015 Recruiting As Your Solution with Suneet Agarwal

No matter where your business is today or where you want to take it, you'll get there faster and more profitably with an operating system. Welcome to Team os, your guide to starting, growing and optimizing real estate team. Here's your host, Ethan Butte. For insights into starting, growing and optimizing your real estate team, we're talking with Sunit Aggarwal. A handful of fun facts before we get started. He's the CEO and owner of Big Block Realty north and of Best SAC Home group, the number one team in Sacramento and a top team in California. A co founder of the reside platform, sunit actively coaches top teams and brokerages to profitable growth. He loves playing guitar, but he's restricted himself to playing on weekends only. And among many other businesses he was involved in before, real estate is breeding American bulldogs. Sunit, thank you so much for talking Team OS today.

Hey, nice to see you Ethan.

Anything in there inaccurate in any way?

You know what's sexier? Because this is follow up boss. Like, you know I used to run like weed clubs, right?

Yeah, totally. Mortgage business, like you've got all kinds of stuff.

So do we say weed clubs instead of American Bulldogs are like. I always think about the approach, but yeah, sounds good.

We have one standard opener on this show and it is what is a must have characteristic of a high performing.

Team of a team.

Yeah, team or team leader.

I mean a team leader has to have hustle. A team needs to have accountability, I think. Cool.

Is there any difference in your experience between a good team like oh yeah man, they're good, it's rocking and they got it going on versus a great team.

So I think about this a lot because I'm so fortunate that I hang out with so many awesome team leaders, very successful rags to riches stories. So I always, I guess I'm fortunate. I hang out with lots of great teams and I think the thing that makes the difference. Oh man, that's a good question. Ethan, you're gonna just start with the hard ones.

Good.

Yes. What makes a great team? I mean leadership is important and I think we're in my. And I've been, this has been my thought before I even had a team is I would think to myself right around the same time that we started, I was all just because like this so and so agent in this office is trying to start a team. They're a semi successful agent in our market but they have no leadership skills because all they've, I mean sure they've led themselves but that's different. It's Part of it, but it's different. And I was like, you know, I've owned businesses, like I could do this. So leadership, that's, that's, that's the difference. But, but it's also hard, right? Like you can't get to become a great leader until you've been a good. Until you've been a come. Until you've been a good realtor. Excuse me, A good leader. And until you've been a shitty leader.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean we all learn through experience. You can only read a book and get so far off that like knowledge. It's the actual experience in the seat. But I think you call out a really important point that comes up a lot on this show actually usually comes up in the context of the shift from high producing agent to being a team leader. And they're completely different jobs. Especially when you shift out of production or if someone chooses to shift out of production and go into leadership full time, it is not the same job at all. I think there's also an illusion that like, like because I'm a kick ass realtor, I can just hire new realtors and teach them exactly what I did. And there is a truth in that, but it's never as clean as people want. And that comes down to kind of like leadership coaching and guidance.

Yeah, I mean that's the thing for me. Like I look back often, right? You think back often and like I was never some great realtor in Sacramento. My team started two and a half years after getting licensed. Right. But I think what helped me in the beginning was I had lots of leadership experience and business experience, you know, and marketing.

So yeah, tell us that story a little bit. I mean you don't have to go into all the details but like give us the high points on like what got you turned on to real estate. What was that first two and a half years like and what motivated starting a team?

