everything and just work on my project. And then I use this little timer.

Yeah. And I would say a real easy book, Eat that frog has like 2020 tactics to help you with procrastination. So I think it's a Brian Tracy book. It's a. It's like one of the top 10 books, I would say for, for stuff like this. Everyone has frogs every day that you have to eat if you want to be successful in business. So that's a really good one. So Sandy has a question. Stacey around, like, probably knowing that a team is, is the way to more income, more leverage, more impact, but being afraid that nobody can look after her clients the way that she did. How do you help someone like that?

Yeah, so I felt the same way because my business also was like 100% referral, right? It was before my team, it was so highly referral business that I thought, man, how would it even be possible someone to, you know, be passed off to someone else? So how I got over that was Lars told me I'm just not that important. Right. Like, you just have to believe that people, what people really want is they want to know that they're working with an expert, someone that can get them the job done, communicate well and the process is being handled great. Right? That's what they want. So how I started doing that was I never wanted them to feel passed off. Right. No one likes that. You know, it feels like the substitute teacher that comes in, right. Everyone's like, oh great, they know nothing. Well, so what you do is when you're presenting to your clients, you bring this person in. So if you're doing a zoom presentation or an in person, you talk about it. Hey, this is my business partner, Jessica. And Jessica looks at hundreds of homes every single week. So we're actually going to work together. Jessica is going to show you all the houses that you want. I'm actually going to be a little bit on the backside of the process and help with the negotiation. But Jessica is going to take lead. And here's the thing, I give her to all of my VIP clients. She is that good. And so I want you to get to know her. She's going to communicate with you in the process. I'll also be in touch with you. I'm going to be on top of it, make sure things are going well with Jessica. But I'm really concentrating a little bit more on the marketing side. So Jessica's going to be front and center with you at all times. And then of course, we have our team, you know, like an admin to help you with everything else, to make sure all the T's are crossed and I's are dotted. So when you do that and explain them as a business partner, they see tons of homes, they know what they're doing. I'm not passing you off. I'm still going to be part of the process, but it's really on the backside. I think clients understand better. And then you do check in with them so you can send them bomb bombs throughout the process. Like, hey, oh, my gosh, I heard you guys saw a couple houses that you liked. Jessica told me all about it. She's been keeping me up to date. You know, I'm excited for you guys. Oh, great. You went under contract, right? Like, oh, great. You guys got the inspection worked out and you can just do it via bombbomb. And then they don't feel like you just left. Right. And you're doing nothing. The hardest part is to pass them off. When you've been showing them houses, you haven't introduced Jessica and it's like Saturday morning, and you just don't feel like showing homes. Right. So that's the handoff. And then you have to make sure you have to be confident with Jessica. You have to know and train her and help her and make sure she's a good representation of what you do and how you provide it. When you feel comfortable with that, you introduce them correctly, it goes well.

Awesome. Awesome. All right, so I'm going to give you a quote, and then I want you to tell me what it means to you. So success in business is 80% psychology. What does that mean to you?

That means to me that.

Or mindset. Mindset or psychology.

Yeah, that's what I was just going to say. That it's like in your head, right? So if you talk to yourself positively, you're looking look at people like they are coming from good intentions and not negative intent. So if you have. If you're working with a negative person, right. But you read every text like it's coming to you negative, it's going to make it worse for you. So if you can keep your mindset in the right. You have the right expectations, you've. You've communicated those, and you are keeping yourself and your clients in the game. That's most of it. It isn't skill, it is mindset. It's how you approach things. It's how you show up. It's. It's not necessarily who sold the most homes and who's the best.

Awesome. What about the best advice you've ever received about business?

