Establishing Efficient Business Systems

I'm Leigh Thomas Brown. This is Crazy Shit in Real Estate. Today we're going to dig into the most boring part of real estate, and that would be systems. But if you're an agent, you need this conversation. And frankly, if you're a member of the public, you need this conversation too, because this might be a great way to differentiate amongst great options as you're thinking of buying or selling. So Jennifer Stats is with us today to share with us some insights. Enjoy the conversation, and I'll see you On the other side. Well, good morning.

How are you?

Your AI got into the room first.

That's so funny. You can kick that out.

Yeah, let me do that just because it won't— I want to show up on the screen, right?

It follows me everywhere.

Just put it in the waiting room. Although I haven't heard of Fireflies. I've had the one I see mostly is Otter. Yeah, but we had to start a new policy in real estate association world to make sure the AIs are out of the room because they can be recording sensitive conversations.

Yeah, we actually had to make the same policy in a couple of my masterminds because people were sending their AI and not showing up to the mastermind.

Oh, oh, so it wasn't coming with them, it was coming instead of?

Yeah.

Bad. That's bad manners.

So we had to start going through and being like, okay, uh, you know, Betty Sue isn't here, kick her otter out. This person like kick her fireflies out. We're like, this is ridiculous.

I had no idea that people would be that lazy. I know they think it's efficient, but that's lazy, man. How are you gonna be in a mastermind if you're not participating?

That's exactly what was happening. We were like, it was something that we had never even thought of before. And then all of a sudden we were like, wait a second, you need to like contribute, otherwise we don't want you. We don't want you here.

That's cropped up just here. And like in the last 12 months is when you've seen Everybody with a note-taking AI just suddenly showing up. And I think we all got so accustomed to Zoom, we, we forgot that laziness was going to go next level beyond turning your camera off. Now it's camera off and not hearing you.

You just have like your robot in there. It's so funny.

So welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on to chat with me this morning to be on the podcast.

Thanks for having me.

All right, so you get to start by telling the audience a little bit about Jennifer, where you're located, how long you've been in and around real estate. Give them a little bit of background.

Okay. Oh, we're recording right now. I didn't even realize.

We're very relaxed.

Very good. Okay.

Stiff interview. This is going to be so relaxed.

Awesome. Okay, so my name is Jennifer Stats. I am currently the owner and founder of a company called Stats Solutions, which runs the operations of real estate brokerages and teams nationwide. I actually started as a real estate assistant about 14 years ago. I got my license in San Diego when I was 20, and I have been in the real estate space ever since. So that is my entire life right now. Um, I am no longer in production, and I live in Colorado Springs, and we love it.

So let's do the math on that 14 years. That means working as somebody's assistant and got your license in the heart of short sale territory. So no wonder you were very, very necessary in chasing around the absolutely insane requirements of banks back then, How in the world did you adapt to that as a 20-year-old? I'm just going to make the assumption that you did not own real estate yourself at that time and did not have experience dealing with transactions. You get a license, which we all know in real estate that is to satisfy the state. It is not how you practice it. It just keeps you in, in the legalities of practice. So you get tossed in, in the middle of heart-wrenching conversations because it was heart-wrenching during the recession to do real estate because you're talking to real have families who have no jobs, they have to sell, they're dead broke, the house is underwater, and here you are, probably a fairly optimistic, cheerful 20-year-old getting tossed in the middle of that. Do you remember the emotions and how you felt at that time and what kind of leadership you had in that brokerage or that team? Yeah.

So, you know, and I can't even remember what made me get into real estate, but I was crazy enough to literally start in real estate as an unpaid intern while I got my license. Like, that's how motivated I was to get into it. I was like serving at night.

That's the favorite person I can hear is the person who's in love with this crazy space.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, and I, I got into it in San Diego, and I got hired on to, um, an agent that was doing a lot of short sales, and she needed help, so she was really willing to kind of guide me and teach me. And then from there, I just started doing everything. Like, I was running putting on lockboxes. I was going all the way from San Diego all the way up to Temecula, which is like an hour's drive. And I was—

just point out, that's the best wine in California. Napa ain't nothing on Temecula. I just have to— yeah, yeah.