Sure. So went to college was doing door to door sales. Not when I went to school. Far Chico's day. Go Wildcats. Talked to some guys that I knew got into, got into mortgage during subprime 2002. And I'm gonna make this super quick either and then, and then in two then you know, went on become very successful in my first leadership role as a branch manager from my buddy's company. Great experience, great perspective. They lost my ass, literally everything and got out of that, got out of a mortgage, got in a cannabis. Right. Like we were one of the first legal dispensaries in California because I paid lobbyists to lobby the city of Sacramento, right? Like, that's what we did. We lobbied cities and we would get a permit process done, and then we would apply for the permit. Now, that went in a whole different way a couple years in 2013, 2012. So I was sitting on my couch, and once again, this dispensary experience was incredible leadership and incredible on the job training. It was a very. Like, I had 40 people that worked there, right? It was very unique. It was very unique. Like, you know, it was very unique. That went away, you know, and then we talked about, you know, I want to be a dog breeder. I'm just going to take it easy. I don't need money, man. Like, I'm good. Not that I was super rich. I was just became super simple, right? My. My hippiness really came out back then. I was, I'm just gonna be chill. And then, you know, my mom wasn't really happy with that. She's a really high achiever. All my successful friends are all, dude, it's been a couple years of you chilling, like, go get your real estate license. I said, fine. So. So I did. I just want. I don't need a fancy car. I just want a. I had my dogs. I had chickens and goats. Like, go to my old Facebook post, like, you'll laugh your ass off, right? Had my. Had my animals. My first year as an agent, I was the rookie of the year for this region for Coldwell Banker. I was like, well, that was cool. And I was learning about leads and learning about sales, learning about marketing, and learning about showing up right then the very next year. I said, well, you know, this is cool and I'm making good money. I made like 80, 90 grand my first year, which was a great win, right? Like, that's huge. 2014. And also, you know, I really like owning a business more. My girlfriend at the time, who I met because I was a cool realtor now, and my girlfriend at the time, who is now my wife, she was pregnant with our eldest kid. So, you know, I kind of want to be home more like this. Showing houses is hard. You know, maybe I'll go back and open the dispensary. So it was either do that or do this. And the way that it shook out is I wasn't able to do the dispensary or the story would have been very different. I said, well, I'm going to go all fucking in. So I went to Keller. I moved to Keller. And I got exposed to follow boss, right? I got exposed to laugh code agents I got exposed to the idea of coaching, the idea of personal development. And I'm so grateful for Keller Williams for that. Like that was. Thank you, thank you, thank you for anyone who had any impact there. Tristan Ahumada was somebody who I immediately started DMing. I was the dorky guy in SAG. DMing. Tristan, right.

And he.

But he was really helpful to me. Hooked me up with coaches, with technology. Definitely one of my first mentors in real estate. And he knows that I. And I say it every time I see him and every time a name comes up. So super grateful to lab code agents. And then kept on growing. You know, I said I'm going to have to hire some agents. And I put the word out there and I had like seven agents like that. I've only been a realtor now for maybe three years and well, I better figure this out. Right.

What was your value prop? Like, how did you land? I got leads.

I got leads.

Okay.

Right. That's all is. I went and bought all on one platform that wasn't follow boss. I went and got it all in one website. Ppc. Leads. Oh, I got leads. I had little Zillow spend and then we started to convert some and then I don't know, like maybe through lab coats, I started getting notoriety on a national scene. Right. Which kind of whatever this coaching or any of this is even being a guest on here. Right. And then I was, okay, well how can I do more? So maybe I should just like go to 100% brokerage so I can control more of my team. Well, now that I'm recruiting to the brokerage, I want those agents too. So I'll just open everything. So then we opened and things started to go really, really well because we had the 100 model through big Block and the great team model through the best Stockholms group. Not that there's a big difference. And I doubt like my wife knows the name of the team. It's all Big Block.

Right.

But at least I know the difference. Damn it. But. And just started growing and growing and then, you know, thanks to great partnerships, you know, linked up with John Sheplak, you know, totally changed my life. Like health, family, all that stuff. Business definitely helped that leadership and it just kind of took off.

Yeah. So what do you think that was? I mean, to be number one in the market and I to my understanding, you have been for years. Like what were you doing differently or better or cleanly? Like, what do you think? You know, because to be number one in the market, even if you have someone Right on your heels. I don't know if that's the case or not. It didn't. It doesn't matter. But what were you doing differently or better than the other groups in your market?