The best advice I've ever received. Ah, there's so many. I would say, know your numbers. It was not my strong suit. It was really hard for me to kind of understand P. Ls and in fact, I'll give you an example. So once, this was actually when I was doing some coaching and I had a client that was. I mean, he knew his numbers. He could look at kind of like Lars. Like, he can look at a spreadsheet of numbers and like, immediately, like, put them in order from a spreadsheet. I, like, need them in order and I need them color coded. I need it to look pretty and I need headings. But that's not how this, like, basically, like, they downloaded all their expenses into a, like, spreadsheet and they're like, okay, what's my profit? I'm like, oh, my gosh. And I'm like, read my notes. I'm like, okay, net profit is gross margin minus cost of sale. I'm like, I mean, I'm like, sweating. And it was in that moment that I realized it's okay to not like, be able to just look at a spreadsheet and know everything. But I knew the four numbers that I had to know to help others, but also look at my own business and when I just kind of dissected it into just four numbers and there's lots of numbers you should know, but those four, it made me feel like, like I could be a CEO of my own business or I could show up like a business athlete instead of, oh, I just don't understand these. I'm just going to let my bookkeeper handle it. You know, you don't know if they're not handling it right if. If you don't understand the numbers. So I think that was a big aha to me. And if I didn't know my numbers, I wouldn't have been able also to sell the team. So I think that was a big. I think that was one of the best things that actually you told me.

Awesome, awesome, awesome. How about in the heavy growth years of the team, those, like four or five years where you were scaling and getting out of parts of it and really building the systems. What is like a daily habit? Like something that you had to do every day because you were everything. Like when you're doing all those deals, you have all, you know, team members that are doing their thing, you're growing and, you know, struggling and failing forward and all that. What was a daily thing that something you did every day that attributed to your success?

Yeah, two things for sure. Every morning I met with the operations team and then the sales team. So at one point the operations team was me, right? And at one point the sales team was like two of us, but we kind of met every morning just to get a pulse of the day. Right. Secondly, when the team was growing, one thing that we did was record all the calls. And so I would go in and listen to all the recordings that were over like a minute and a half just to see how the call was handled. Not. Not in terms of what are they doing wrong, but just what's the good and what can we improve on? And then when we had our team meetings every single week, we would play those even ones I did bad. I would play them like, can you hear, guys, how I'm not prepared? How I kind of like, have no idea what's happening? So we did that. And then one other thing. This was not daily, but this made such a difference for our business. And I started this as a single agent, let it go for a while. And then when we had the team rolling, well, we continued to do, and that was call the clients every. We did Tuesday afternoons. So Tuesday afternoons from like noon to 4, all we did was call clients that were active, under contract, or maybe like. Like kind of starting to come into the market, right? Like, they raised their hand and said they were looking for something. And I just had standing block in my calendar, and in my calendar it would say, like, 10 things I could talk about, like how many showings were happening, what's happening in a price range that they're in. What's. How many open houses had we had, if it was a listing, you know, what we've done for them this past week to find a home for them. And so what happened was my phone stopped ringing, like every day with the same questions because they hadn't heard from me, right? They knew they were going to hear from me every Tuesday. If they had a question in between, they could for sure call or email. But it kind of prevented all of those, like, got a minutes. Also it prevented people from like, Friday afternoon deciding that they Want to look at houses this weekend and I have different plans, maybe with other clients opens or maybe my family. All that was prevented because I wasn't contacting them at the end of the week. I'm contacting them upfront in the beginning of the week to get my own schedule set. So that was a big one too.

Awesome. How about what's one book, you know, given the current real estate environment, the economic environment, you know, NAR saying 30 plus percent of agents won't exist in the next 12 to 24 months. What is one book you would recommend right now to someone that wants to grow despite the market that we're in?

The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes. I think it is like my favorite book. It has so many examples in there. It's just, it's so great. And Chet Holmes worked with Charlie Munger, who worked with Buffett, Warren Buffett. And so this guy was running so many companies, like 21 at one time or something. So the book is just fantastic. It is a must read. And it's one you have to get. Like, I am an audible per. Well, I'm actually, I get audible and I buy the book. So it's like uber expensive. But get the book because it's. It's like a good one. It's worth it. There's some charts in there that you need. Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes.

So for the agents out there and team leaders that are struggling, what words of encouragement would you give them?

I would just say that it's not as bad as you think. A lot of times we create these stories that, you know, we're never going to be able to get out of it. I don't have enough clients. My clients aren't doing this. No one's responding to my marketing. I already connect with a million people a day and no one's saying, yes, it's not as bad as you think. Show up, keep doing the work, do the right things consistently. Let go of all the rest. There's only a few you need to do and you will get to where you want to go. There's been plenty of times where I thought, it will never work. You know, why does everyone else have success? I don't, oh my gosh, I must be a failure. I'm only selling whatever amount of homes and it's just not true. And it's just going to cause you more heartache than you need. Just, you know, read positive things, look at positive things, speak positively, be around positive people, believe in yourself, and you will totally have everything that you want?