And I was— she was just kind of teaching me to do a lot of different stuff. I was helping with short sales, calling banks, doing paperwork. Um, I was helping with marketing. I was helping with all the different things. So I really got thrown in in kind of a crazy market. And then to touch on the, you know, emotions of it all, it was a lot. And it taught me a lot being so young that I think a lot of us go into real estate and be like, I'm going to go and like show these houses. It's like pretty things. And also, and I didn't own real estate. My friends didn't own real estate. You know, we were all renting. And I luckily found a really great mentor in, you know, she taught me a lot about just the relationships you're building, not only with your clients, but she— the biggest takeaway I got from her was the relationship that you should have with other realtors, because she was really good at that. She would build really strong relationships with the other agents. So when you called and you told the other agent on the other side who you were working for, instant respect. And that was my biggest takeaway from working with her was just so many agents don't build that rapport for to be in this business long term.

So it is wild to notice it because you don't know at the beginning how valuable your peers are going to be. And then a few years in, you start to realize that in every market, the same REALTORS® are doing business with the same REALTORS® because as your business grows, you organically just do more together. And then you have that moment in your career where you realize you're going to deal with the other agent so many more times than you're ever going to deal with any individual buyer or seller because people just don't do real estate that frequently. But if your peers are very active in the business, you're going to deal with them a lot. Yeah. And what you're saying here is such a wonderful reminder when agents feel so combative that dialing it back is powerful for the long-term relationship. And I love that you were taught that out of the gate. I don't know that enough agents learn it quickly. They have to learn it the hard way. And I mean, I learned it the hard way, even though my dad has an immaculate reputation, always had. I'm a little more prickly than my dad, and I ran afoul of another agent, and I sent her an apology after the fact. But even to this day, I see her name and I feel like dirt because I wasn't super great at the beginning. And that's just, you know, I'm not Catholic, but I can carry some Catholic guilt. And I wish I'd thought about that. My dad didn't think about it because he just was like your team leader. He was just always kind and thoughtful and he always valued the relationships. I had to learn the hard way and I think it's, it's probably why it sits on me today.

Yeah, I teach a lot of our agents that we hire that now because I'm like, you need to build a rapport. Don't just like text them and don't try to pick up the phone and call like If you want to be in this business for the next 50 years, you're probably going to be on the other side of this deal with this person again. And they're going to have—

Can you say that again? To answer the phone and not just go to text. Say that again, Jennifer.

Yeah. Pick up the phone like it is another human being. And if you're on the other end, they might have all these offers in front of them. And they're going to go, I know this agent. I know I've gotten a deal specifically because of my relationship or the way that I treated the listing agent. And they were like, you got the deal because of you picking up the phone, talking to me, writing the offer the way that made sense for my seller. And everyone else just sent a text message or just didn't even call me, period. I'm like, It's crazy.

Well, and for anybody listening or watching that thinks that maybe cut somebody else out, I want you to understand that when you're working as a fiduciary for one side of the transaction, you are, of course, as the fiduciary, putting your client's needs first, going to look for the best possible outcome. And the best possible outcome can often reveal itself through something as simple sounding as communication.

Mm-hmm.

And I think we just overlook that sometimes because as agents, we get so focused on dollars and the price on the offer may not be the key for the client. It may be the timeframe, it may be the deposits or the kitchen table or something. And how are you going to know that if you're not being curious and just asking questions that aren't going to violate fair housing or leave anybody out, but more create that opportunity for the buyer to get what they want and the seller to get what they want? It's not rocket science, but we know that it's seldom seen in the business that somebody goes to that level of care and concern. Yeah, it's crazy. The person— you've been working in the back end, so you get to see agents from a different standpoint. And our people are not known for being super organized or detail-oriented simply because they are more emotionally relationship-focused. And for that, I called them If you were going to give a piece of advice to agents from the person who runs the backend, what would you tell them to fix in their businesses first?

I would probably say fix some of the systems, and that sounds really boring, but systems are to me very, very simple. Like, what do you want to happen with your clients? Like, if you take it from that standpoint, what type of customer service do you want to provide? Because that's really important to a lot of agents, right? And they don't see it as a system, but it is a system. Like, as you get busier, your business becomes a system. So what are you doing to provide great customer service? So, you know, how are you reviewing offers with them? Because I think a lot of times us as agents, we get so busy that all of a sudden the things that we thought were really important in our business kind of go amok. So if you really kind of sit down, especially, you know, we're going into a kind of slow season right now. Everyone's kind of getting a little bit slower. I just, I'm telling everyone like, look back at what you want to happen in a transaction and try to like systematize a little bit, create a little bit of a checklist so you're actually doing it all. Because like how many agents that are listening right now got to the end of a transaction and they have all these things that they want to happen, like send out a gift or send out a note card or ask for a review, and they don't, they don't do it because they don't have some sort of system in place. It's just kind of on the fly.