I remember talking to John in my. It was my office at the time. It was during COVID but it was my younger daughter's nursery, so it was pink, and there's like a balloons and a crib and, like a chair to read in. She was. She was what you. She was a year old. And I'm like, dude, I would just like to be number one in Sacramento. I said, but by the way, I'm looking at it, I think we could be number one in the state, bro. He's what. I was like, yeah, let's. Let's see. And we. Then we were number one in the state. I was a holy. And what did we do is we were getting the most opportunities. We had a ton of agents, and the market was really, really good. The market was really, really good. Absolutely. Then the next year, same kind of thing happened. I was all, dude, this is kind of crazy. And now it's just like osmosis. I didn't, like, I didn't think I would still be number one in Sacramento. I was recruiting last week, so I pulled the agent list of every agent of Sacramento and I looked at the end, and it's my name still. I was. I'm still number one. Yeah.

That's crazy. So. So it's. It's leads. Talk about a little bit about, like, the early formation. So you have a bunch of leads, but that doesn't. I mean, that doesn't lead to success or to be number one. Right. Like, what was the. I mean, what. What did you bring maybe from your past experience or what was some. Some hard learning early on to figure out? Like, as you get this volume of leads you mentioned, the market is good. Of course the market's good for everybody. But in general, when the market's good, lead flow is more favorable, you know, as that starts ramping up a little bit. I mean, what were some of the pieces that you put into place early on or some practices that you put into place or people you put into place to, like, to complement your weaknesses or whatever the case may be. Like, as things started ramping up and you. And you had this vision of, I think we can be number one in the state, as you're putting that together, what were some of the key pieces that you either already had in place or knew that you need to implement to get there?

Yeah. Well, I learned from modeling others for sure. But, you know, we got channel partners like Zillow, and now I need a ton of managers because they have. Because it was a big workload for that. It was the Zillow offer stuff. Right. So. Which resulted in most of the top teams last, last few years here, according to real trends. And it's accurate. Right. So we had to hire a bunch of people, we had to bring a bunch of agents. So I've been yelling that recruiting is important since I first opened any kind of organization. Most people do. But somebody dedicated to that, right? Somebody dedicated to agent training. And I know that that's easier said than done now because, you know, many teams have, have cut back on staff. Right. And increased the CEOs workload been due to, you know, a 20% national dip in home sales. It's real. If you sold less last year. I did. It's because that's the way that the math worked out. You got the same market share, but it's about having those people in for me. Leveraging yourself, finding your weaknesses. Like, you know, I, I remember we did a big partnership in the dispensary back in the day with the, one of the first people from Oakland, one of the big, big, big players. They came in and I did a consulting agreement with them. And I've never told this story, but they had me compartmentalize the whole business. So we had a manual for every department. How many dispensers do you think had that? Ethan. Right.

Like back then, like 2008, I mean, you could substitute the word dispensaries with, you know, real estate.

Yeah, yeah. So then we compartmentalized a lot of that stuff. And, you know, we, we still have. Are we the fancy at us? No, but I mean, I've seen what works. I also like something that I did really early was just a lot of organic marketing. Not that I was good, but like my first week as an agent, it was 2014. Like we would go on home tours with the brokerage of the new listings. I would take a little 15 second Instagram video because that's all that you could post back then in front of all the houses. Two weeks later, after doing that for two weeks, two weeks later, some of the agents from my very same office said, hey, you have a lot of listings. I was all, no, I don't. So I just realized, I was like, hey, you know, that works. So those things that like that. And I still, I mean, I still post on Facebook 100 times a day.

And so this is probably part of the, the osmosis that you referred to earlier. It's the, it's, it's the presence, it's the availability, it's the awareness. And so when I'm in doubt or when I'm in question or when there's an opportunity, you go to the, you go to the people who are top of mind.

Yeah.

And that's true of consumers and of agents. Any positions that you added, like when you mentioned like, you know, surrounding yourself with managers to kind of get the whole thing on track and probably to, you know, fill out the type of playbook that you had at the dispensary in terms of having operations really dialed in and documented. Any positions that you maybe added later on that you maybe wish you added sooner. I'm just thinking on behalf of like someone who's got a little bit of what you had in those early days and aren't quite sure, like if I'm going to be adding fixed costs in a market like this, I'm not sure which ones they should be like. And you can also go to your own coaching on this too, like whether it's your own experience or whether it's other folks that you've had the opportunity to kind of get into their business with them. You know, what are some of the early positions when you want to start adding this proper leadership layer or management layer inside the organization? What are, what are a few key functions or roles or titles or whatever that come to mind?