Awesome. Is there a favorite success quote that you have and how do you apply it to everyday life?

I'm looking on my board right in front of me. Well, okay, one quote that I do love. So I love Marie Forleo, and one of her quotes is, everything is figureoutable. And if you know me, I'm like a master Googler. Like, I Google everything because it. Everything's out there, right? Nothing's really new. Everything's out there. So you can figure it out. You know, you may have to invest in yourself in, you know, coaches. You may have to invest in yourself in books and things like that. Everything is figureoutable. Somebody's already done it. There's somebody you can follow or you can figure it out for yourself. But, you know, these. These dreams, these things were placed on your heart for a reason. So go out and, you know, figure out how to do it and just get it done and. And then don't look back.

Awesome. Outside of audible, is there an app or some kind of resource that you're using right now that we should all be using? And outside of turning. That could be it. Turning the notifications off on your phone? Yeah, that's the resource.

Yeah. You know what? That is a good one. I turn all the notifications off on my phone. I also. This is my first. Oh, look at that. Oh, that's. That's the school. Sorry. I do have my school one up. This is my front screen. It's blank. See how there's no apps? That also is really important for me because all I need is here's my timer, here's my calculator, here's my camera and phone. No text. Drives my husband crazy. He's like, I texted you earlier today. I'm like, it's fine. I mean, if something's on fire, you'll call. But having that. Just getting rid of the noise. Right? So all my apps are also in a folder, so if I need to use them, I type it in and then that's how I find the app instead of, like, having to scroll through pages. So. Yeah, that's a good one. Well, let me see. I also, on my second screen are only my important ones. Oh. I would say I have a meditation app on my phone that also. It's called Brain Wave and it has, like, different meditations for, like, focus time and meditations, even just meaning like the right music with binaural beats. And I like that. And then I would say my next one is my fitness pal. I like to track my food. I got Some goals, you know, so.

That would be nice, and it is understated, but this thing can ruin. Can ruin your chances of ever being successful. So that. That's Stacy's point. There's very little in here that is gonna move you closer to the goals you've set for yourself if. If anything, like, maybe literally nothing, you know, but we can. We are, like, on it for, like, hours per day. Last question. If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently?

What would I do differently? You know, I think I would believe in my ability more. I think I doubted myself a lot, which caused me to, you know, like I said, doubt my team or doubt my abilities to do it. And I probably could have done more or impacted more people if I would have just believed in myself sooner and also not assume everybody else should have this pedestal that they shouldn't have. Right. Like, one time, Lars and I were at a. We were at this conference, and this girl that was pretty popular at the time, not everybody knew her, but I did. And I went up to the front to go, like, say hi and meet her, and she, like, snubbed me. It was crazy. She was like, hi. I'm like, oh, my gosh. And so I came back, and I was like, lars, oh, my gosh. She, like, snubbed me. And he was like. He's like, hey, look, you know, what has she done? Has she created a great business? Has she done, you know, and he kind of named some things that. That I've done that. That, you know, were neat. And he's like, you cannot put these people on a pedestal that they don't deserve. And that was. That was what I was doing. I just assumed everybody else was so much farther and so much better. Just like, I'm not smart enough, and I'm not, you know, whatever. So I wish I would have just let go of any shame, any blame, and just believed in myself sooner. Because there are people that are waiting for you to step up. They're waiting for you to start your team. They're waiting for you to reach out, and you can't do that if you're coming from a place of lack.

I hope you enjoyed that episode. Stacy is one of the coolest people I know and one of the smartest people that I know. And if you're at the point in your journey where you do want to figure out how you can get on the track to growth without losing your life, increasing your net worth, you know, something to show for all the effort you're putting into your real estate business. Jump on a business growth assessment. It's Rebs Growth Assessment dot Com. That's REBS Growth Assessment dot com. And we'll see you over there.