So I pick up two really good things that you said there. The first one is so elegantly simple but overlooked, and that's that the system itself is about what you want to provide at the end. And I think if more agents thought about it in that reverse engineering mode, they might be more likely to put a system in place because we think about it as systems. Okay, I got to have a system for listings and for buyers. And then they start thinking about the system itself, get overwhelmed, freak out, and just go about their business. Whereas if it's that simplistic solution, let's just take your— I want to provide a closing gift. That's what you want to provide to your— I wrote down the system equals what do you want to provide to your clients? You want to provide a closing gift. Let's reverse engineer what has to be in place for that to happen. Yeah. And friends, that is a system. And so when Jennifer talks about systems, the reason most agents never put one into place is you're thinking about the whole picture of your real business. But your real estate business is made up of a billion tiny little intricate, thoughtful systems. And it could be as simple as having a great closing gift ready to go. But that's not just simple. It's very complex because you might be the only agent providing one. So then you're setting yourself apart as far as your brand goes and your reputation goes. And that frankly goes back to what you were saying at the beginning, Jennifer, about how your first leader had a great reputation in the marketplace. Which I would assume comes from her consistency in behaviors. Inconsistencies can be an outcome of the systems we have in place. Yeah. And of course, mentioning that the markets are stabilizing, I guess, is probably the best way to put it, because depending on where my viewers are located, they may be experiencing a hotter or cooler market. It's just all over the place right now. Yeah. But in general, we're seeing a stabilization versus the COVID years. Which means it's not an opportunity to take a nap, although naps are good, but it is a great opportunity to tighten up where your business got a little bit haywire. Yep. During the COVID years. And you brought up multiple offers, which I think is a wonderful example because when you're receiving 50 offers on a property, it can be overwhelming to the agent, overwhelming to the client receiving them. So what best practices have you observed as we cool down and now multiple offers becomes 3 and 4 offers of 50. What would you suggest is a good way to be prepared should the markets go back into overheated mode so that a better level of service can be provided?

Yeah, I mean, if we're talking about multiple offers, what, what we kind of do with a lot of our clients that they've seen really great success, we just have a very simple Excel spreadsheet. I know there's a lot of different systems that you can pay for and whatever, but we always just make a very simple Excel spreadsheet of the terms of an offer that are really important in that market because they're different in every state. And then we just make really clean folders of every single offer package. That way, you know, our clients can go and we can share the entire Google folder with the Excel spreadsheet, all the offers in one clean format. Because we have some— you have some clients that want to go through every single document, and then you have some that are just like, just tell me the, like, higher-level stuff. And then we have them organize it on there. Whether you have a team and you have like an assistant going in there and helping you organize it, or whether you're just doing it yourself, that's one way that if you're back in that situation, we've seen really good luck and or good results with clients liking that method because they can visually see everything. And, and just kind of like you were mentioning before, it's not always about the money. Sometimes it is, but sometimes a spreadsheet like that can really like help your seller see that, yes, this offer is X amount, maybe the highest, but you're actually not netting the most. So you can kind of visually put that on paper for them too.

Is there a class that you took on the— Yes. —that's been good for you? I want to hear all about it. Yes.

Okay, so I am in the progress of taking your How to Dominate During a Recession class, and Oh my gosh, it's just absolutely the best. It's really helpful to understand and to know what it was like during the other recession and how to, to proceed. But also at the same time, in the back of your mind, remembering that every recession is not the same. So you have to be prepared, but you have to be flexible. So understanding, educating during this downtime in our market, educate, educate, educate, getting on top of that. And being prepared. So, you know, take as many classes as you can, get involved with your, with your association. Just really, you know, diving in has been— I'm so excited to get it completed. But yeah, you— it's a great class.

