004 Jenny Wemert on What It Takes To Go Independent

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Welcome to Team os, your guide to.

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Here's your host, Ethan Butte.

For insights into starting, growing and optimizing a real estate team, we're talking with Jenny Wiemer. A few fun facts before we get started. With her husband and their triplets, she moved from Houston to Orlando about 20 years ago without knowing anyone. She built the foundation of a real estate business through a farming strategy in her own neighborhood. And she, like her coo Emily Smith, and like me, is a native Michigander. Thank you so much for taking time to talk Team OS today, Jenny.

Absolutely, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, really looking forward to it. And we'll jump off right away where we always jump off in these conversations, which is a must have characteristic of a high performing team. When I offer that to you, Jenny, what comes to mind?

Servant heart comes to mind. You know, I just, whenever we're hiring, we're looking for that servant heart. I can't train that, but I can train real estate. So we have to care about the people we're working for.

I love it and I love it. I think when I heard that right off the bat before, you offered a little bit more context. I'm sure a lot of other people heard it the same way, which is, well, yeah, leaders should be servant leaders. That's the model that I think most human beings respond most favorably to. But I hear it throughout the team. So just go one layer deep, deeper there. Like why is it so important for a team member that you're bringing in? Let's just say as a listing specialist, why is the servant heart so helpful in that seat or any of the, any of them adjacent?

Well, I1, I think this business is hard, right? We're at everyone's beck and call for 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And if you don't love serving people, it will be very, very hard. Right. So for us as a whole, I don't ever want lose sight of the importance of the client and going the extra mile for the client because if we do that, the rest of it falls in place. You know, the, the reputation and the brand and the, you know, the business and the money and all of that will come if we do the right thing with the people in front of us at that moment. And that's true across our team. You know, whether you're in an admin Seat or you're an agent seat. It's all hands on deck to serve the clients at the highest level. And, and that's important to me and will always be important. And then within the team, it's servant hearted towards each other, like taking care of each other. Because so many of our agents have been doing this with me for so long. We've done life together, we've done babies and divorces and marriages and deaths and whatever life happens to people. And we all need to be there to support each other and make sure that our clients, clients are taken care of in the meantime. So it kind of goes from a, you know, client perspective and in house culture as well.

Absolutely. I think that that client experience is so driven by the agent experience that those are two sides of the exact same coin. So I love the way that you describe that. I also appreciate very much something that I feel like a lot of people and I don't, I don't know how to characterize them necessarily. I was going to say like maybe earlier in their careers, but I don't think that that's even necessarily a requ of it. Is your confidence that if we take care of this as the fundamental taking care of each other, taking care of people, that everything else happens as a consequence? I so often observe that people put numbers up at the board and chase them and that sometimes people become kind of collateral in that process. You're nodding your head for folks who are listening exclusively. We do put these up on YouTube as well. But you're nodding. What are you nodding to, Jenny?

Well, I do. I think we all, you know, when you first come in the business, you're excited, you're helping people. And actually, you know, I always see agents come out of the gate and do their best out of the gate because they're kind of naive to the whole process. But then they get ghosted by a client or burned by someone and taken away from a family barbecue and without any results. And they start to get a little jaded and then, you know, they start to kind of forget that we're serving people and then they start paying attention to the numbers and then it kind of goes downhill from there. And then as we start to grow teams, we go get coaching and training and they all want us to pay attention to metrics and conversion rates and da, da, da. And the more you get into the weeds of all of that, you lose sight of the people in front of you. And now we're having like AI respond to the people that are asking for help about A property. And like, we have to stay human. We have to stay in relationships with people. And like, I. We don't. We're not like this. Our team is not. Like, we're not tracking, like, the. The minutiae of metrics. We're tracking, you know, production and success and how many testimonials are we getting and what's our reputation out there. I don't need to tell my agents how many people they have to call a day and how many notes they have to write and, you know, what their conversion rate is. Because if they have somebody and they have a need, my agents are going to step up and serve them as a human and take good care of them. And then 50% of our businesses now repeat referral because of that. And nobody wants to be on these cold leads. Everybody wants to be on repeat referral. And that's the whole goal. So you can't do that without taking care of people and relationships.

Really good. I also heard in that response the idea that the activities are dictated by this as well. Like, I don't need to dictate activities to people. Their own call to be of service and value and to do the right thing by people kind of guides the activities. Characterize your team however you wish. Talk about the market or the size or the structure or the culture. I know culture is a big part of Weimer group. Characterize your team however you like. For folks who are listening.