So I'm starting to think back, right and, right. And the first, like everybody should have an admin and that's not management, but everyone should have admin. Maybe they're virtual. I still have like 20 some odd VAs man. And the guy who does everything for Army Joe Bonin is like a legend, right? Most dependable, hardworking, loyal person out there. So your admin should be covered. And for me, the first like in Sacramento person was someone to answer all the agent questions and help the agents and help with training. Right. And that person could also do a bulk of the recruiting. That's who I would hire. What do you want to call that person? A manager. Right. Like you could do sales manager, you could do branch manager. But I like having that person who can do the agent training do the God in minutes. I don't have the answer. Like I, you know, I said earlier, I'm not some like incredible realtor to where I can name rattle something off from the contract. I like the sales and marketing stuff. Right. Like that's why we always geek Out. So sales manager, like what? Every branch manager, that's the key hire for me. And I remember mine. And she did great. She couldn't make it through the big growth, so she got replaced. But I think, you know, like, you're just leveraging yourself. Something that's been helpful for me is leverage. Like, I'm leveraged, bro. Like, and I like it. Like, I get so much more done. I use task boards and Monday and just assign stuff across multiple businesses, multiple departments of businesses. And it just really works.

Yeah, really good. And that leverage approach, I mean, is it really, is it this simple for someone, again, on behalf of someone listening or watching, as you look at your day and as you look back at your week, you think, what was I doing that I don't want to do, that I'm not good at, or that I shouldn't be doing? That's not a good, you know, you could do like the cost, the cost benefit, you know, against your time. Is, is it really that simple? Like, look back at what you're doing or look at what's ahead and say, what should I not be doing? Or what do I. Because I either A, could be doing something more valuable or B, someone else could do it better. And then the other bucket being I actually just actually hate doing this work. So I should get that aside.

Yeah, I mean, you. Yes. Like, the cost benefit is definitely right. Go down the list of everything you did last week, but how much it is per hour. Figure out what your worth is from how much you make, how much you work. Right. And then these things you should pay yourself, these things you should. These things you do yourself at least things somebody else should do. Absolutely. I tell a coach to that. 100%. So thank you.

Yeah, really good. Okay. So coaching teams in general, high level, you're, you know, you go to a lot of events, you do a lot of one on one stuff, you're in a lot of rooms with a lot of different kinds of people at different stages of the journey. You know, as we're recording this in early 2024, look, look back on maybe the last six months or so, what are some of the top concerns or challenges that people have? And I want to restrict it maybe to things that are within their control. Right. Cause I want to kind of like set the market off on the side. Although none of these observations are answered, can be addressed or answered without the color or the context of the market. But besides that, what are people struggling with? What are they thinking about? What are they working on? See what your contacts are doing on Zillow. Monday, December 8th join follow up Boss for a sneak peek webinar where you'll be among the first to see how to get Zillow searching, browsing and saving insights for the contacts in your database to directly inside Follow Up Boss. So when a past client of yours gets that late night and extra bedroom would be really great right now. Kind of feeling you'll know before anyone else who's showing high intent to buy or sell insights about what's happening right now so you can deliver a personalized touch at scale. See what your contacts are doing on Zillow. Monday, December 8th at 1pm Eastern, 10am Pacific. Learn more and sign up through the link in the description below. You're in your podcast app. Check out the description of this episode right down below. It's the first line and the first link. Now back to the conversation.