Highly, highly glad that you're finding it helpful. And I love what you said, too, that every recession is different because whether the media wants to call it one or not, we know the economy is not feeling perfect right now. And when things don't hit, that's when we do more education for ourselves so we can give that education to our clients. And so thank you for those kind words. I can't wait to get the full review when you finish it. And by the way, friends, if you follow the link here, we might have a discount code to get you involved in that class as well. So you can join Mackenzie and get some education in your yoga pants in the evenings while you see clients during the day. So thank you for that kind recommendation. I'm so glad you're enjoying the fast. Yeah, you're welcome. Well, what we know about Google is that their owned— their parent company is Alphabet. They are very well known for using the data that we put into Google Forms, Google Docs, Google Drive, skimming it, selling it, doing whatever they want with it. And in real estate, there is a, a huge push toward better data privacy and security. So my question is, do you guys have any security overlay on the Google folders and drives as you share offer documents with sellers, or is that not something that you've gone after yet?

It's not something that we've approached. I mean, because that just kind of— I feel like there's almost like a bigger question there, right? Like, how many different providers are agents using that they're putting their clients' data in? And it kind of poses an even larger question: are agents considering all the different platforms, right? Like, we've got hundreds of CRMs, we've got broker compliance all over the place. I mean, 90% of agents use Gmail. So to answer your question, no, we are not looking at stuff like that yet. Um, it's something that certain brokerages kind of have some questions around. Like, we internally use LastPass, we use Google, um, and there's obviously been some data breaches with LastPass and stuff like that, but we haven't looked at it as a team just because it is a bigger question, right? Like, are we looking at all of the different CRMs and what exactly are they releasing? Because a lot of them are bought by brokerages and larger companies too.

I mean, it is a— it's an interesting thing. And I guess you are thinking about it when you've got LastPass for your passwords. You guys are doing some beginning things, but when your password provider LastPass gets hacked, which happened It just throws you into this big question mark. And of course, one of the spaces that the National Association of Realtors has been looking at is what do brokers need to be providing when it comes to data security and privacy? Because we do have so many things that we share with our sellers, with our buyers, with each other. And of course, the wire fraud situation that has just taken hold in so many angles where deposits go missing and then Title companies in California get hacked and locks down escrow. You've got just so many different bad actors out there in the internet world checking on things. I guess we're all going to have to look for that second layer of security. And I love your point too, where no matter what CRM you're using, you know, if you're a regular person at the Client Relationship Manager where we keep all of our people in a database, I think we're all going to have to check into that. And because as I ask you the question, I'm sitting there thinking, Well, I use KVCore. I don't know how much security KVCore has, so I got to go check that. Yeah. And we share our client documents through a very secure server called ShareFile, which we pay through the nose for, but we found it better than Dropbox because Dropbox had some holes in it. But now I'm reminded I got to go look at ShareFile again because everything is always always vulnerable and always changing. And yeah, in fact, that's one of the things that realtors do that the public doesn't see. We're also looking at how we safeguard our clients' data privacy and security while we're getting attacked by the media for not doing anything. We do things all the time that we never talk about because it's a moving target. So anyway, yeah, some, some great angles for our viewers and listeners to think about. Now, that you've grown your business and you're now helping lots of people with a, a more efficient streamlining of their businesses. Do you find that you are able to bring the most benefit to somebody who is very highly productive, tops in their market, they're, they're burning the candle at both ends 7 days a week, or are you most helpful to the agent who's doing one transaction a month and is trying to scale up and grow their business a little bit? Who, who benefits the most from you?

That's a hard question.

We have a really— you can't say both. You have to pick one.

I have to pick one. It's a rule. Okay. I, I would say I probably add, we add the most value to a client who is burning the candle at both ends. They are doing it all. They're highly productive. Because our goal, if we're coming on, is to get them back more time, right? Like, we don't want to take some off their plate because they're doing all this stuff. Like, we have one client that's been with us for 6 years. He was about to have a heart attack when he hired us. Like, it was just— he was just going, going, going. He's doing all the things himself. And we came on, he just called me. He's like, Jennifer, I need help. And I'm like, what type of help do you need? He's like, everything, everything. And I went into his business and it was because there was a lot of duplicate stuff. There was like 17 different spreadsheets and like people he was having a hard time delegating. So like he would ask, he would delegate things out, he thought, but he would be asking 3 separate people to do the same thing. So he was wondering why things weren't getting done, but everyone's getting frustrated. And I'm like, okay, but give it to the person that's supposed to do it. You ask one time, or you create a system that you don't even need to ask anybody to do it, and then it's just done. And now, uh, you know, 6 years later, he doesn't even— didn't even know what was under contract a few weeks ago. Like, he's like, I— you've systematized everything so well that I don't even know what's under contract because things are just happening. So I think that's— I think we add a lot of value there. And selfishly, I really like seeing that progress because there's a lot of stuff to work with. So I think that's the most fun for me personally.