Yeah, I think it's, you know, it's been built on. Our team has been built around the people on the team. So for me, I got, you know, I was, you know, like you said, mother of triplets. I was trying to always get time back. So I was trying to take hats off and replace them with people. And over time, you know, I would, you know, hire an assistant, hire agent, hiring an agent. And then we, you know, based on their availability or their strengths, we would hire the next person. And because we've been able to retain agents and staff, which is the thing I'm probably most proud of, we've been able to just continue to grow and build on all, like, such a strong foundation. And I think at this point, we're a team of, I don't know, don't hold me to these numbers. Roughly 90 people, and, like, 32 of them have been with me for more than five years, and most of them have been with me almost ten or more. So we're just continuing to grow. And we grow when we have enough leads to feed another family or the availability to help somebody. Grow a business within our foundation. We're just not. We're not just hiring to hire, you know, Fagimir, you're in where, you know, so I think, you know, to characterize that like we are, we've built on a collective group of skills, and we trust each other and we rely on each other. It's a true team environment. And, you know, from there, you know, like you said earlier, the culture comes, the brand comes, the reputation in the marketplace comes because we care. We. We care so much about taking care of each other and our brand because, you know, that's important out there.

Yeah. So your teammates are not teammates. They are we mates. We mates is actually an acronym that captures your values, which I think is awesome. And. And I heard in there, like, a little bit of, like, complimentary strengths and that you've built around the team. I also, the longevity is. Is pretty unique as well. So feel free to speak to we mates if you would. Anything that you're doing, just give folks a practical tip on, like, how do you make sure that these values in this culture and this process is alive and well day to day, week to week? Do you have to talk about it? Is it exclusively modeled? Like, how do you bring that to life in such a tangible, meaningful way that actually Delivers results like 50% repeat and referral?

Well, we do talk about it. You know, we don't shove it down their throats every day, but they're with that we mates that we use that term to refer to ourselves, but, you know, the community uses that term for us as well. So, like, I'll get. I'll get calls from agents out there, and they'll say, you know, she's just not acting like a we mate. You know, like, there's some sort of standard now for a we mate, even from a community, which I love, which actually I love a lot. But so I think that the. When we came up with that we mates, we've also attached that to our, like, kind of our mission. And when we're hiring, we hire to that the, you know, those qualities, I guess. And so we mates stands for something. It's we never I to start with. And then mates. It's a masters of our craft. We want everybody to, you know, we want to be proud of our partners out there. We want to be experts and so masters of our craft, accountable for our actions. What is that?

T Teachable spirit.

Yeah, there you go. Yeah, teachable.

That's it.

And then E is elevate others. So, you know, we're all going to have a bad day, we're all going to maybe just you know, not be at our best in a transaction. And we look for those opportunities to lift each other up and then also give each other a lot of grace because, you know, we will make mistakes. And as long as. And we're not doing neurosurgery right, so a mistake can be fixed with money. We don't hang people around here for making mistakes. So we want everybody to try their hardest and go the extra mile, get on that. That limb for those clients, and then we can fix everything on the back end. But the, the when we say we mates, it actually stands for something. And that's the stuff we celebrate. Like, we don't compete internally because each of our agents have different goals and different whys. And it doesn't make sense to pit my young gun that has 24 hours a day to work against my mother of four children and single. They are both doing the businesses they want to do. We're there to support them. But it doesn't make sense to have a leaderboard and compare them. Compare as a group externally, but we don't compare internally, and I think that kind of helps. We don't have a bunch of ego divas. Everybody is a humble servant. So I think that's sort of who we are. In a nutshell. We support each other as a brokerage, as a team, I guess we try to keep everybody in their highest talent areas. So our agents are just focused on being agents. We have leverage behind them in transaction management and listing directors. So every listing that goes out is like our billboard, and we're proud of it. And then we just try to keep our agents, you know, working with their clients, hunting for inventory, winning deals, and then keeping up with their database that they build over time with us. And. And it seems to be a formula that works for us.