I mean it's, it's the same thing. And even for me, you know, like it's for, even for, it's across the board. Like I think a lot of people felt beat up a little bit. Agents, leaders, like, and, and that's, and good because that's freaking part of it, bro. Like you're supposed to feel beat up. That's how you know that you're doing it right? But, and then people want to get in their own ways. Like, you know, so many people say, well hey Sunit, I want to recruit. What are you doing? Oh, you know, I posted on Facebook, I was all like, what is everything that you're doing for recruiting, are you doing it all? Why aren't you going to do it and why? Well, I don't have time. Let me look at your calendar, bro. You don't have enough time. Okay, I see a lot of white space. Oh, I'm trying to save that. No, bro, get it in there. Right? Let me tell you something, it's in my calendar, right? So people like just not doing it. It's the same thing. And maybe that's exacerbated by feeling a little beat up. People wanting to lick their wounds a little bit. But you're going to lick your wounds right into going out of business unless you get out there and recruit. And I actually sat down, I did this for a one on one coaching call and I wrote out, okay, let's talk about every single way that you can recruit. Okay? There's like 40, 29 ways I think is what we bowled it down to now. And like I, I want that list to be higher so I can do more. Are you Leveraging each of these things more. Yeah. So that I think, you know, like I've been trained well by chat, bro. Like recruiting, it's like fixes every problem.

The way that you're talking about it makes me think back to your initial response of Hustle in general. It's like just, just do the work. And I'll layer in your observation about like your early Instagram videos. Like they weren't great. I was just doing it and it was creating this impression. So I think there is even among strong minded, strong willed and even successful people, I think there you can feel a little bit paralyzed or something in the moment. I think this, this bias toward action is the. Is the thing that solves everything.

Yes. Do the bias towards you put that really well, rather bias towards action. That's a Twitter post right there. X. Yeah, but it solves everything. Like you just. There's no mystery. People still think there's a mystery. It's just work works, dude. Like to be cliche, right? Yeah, yeah.

You know what works right now is. Is doing work. Okay, I want to go into a specific topic that I'm sure you're speaking to experienced yourself and you're probably people on as well, which is, you know, all growth is not good growth. What we're looking for is profitable growth. Kind of two layers here and you can take either or both. You can take them in any order you want. But kind of two zones I'm curious about specifically around profitability. One is the team model versus a traditional brokerage. What have you observed about that? And then the other one is like splits versus services. I know there are a lot of different ways to run splits. One of the attractive things about a team I feel like right now is that it tends to provide some of the services that brokerages maybe stopped providing or provide cut back on. Sure. On average. So I know that's a little bit messy, it's a little bit big. But speak about like profitability in a team model versus a traditional brokerage. Thoughts, observations there and then we'll maybe get into splits and services and. Any thoughts and observations you have there.

Great question. I don't get asked this enough. Dude. So thoughtful. Thank you. So thoughtful. Foreign. It's been my experience that when a traditional potential franchise type model, usually old school franchise model. Let's say I went and signed up with any of those couple guys. Right. We don't need to say any names but we, but we all know. Let's go say I go sign up and I'm gonna pop open A franchise. I'm going to be paying them something for mediocre software, right? Like if anything mediocre, like super templated, you know, scalable agent websites where you get to change your phone number and your friggin profile picture and probably not the level of support initially that you want because you still have to worry about the compliance and worry about these things. So I think starting those brokerages franchise model, starting one today, probably wouldn't advise against it in most cases. Now I know there's some nuances where you operate like a team, I'm saying a traditional brokerage, not a team Rich, Right? Not like, not that you're giving leads but if we're doing a team model or a team original model, where now you're talking leads, right? Like now you're talking about the major investment into the business. Now you're talking about getting the best software, not some boilerplate bullshit. You're talking about getting follow up boss. Isn't that what all the top teams use? Last time I checked it was. But you talk, but you talk about getting follow boss. Maybe you talk about ISAs now you talk about training and talk about massive stuff that you need to do to convert. And it's easy to make a profit when the market's like super hot and it always catches people with their pants down. Always, always, always. No matter how many times like you still get, there's still something that you could have canceled a little bit earlier, right? And we were victim of that too. Like for example, we were going fairly hard on billboards in Sacramento. I was the only agent when the market tanked, I said, you know, I'll still go hard. After about a year of that I was, it's not getting any better and I was just really painful. So I'm just going to stop. Which you know, wouldn't have happened. I wouldn't have looked at the profitability so close on that one and that one avenue if we were having great months every month, like terrific 20, 21 months. So what a team leader has to really realize is especially if they want to be out of production, which I think people do and they always have. Always for the wrong reason. Right? I just want to get out of a production. It's like a merit badge. And the reason I can talk about it is because that, because that was me two and a half years into being a realtor. Oh, I need to get up, I'm out. Like are you gonna like, you should really work in the team until and take splits like an agent on your team. Until that money is, until you don't have to do that. Right. Like, that's how you stay really profitable. What's your profit margin? What's your cost of goods sold? And you know, many teams out there don't know their cost of goods sold because they, you know, like. And I, I had a traditional bookkeeper forever. And not to toot my own horn, but our bookkeeper at Reside really open the light about a lot of this stuff because you know, you just get the checks, checks from the brokerage. They're not counting cost of goods sold, but ours do. And like, where's your profit margin? Like, have you thought about that? No, I just don't want to sell any more houses.