Well, you point out the number one reason agents go sideways in their real estate business. They work so hard to build up a book of business, to have people calling them, and then they work so hard to serve them that they work 7 days a week and they get so completely exhausted bringing on health issues because they are internalizing all the stress, trying to hand it off, afraid to hand it off because they worked so hard to build up all that client trust and they're scared that some other human is going to mess up that trust. So they fall into the trap he did of micromanaging and probably still doing it himself on the side because he didn't really trust their output because he looked at himself as an expert because he doesn't want to let down the people he serves. It is the wildest thing that happens in this business when an agent gets successful. And we don't talk about it very much because when we look at successful agents, their peers look at them with a mix of jealousy and irritation, and the public looks at them and says, well, maybe you just make too much money. And they don't understand that this agent has invested tears and money and time trying to build something that is helpful to the public. And bringing on somebody to lift a little bit of that load actually makes them better with their clients. Because if he's slightly less stressed out, I bet he listens better to his buyers and sellers now because he knows that you're handling a lot of that detail work, which is not his highest and best use of time. Yep, absolutely.

And I think his agents too, because, um, for that, that, that agent specifically ran a team. Broker-owner and a team lead and was doing so much that even his team felt like they couldn't get the support they needed because there were— he— you could tell how stressed out he was with everything else that was going on. So that's the most fun for me. A lot of his agents are some of my good friends now. And, um, so yeah, I think that's where we add the most value.

So Jennifer, as you look into 2024, what is your big prediction for real estate teams, offices, brokerages, and your perspective, of course, going to be different because you're working on the transaction side. So I'm very curious to know what you think about real estate in the next year.

I think what I'm seeing right now is I'm seeing a lot of people get scared. That, that's really the feedback I'm getting, whether it's from clients or if I'm doing consultations with potential new clients. Everyone's kind of like, feels like everyone's tense, right? I think my prediction is that the market's still going to go. We're still going to be selling houses. People are still going to be busy. They just need to lean in and do the activities. Where I'm seeing the slow— I'm seeing people get slow is because I can see in their CRM, I can see they're not doing the work. They're getting— they got lazy. And I'm like, well, yeah, you're getting slow because I can see what your agents are not doing.

That's fascinating because you're literally saying out loud what I keep saying to agents and brokers is that you, you have to keep doing daily activities because houses will be bought and sold. But my goodness, you've got a little accountability perk to you that they won't have in their own mastermind groups because they are going to talk to their peers and they think they're busy because they this scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. And that is not productivity because you can look at their CRM. I mean, yeah, and to hire you right there is to have a little— like they're saying, I don't know what you think you're doing, but I didn't see any calls made. And that might just light a fire under somebody to go be that resource because we know that when the markets do feel tense and that's a great way to describe it, our buyers and sellers feel tense too because they don't know what to do. And their best resource is their local REALTOR®, not the Bloomberg headlines or the Wall Street Journal or any of that national press. The best resource is that local REALTOR®. So keep on poking at them, Jennifer, because that might be the best thing you could do for them in 2024 and beyond. So somebody wants to talk to you more about this. Frankly, this whole accountability piece is probably why they're going to call you. What is the best way for them to reach out? Is it to go to your website? Call you, email you, social media? Where do you hang out the most?

Yeah, I mean, you can always go to our website, statsolutions.com. If you hit the Contact Us button, it goes directly to my calendar personally. Or the easiest place to get a hold of me is just my Instagram is Jennifer the Realtor.

All right, guys, all of that contact information is in the show notes for this episode. So I suggest you go follow Jennifer, reach out to her if you think she can provide some benefit to you. But just take away from this that we all need to reverse engineer and realize what we want to provide to our clients and get this a little bit more business savvy as we go into a changing market because we need good REALTORS® to get their act as tightly oiled and running well as possible to serve the public. Jennifer, thank you so much for coming on the show and giving us some really good insights.

Thanks for having me.

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