It has for some time. I want to go back a little bit because in every one of these conversations, I like to spend time with you and thank you for spending time in conversation with me, Jenny. I like to spend time with each person talking about a key decision that they had to make along their journey. And for you, I would love to talk a bit about your shift from production into leadership full time. That's. I think that'll come up quite a bit in these conversations. But in particular, there's another layer of it of, you know, you chose to use the model, which I think is not uncommon, of replacing yourself with a listing agent. There are a few things that you learned in hindsight through that experience. So take us back to that time and tell that story however you wish.

Sure. Well, you know, I was with Keller Williams for 14 years. I built our team there, followed the red book, followed Gary Keller's teachings very closely. And so, you know, at that time, as a, as a rainmaker myself, like I said earlier, I was trying to take the hats off. And the first hat that had to go, of course, after my admin, was the buyer agent position because I just didn't have the time to be in the field. Right. It's my favorite part of the job. It's of course, but it was the part that I needed more time back to be able to lead, generate, convert and so on. And so, you know, I early on had to hire on, hire the buyer's agents and that went well for a long time. And I was slow to give up the listing side of things because honestly, that's where the profit is. You know, like doctors don't get out of the operating room and expect to make the money they're making. Right. So I, you know, I held onto that listing agent position for probably a little longer than I should have. I was getting kind of burned out. You know, I'm like, if you call me, I'm not going to call you, kind of follow up at that point because I was just wearing so many hats and it was, you know, just being pulled in so many directions that, you know, I was starting to lose sight of that customer service piece. So I knew that I needed to replace myself, but I was holding on to the profit. And then one day, my daughter, she was in sixth grade and, and her cheer coach called me and said, you know, I've been praying about it and God just keeps leading me to you to be my volunteer assistant cheer coach. And I was like, oh, well, how do you say no to that? Well, if God says, I guess I gotta do it. So that turned out to be the, you know, the straw that broke the camel's back. I didn't have 20 hours to be a volunteer cheer coach and listing agent and run the team and da da, da. So I finally stepped out of the listing role, handed it to one listing agent and said, you know, don't screw this up, right? And I'm going to go be a chair coach. And he didn't, he didn't screw it up. But there were a lot of lessons learned in all of that. One probably waited a little too long. But two, you know, people who are leading teams are probably superstar real estate agents and have high Capacity, Right. And so not everybody has that same capacity. And nor should we expect them to, nor do we need them to, to be part of a team. Right. But the guy that I handed it to, he did well. But the reality is you can only handle so many relationships at one time, you know, so, you know, if you have, if you're carrying 30 listings or 20 listings and you have how many pendings, that's a lot of relationships and balls to keep in the air. And it was too many. It was too. I, when I was doing it, had a large staff behind me picking up the majority of the pieces. So because of that, I transferred these listing agents into these roles with a ton of leverage behind them, which was unsustainable is the reality. The cost is unsustain, sustainable. In hindsight, I should have let all of my agents start to take listings and not overload one or two agents and also spoil them with a bunch of leverage. That was unsustainable. I needed agents to carry their 10 or 5 and maintain all of the relationships and do the work and not be so leveraged with admin behind them because that just became, you know, kind of a house of cards. I couldn't continue to hire that much leverage behind these agents. So it was, you know, those, those shifts were difficult because when that one agent is getting all of the leads and you bring in a second agent that, you know, that never feels good. So I would almost recommend bringing in two. So they learn to share early and then. But you know, we've always led with very, very transparently and said, you know, like when our agents were coming to us and saying we're dropping these leads, we want better for the team, we want better for you. You know, it's time to hire instead of like hoard and because they don't know when they're going to get that next lead or you know, be afraid of that next person coming in because they're going to get less. You know, we've always kind of come from abundance and worked with our agents to help make decisions. And you know, when you're a young team, you start your lever, your value proposition is small. You know, I mean, you just, you, you have, you, you're the coaching, you have maybe have some extra leads, but you're still, you know, wearing all the hats and you're still cherry picking. The value proposition is small. So you tend to offer out like a higher splits and then as you grow and you, you know, you have to build this whole thing and leverage and keep buying more leads. And, you know, it's unavoidable to have to, like, back down those splits, but if you. In hindsight. And we did it well, but, you know, there was. There was pain in that. You know, in hindsight, I think, you know, explaining that up front, like, we're giving you more now, but as we grow, you know, we're going to have to dilute this because you're going to have volume, you're going to have leverage, you're going to get time back. But it can't all be on me to cover all of that. So, you know, I don't know, I just dumped on you, like, seven different thoughts, but.