Yeah. So there's a couple things in there. Getting a better handle on the business in general, not just the, you know, this is another reason that we can easily say something like GCI doesn't matter. It's like, what are you actually taking home? Like that's, that's the rolled up version of it across a team or a team bridge or a brokerage. But like keeping a better eye on the business, period is one aspect of that. And then the other one too is I think being clear in your own mind what you will never cut back, what you will cut back at some circumstance and what, what should always be kind of like on a, I don't know, like a gas pedal where you could pull back really quickly and you notice the difference right away. I'm thinking about like your, your billboard scenario. So like we need to be responsive to the market, but we don't want to be over responsive. Right. We don't want to like shut everything off and turn off all our software and turn off all our ads just because there's a slowdown in the market. So I think there's like, you just need some clarity within yourself. What are your biggest costs which are going to stay no matter what's going on in the market. And you need to maybe have some financial cushion to.

Yeah.

Breeze through that. And then what can you kind of throttle back on or, or even eliminate and I. That clear. I think those decisions are made emotionally and urgently probably more often than they should be because as you said, everyone gets caught with their pants down, dude.

Like, turn off the brand awareness and go harder on direct response. That's what you should do.

Go into that a little bit more for folks that aren't super clear on the difference.

Yeah, way too jaggedy. Right. Like, so there's this author and coach and speaker. His name is Dan Kennedy. So he has a book called Magnetic Marketing. So don't take it from me. I'm going to do my best to hack my way through this is right, like brand awareness is putting your stuff out there and hoping that somebody will do something right. Like, but brands like it's like a billboard. Hopefully they see my billboard enough times. Whereas direct response is like asking them to fill in their home address right now so I get their information. So when, if you're gonna get back on something, it's advisable in my opinion to cut back on the, on the brand awareness and maybe spend that budget on the direct response. At least you're general, you're guaranteeing something with some type of metrics and KPIs.

Yeah. Really good. And I will add one thing there and I think you'll agree with me. But feel for. I'll stop as soon as I say it and then you can add whatever you want or correct it. But I feel like, you know, when you slow down on that brand spend, whether you put it back in your pocket or whether you devote it to more direct response, when you cut back on that brand spend, some of the communication you might have done around that brand spend as a follow up, just devote it to your own database. Like turn back to the people you already know and you can already communicate with.

Totally. I mean, you know, so right now I've been very, very focused on like just more email engagement. I just, you know, did like eight, eight weeks with like the top digital marketing email coach. I have like on meetings every day about it, at least three hours a week because that's what I see what the big opportunity is. I have 115,000 people in my follow boss account, Ethan, and only 9, 500 are regularly getting emails. And it's driving me bonkers. Right. So like that's, that's an example. Like those people spoke to you once. You still got them, get them back.

Yeah. Or at least look at that, that big gap between, I think you said 115 and 9500. I mean let's just, let's take that other 110,000 people and at least do the work to further qualify or disqualify. Like, oh, I'll never talk to this person again.

Yeah.