Yeah, well, I'll hit four of them really quickly. That was awesome, by the way. Thank you. So. So first is like, maybe listen to that voice in your head when you're thinking, is it time? Am I willing and able to do this? Can I actually set down production? I think there's a fear of, can I afford to set down production? Because I'm. I'm producing so much myself. I heard two people instead of one, in part because they can learn to share. And it. I think it precludes maybe some of the scarcity mindset a little bit. I also heard the idea of hybrid agents instead of the most common or the most traditional route, which is to replace yourself with a listing agent, because that's kind of the last role you kept to yourself. And then, gosh, I've now forgotten the last piece, but it was. Oh, it was splits. And this idea of casting a vision from the beginning that this is where we are today. This is my vision for where we're gonna be in 24, 48 months. This is how we're going to get there, and this is what it means for you in the split. But this is the benefit to you, and this is what we're all collectively paying for. This is my vision of what this team is. And I think. I think it's probably hard because I think maybe the next generation of team leaders who's learning from folks like you, perhaps through channels like this show that we're doing here, may be able to have a clearer vision in advance, but I think this is all learning. That's 100% 2020 hindsight.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've been blessed because the people that have been with me from the beginning are, you know, majority are still with me and so building that trust that I'm always going to take their families and their livelihoods in consideration when we're making these changes. And And I'm thankful that they've trusted me through some of those changes, but I really do. Like, if, if anything, if I lose sleep over anything, it's just making sure that we're living up to what we've promised. Promised. And. But sometimes, you know, market conditions warrant changes and, you know, the. The team dynamics warrant changes occasionally. And, you know, we've been together long enough now that we know we'll come out of it on the other side. But it's. Building that trust helps get you through all of that.

Yeah. And I think that's. I think just the spirit behind and the mentality behind the words that you just shared with us are probably why you have so many folks that have been with you 5, 10, 12, 15 years. I would assume that that's relatively uncommon.

Yeah, it's sort of like dog years in real estate. Right. Like, people, you know, I mean, there's. I mean, in Orlando, Florida, we're ground zero for every new real estate company, every new model. Everybody's promising something. And so, you know, our agents are under attack on a daily basis. And they are. They. They say they're going down with the we mate ship. So I don't. I don't know. I'm. I'm just blessed that we, you know, because I care so much about my people that I want to make sure that they're getting what they need out of this. For sure.

Yeah. And I know it's probably a little bit trite to some folks watching or listening, but that's something you just can't buy, and that's something you can't pay for. It's like, it's something that you built that can't come undone any other way.

And I think it's important to note I've built this over 20 years. Like, this isn't something I went in yesterday and bought a bunch of relationships and bought a bunch of. Like, this is just something that has organically grown over 20 years, and we've never tried to make it more than it is. We are just building on the opportunities that we have in front of us. And we're all achievers. We all want more, but we're not trying to, you know, triple our goals this year for no good reason. Like, if. If. If our agents are happy where they're at, then they're happy, then it's time to hire another agent. Like, we don't need everyone to be robots and do and, you know, strive for things that they don't necessarily want to strive for. You know, not everybody wants to be, you know, a superstar real estate agent on stages or in blah blah, blah. You know, like they just want to make a good living and, and have some work life balance and, and be proud of what they're doing. It's okay.

And maybe coach a cheer team now and then.

Yeah, right. Exactly. Be able to. And like I have my, some of my top guys. They're young, well, guys and girls, young families. You know, they have all the flexibility. They can go coach their kids, they can go away on the, you know, whatever, travel baseball weekends or travel football. And, and they're enjoying it and they're, and they're crushing it in real estate. But that's because they feel in control. They don't feel like they're being controlled by the business.

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I wish there was some brilliant answer to this. The the Reality is my husband is the broker. He's kind of like the back end with his cfo. And then Emily and I are kind of like the front of the house, leadership, visionaries, marketing kind of stuff. And people, you know, all of a sudden, I don't know, this is going to sound airy, fairy, but like, all of a sudden we'll start to get clues, right? Like, it's like this person's complaining about this person, this. And this is, you know, this is like somebody else is complaining about something else, but it is related. And I'm like, you know, we're really on a ceiling here. And, you know, we are going to hit this ceiling very soon. What are we going to do? We got to start thinking through, like, how are we going to manage that? Like, for example, right now we do lead shifts on our team where our agents get three hours at a time. Whatever comes in during those three hours into our lead bucket, which is, you know, a lot. They have to manage those or refer it or whatever. Well, there's only so many three hour shifts in a month. And so eventually we're getting to the point where we're going to be maxed out with numbers of agents that want shifts and shifts available. And so, you know, we're brainstorming around, like, how do. What is our next step on that and how do we manage that and how do we make sure that everyone is getting what they need in their fair share? And so, you know, it's sort of like we kind of lead like we're a cruise ship. You know, it's. We're slow to make changes and slow to turn. I think it's difficult when you're a Jet Ski leader and you're constantly making changes and changing tech and the newest and the latest and people can't keep up. So as long as we're making slow decisions but not keeping our head in the sand and realizing we have a problem here, this is coming like a freight train. I see it coming. We're just actively in dialogue, but there's no formal process, unfortunately.

No, that's not unfortunate.

Psychics and so, no. Just kidding.

Yeah, yeah, we read. We read the leaves. I really appreciate that. I mean, I didn't expect some, you know, magic answer or something. Like, I guess I did describe a brain trust, you know, you know, conference room table scenario or something. But when you started that with, like, the reality is. And that's all, that's all we're looking for here, I really appreciate that very much. I assume that it was A pretty big decision because you, you talked about how much value Keller Williams had been to you throughout your career. I know that in a previous conversation you and I had, you said, hey, you know, when it's the right thing, I send agents to Keller Williams all the time. You went independent about 6 and a half ish years ago. Share anything about that process? I know several people that we have lined up to talk with on the show have made a similar move, but I also know that a number of people are still with, you know, the original brokerage that they started their team with, you know, years or even decades ago. So how did that go for you? What was the motivation? What was the process like? And you know, with six and a half years hindsight, what would you say to someone who's on the, on the precipice of a similar decision?

Yeah, it was a very difficult decision. You can probably tell by the way I've talked. I'm a very loyal person to our relationships. And so I helped build that office. I have blood, sweat and tears in that office. I had a little bit of ownership in the office. So I did. We didn't want to leave. We really didn't. And, but we got to a point, I think we were about 45 people strong at that point. We were going to have to go to an outside location. We were really building our own culture within the culture. We were paying for all of the, like, different tech stacks than what KW was offering. And so when we were getting ready to go do that, it just didn't make sense to keep sending, you know, two, $300,000 back to Keller Williams basically for the brand. Right. Like, because we were, we were using our, all of our own stuff, so that hurt. We, we explored everything we could possibly explore within those models. I just wasn't really interested in being an OP in the, in that environment. And, and at the time they were doing all the expansion and I was like, listen, I've got less than 1% market share in Orlando, even with our 850 homes we're going to sell or whatever. I can go get 99% more here. I don't need to go to another state or whatever. So I just wasn't interested in that at times. So the option really for us was just joke, like pick up, drop in and keep on doing exactly what we were doing. So we came, we were the Weimer Group, now we're Weimar Group Realty. And we just kept on trucking. We just had to remove the KW logo. We have stayed close with all of our KW friends and you know, like I said, like we don't hire very often and we don't hire everyone. And so like newer agents we send back to KW and like this is where you really want to start if you want to be your own agent. And it's worked out well. And so would I recommend to a small team to go be a broker? Not at all. Like there's, you don't have enough value proposition. And a couple of the big AHAs are, one, you're a ghost as a broker. Like we, even though we have a very, very strong reputation in our marketplace, the experienced agents know who we are. But new agents in the market, who's Wemer Group Realty, like, you know, they're calling Coldwell Banker ReMax, you know the names. So recruiting is not as easy as you think it is and it becomes a full time job if you even plan to do that. And then two, the, the, like it's all on you, right? So we have to train our agents, we have to have the modules, we have to, I mean like we can use some ele outside stuff but like we have to have a plan. We have to, we have to do it all, we have to carry the liability. They always make the liability piece, you know, the scary piece. It's not really. But you know, since we've done it, we've been to a couple arbitrations, we've been, you know, been threatened with lawsuits. Like it's no fun. So would I do it with a small team? No, because it's almost impossible to grow and I miss being able to be part of something bigger where you know, we have, we often have too many leads or not enough people to do open houses or something. In a kw I could stick my head out the door and say to the newer agents, hey, do you want to work this $150,000 lead? Do you want to do an open house and build, you know, kind of an extended relationships? And I miss that because if we can't service the lead, we can't service the lead. And I end up giving them back to KW anyway. But it's still like, you know, I'm, I didn't realize what we were leaving until we were gone. From that perspective. And the team leaders, if you have a relationship with the team leaders, they're helping you recruit, you know, you're rescuing some of their new agents as a team leader because they can't get off the ground. But you could get them off the ground and it's a win win as long as you keep it a win win and don't try to, to, you know, steal out of the broker's pocket all the time. But so those are my kind of observations about going as a broker. We were big enough that we could pull it off and we had enough stability with people that we felt comfortable. But I don't know if I would do it again if I was smaller.

Yeah. And I know I'm asking for the impossible. First of all, thank you for sharing that. That was fantastic. Especially a couple of the key decisions or key consideration factors. I'm sure this can be helpful for a lot of people. You referred a couple of times, you know, if I was smaller and I'm asking for a magic number, but I'm really not. It sounds like I'm asking for a magic number. Like just in general for context, like when you say small versus, you know, big and I know there are a number of dynamics. It's not just agent count, it's not just production, it's not just transaction size. It's. It's probably a variety of these factors difference between small and large. But like, how do you, how do you define, you know, when, when, when do you have enough market presence or agent count or production that like this is potentially a viable thing for people to consider?

Yeah, I don't really know.

It's highly varied.

Yeah, I'm like, I don't have the metrics but I would say like, like when I'm giving advice, I'll say to them like if you're going to be, you're going to stay in the field as a lead agent and have an assistant, maybe a couple of showing agents and you're going to be your own brokerage by all means, that is going to be highly profitable. And like that is the most profitable model right there. If you're going to stay in the field. Right. If you intend to come out of the field and become a recruiting machine and just be broker and agents and not a team model, I would highly suggest skipping that and just joining one of the recruiting companies and you know, get rev share and not have to carry all the liability and the training and all that. It's the middle. When you're growing from a small team like that perfect pod and you start adding a bunch of agents and you're working yourself out and your goal is to be, you know, that Gary Keller seventh level or working yourself out of the field, the middle is hard. And that's why you see very few teams make it at a volume, like high volume because it becomes, I mean, your profitability goes to nothing in the middle, especially because you have to invest to get leads and to build or people just are going to leave you. And especially if you go open your brokerage and now you're carrying rents and you're carrying all of the things, it just, it's so it's like the black hole in the middle to get through the money is on the outs. You know, it's either a small team or big volume. But, you know, you go from 60% profitable as a small team to like 10% if you're lucky these days. You know, with the cost of leads these days, that's a hard transition and through the middle and some of the. Most people don't make it it. And so I, I wouldn't add, you know, you know, opening your own brokerage to that expense in the middle. The challenge though, people run into, and it's what we ran into is we needed our agents to be able to make more because they were getting to, they were getting to a ceiling where they needed to hire, you know, support admin, showing assistance. And so when you have, you know, nowadays with some of these brokerages you have, have, you know, you have a broker, then they may have like a place or a Livyon or something on top of that, and then you have the team leader, then you have the split, and then you, then you're still trying to pay a showing agent, like there's nothing left. And so that was part of our decision. We needed to collapse some of that, you know, one of the splits and so we could give it back to the agent so they could grow.

I feel like there are agents listening to this right now who are solo agents inside a brokerage. They're thinking, should I start a team? Should I join a team? Those are two very different things. I think probably the more aggressive, really driven people that are willing to sell 80 houses on their own or something with no admin support at all are probably the likeliest potential team leaders. But what do you say to either of those populations? What, you know, what should they. Especially someone who's probably perhaps suffering a little bit with lifestyle, suffering a little bit playing to too many of their weakness areas and not enough to their strength areas because they're not. It's hard to be good at all these things like including running your business. And so speak to either of those and maybe start with the agent who probably should open their mind and open some conversation about is it time to consider joining a team and what should I look for Yeah, I mean.

From an agent perspective, it depends on the team leader, right? It depends on the value proposition as well. So not all teams are created equally, obviously. So it's kind of hard to answer that question. However, if, you know, like, for us, we're attracting experienced talent because we are sharing the cost of the admin over, you know, volume. They don't have to go pay for their own assistant, their own listing director. And so they get the benefit of having the leverage. They don't mind the split because it's fair. Right. Because they're not having to carry that employee salary and wake up every morning worried about keeping them busy and paying them. So that's attractive to experienced agents. They also want to be around other producers. You know, talent attracts talent, and you want to work around people doing things at a high level. The new agents, it's always good for them to start on a team if they are team players. But, like, they don't have to learn the hundred things that a single agent has to do. They just have to learn eight and, like, worry about the clients and how to write a good contract. And then they have a mentor. And so they only have to get focused on this and then they can learn the rest over time. So I don't know how a new agent starts in this market without being under somebody's wing or into a structure. So the new agent is kind of easy. We've had the most success with growing agents. So as much as I hate hiring new agents because it's so hard and you have to, like, what's an appraisal? And they, you know, they grow with you and they turn in to be superstars, but they have, they buy into the team model. They feel like they've helped grow it, and they don't feel like they have to leave because we're continuing to build around them. Like, what do they need? What leverage do they need? And, you know, growing them is as. As big as they want to grow. So it can be done. You can hire, you can attract experienced agents. You just have to know your value proposition. You know, they're not coming just for the leads like they. But, you know, they. They're coming for more of the. The leverage and the. And not feel so lonely out there and to work around talent. I don't know if I answered your question, Ethan.

No, you did. Absolutely you did. You spoke to the new and to the experienced agent. How about to the aspiring team leader advice for like, you know, getting from one or two to six or 10.

So when I'm talking to agents now. Like I'm telling them, you know, try to leverage yourself first. Right. If they are, you know, active in the real estate market, I used to say hire your transaction manager. You can, you know, do that in by project or whatever. But now I'm saying keep the transaction management because that's the high touch points with the clients and leverage the marketing because that's the piece that goes away the fat. You know, like when you get busy and you're, it's under fire, you take your foot off the gas on the lead generation. So I'm teaching for agents to hire that, you know, marketing first once they make their first hire and they have to wake up now and be responsible for somebody else. You know, if they can get past that and they enjoy that, then they can probably build a team. But a lot of agents that I know and I'm one are like ADD and they love the, the that every day is different and they love the flexibility and they love to hide some days and not get out of bed and whatever. You know, they may not make the best leaders or be able to get this thing off the ground because they don't have the, the diligence and consistency to do so or the want to lead people. So they have to know themselves. But they shouldn't just start a team because it's cool to start a team. If you don't have something to offer besides coaching, that's not enough in my opinion. Anybody can hire a coach. Why would they give you 50% of the commission? So what, what is it that you offer? And so like for a, for a young agent or a new, not a young, an aspiring agent, you know, they could kind of test it like get a few agents around them and start to give them a few of your overflow leads, test to see if they're closing and like, you know, I used to call it my, you know, like my extended sales team and it was almost like tryout and if we got a groove going, we're like, why don't we do this for real? And you know, like I will commit to, you know, making sure that you have enough to build a business. When you don't, when you just are like handing out a few leads to people, you don't feel the need to like, you know, carry them, feed their family, you know, it's just like if it works for you and it works for me, that's great. And so try that on. Maybe leverage out, you know, maybe part time marketing until you can bring that down full time and just start to test that and see how it goes for them. And then if they get, if you get a foundation with a good strong admin, you actually have a value proposition now for agents to join your team because you have shared leverage and you should have leads, in my opinion.

I really like that tryout scenario. It provides so many different benefits with like kind of a clear value to the other person, but kind of non committal scenario for everybody. Really, really good advice. What do you. I mean, I would assume that you're at a point in your career that you're probably holding on to within the context of the, of the group, the pieces that you really feel like you want to do and that bring you the life to bring you to life the most. Is that accurate? And if so, I feel like I already know the answer to this a little bit. But you know, what are the pieces that you choose to hold on to because you just really like them the best? And are you holding on to anything else that you would maybe like to give away? I would assume not.

That's a good question. I have they it. Well, maybe I haven't. They have systematically removed me from most things that require consistency, so which is good. I hold on to relationships and I love to teach and mentor. So I'm probably holding on to that teaching rule a little too long. But I love it and I love to, and I love to mentor our agents where like tell me what they want and I love to like brainstorm with them what they can do to get it and just kind of like, you know, I guess coaching, I guess if you want to call it that, it's what I enjoy the most. And really I'm just sort of like team mom at this point. I, I'm a firefighter. I love to like call me with the problem, please, all the way to 11 o' clock at night because, you know, put me in. I love that stuff. You know, like, let me, let me solve your problem. I still got it. Yeah, right.

Yeah, well, and I think I left this out of the fun facts, but if I remember correctly you were. You started your career professionally as a teacher, like a school teacher.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So those are the things I love to problem solve and be the hero.

That's fantastic. I so appreciate the time that you've been willing to spend with me and everyone else who's watching and listening before I let you go. The way that we wrap these up is with trio of pairs of questions and you only have to answer one of them and the first Pair is what is your very favorite team besides your own real estate team? Or what is the best team you've ever been a part of besides your own real estate team?

My favorite team that I aspire to is Russell Rhodes. You know, when he was, especially when he was at Keller Williams, I was watching him organically build a business over time and like, you know, suddenly he, you know, he was doing from 300 transactions to a thousand transactions. And I realized if I just keep doing the right things and taking care of people, I'm just right behind him a year or two, you know, and, and I, so I was watching him closely. He was very client focused. They did a lot of client parties and events and pies and all the things. So I used to just, you know, really watch his team and aspire to be them.

Really cool. What is one of your most frivolous purchases? Or what is a cheapskate habit you continue to hold on to even though you probably don't need to?

The cheapskate is way easier. So I am a Midwest girl in heart. I have the hardest time living in luxury. So we travel in luxury. You know, I have no problem with that. But in real life, I am a thrift shopper. I will, I'll buy, resale. I refuse to carry a purse with a bunch of letters on it if they're not paying me to be their influencer. Like, maybe my CPA husband has made me frugal, but like we're frugal to a fault. But we're really proud of the investment portfolio we've built and setting up our kids and building kind of generational wealth. I don't need a purse or red bottom shoes for everyone else to know. I have money. And my husband is still. We've sold his car two years ago and he just hasn't gotten around buying a new one because we had an extra wiimob sitting around with my face on it. And he drives that stupid car every day. Like, talk about no ego. I mean like, that's next level for me. But there he is in the, in a little car with my face on it every day, back and forth to work.

It's so awesome. There's so many good pieces in there and I can totally relate to all of it. My wife and I are not nearly a fraction as financially successful as you and your husband, but, but I'm still driving a car that I drove our 20 year old son home from the hospital in. And the last time he and I were in Orlando and down in Tampa riding Roller Coasters. We hit a couple Goodwills. Cause we had a little bit of time before we had to get to the airport. So. Anyway, could totally relate. Love that.

The hunt's fun.

Yeah. Well, that's the thing. That's the game. It's the hunt. Yeah. Last pair for you. And you can take, of course, either one that you prefer. What are some of the ways you keep learning, growing and developing or. Or what are some of the ways you enjoy resting, relaxing, or recharging?

I'm not much of a rester. I'm either really busy or I'm a sloth. So I'm going to say my phone habit is, you know, keeps me kind of in a learning mode. So, you know, I watch the groups. I'm connected to agents across the country. I'm constantly learning and like, looking for nuggets or new opportunities or, you know, connections for us as a whole. So I would say that's what I'm doing to learn. You know, I'm. I'm like, I watch podcasts and. Or listen to podcasts and all of that. So I'm a learner at heart. I can't consume enough content. So I'll go with that because if other than that, I'm face palant on the couch, like it's I'm a sloth or like, super, super.

It'S on 10 or it's off to 0, I love it. This has been great. Again, I really appreciate your time so much, and I would love to send people off who've made it to this point in the conversation to learn more about you or your team or your journey. Where would you send people that have enjoyed this conversation? Maybe want to connect or learn more?

Yeah. Thank goodness. My name is so unique. So if you just Google Jenny Wiemert, you'll see anything I've ever done. But Wiemer Group Realty is our website. We do. If you go to Weimar Group Realty and you go to the careers button, everything we've talked about as far as, like, our model, our splits, our culture, we have a magazine posted. It's all very transparent. Anybody can see it. So I would recommend maybe checking that out. You can also see our buyer guides and our seller guides and everything else at Wemer group realty. So wemergrouprealty.com would be a good start. Or our Facebook page.

Awesome. And that's W E M e r t wemertgrouprealty.com we'll put that immediately adjacent to wherever you are watching or listening to this. Jenny, thank you. Again so much and I hope you have an awesome rest of your day.

Thank you for the opportunity. Thanks for checking out this episode of teamos for email.

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