Or re. Engage the people that are there. Okay. Two other kind of zones I definitely want to hit before I, before I let you go back into the rest of your afternoon. Splits and services. Anything you have to, to offer at a high level there. What have you seen that never works or what have you seen that's super functional? I know that. Like that, because that's the lever. Like what in this profitability zone, it's like, that's a big piece of it.

Yeah. Like if you want to pay agents in your organization more money, you better be bringing in twice as many new agents. So this, so any of these discussions are a mechanism of you're not fucking recruiting, Right. So outside of that, I mean what's your profit margin? What's your cost of goods sold? You got to get really clear on that because all the numbers add up, right? Like your expenses cannot be 95% of what you're of what your net is. And then you want a 20%, you want a 20% profit margin unless you sell more houses, I mean, and go sell more houses then sound like you're going to need more agents. So that's all a mechanism of the recruiting not happening. That's, I mean, that's how I feel. Like it just comes down to dollars and cents, man. And it's, you know, like if you want massive growth, you're going to spend money on it. Do you have the money?

So I, but what I, I'm putting myself into the seat of someone receiving that question direction practically. My thought goes immediately to, I need to stay small and nimble. I still need to crank like I'm a great agent, I've got some people around me. I'm going to stay small, I'm going to maybe bank what I can and then at some point decide to kind of step on the gas pedal and try to blow through kind of that hard zone of challenging growth. You know, I think you can run a pretty profitable business at, you know, five, six, seven, eight people. But there's a zone past that where you're constantly struggling with, you know, again, the fixed costs of, of hiring staff and support before you can get to the volume play.

I mean I tell people, man, just recruit. Yeah, just recruit.

Okay, so another, another, another way to ask about splits and services in light of all the times recruiting has come up here, our time together, it's, it's how much do you think this matters to the agent? Like what's the magic of recruiting agents like? Because I feel like part of the value prop is somewhere in there. Like, well, you know, you're going to get X for every self generated and you're going to get X minus for every company generated opportunity that you convert. And in order to support your, we have, we do this for you, we do that for you. We have this whenever you need it or want it? Like, I feel like it's part of the recruiting conversation. Or is the recruiting conversation even simpler than that?

Well, the recruiting conversation is much simpler. Okay, Right. Because what somebody's looking for, number one, I mean, many people are 100% financially motivated. Good. Cheers to you guys. Me too. Right. But. But you could always go somewhere else and get a better deal. Yeah, so keep on looking, bro. Right. Like, you can always go somewhere and get a better deal. I think, you know, people come, you know, for experience, for mentorship. Someone can always offer a better. Better leads, better tech, better marketing, better branding. So, you know, I never thought about it that much. I just recruited for myself, and I'm sure many people think about that. But, like, why would you join you. Do you have a compelling reason?

Why would you join you. I love that as a question.

Yeah. Why would he join you? Like, okay, like, when I meet with somebody, that's the first thing I ask him. Like, okay, so why should I join your team?

What I hear in here is that. And by the way, I align with it, if what I'm hearing is correct, and maybe that's why I'm overhearing it. But, you know, the transactional piece of it kind of the details. There are some people that are numbers oriented. There are some people that are financially oriented. There's some people that really want to know the transactional component of it, and that may or may not click for you and that person. They. They may or may not be the right fit. What it's. What I'm really hearing in this is that it's. I don't want to sound too soft, but, like, how you make people feel. Do you make them feel supported, encouraged, motivated? Do you make them feel at home? Do you make them feel like they can be their best self here? And all of that transcends the transactional components of cost benefit.

I mean, case in point. Yes, case in point. I've been spending time this year recruiting more actively myself personally. Like, as I mentioned earlier, I'm really proud of myself that I could say that I'm no longer some coach, you know, white in an ivory tower, right? Like, oh, yeah, I just. Just do this. I'm doing it. And I hired a guy last week, very seasoned agent, and we met, and he signed or he asked for the contract, was ready to sign without discussing money at all. He goes, okay, I'm ready. The guy sold a couple hundred houses in his. In his career. He didn't have the best last year, but it was because hey, you know, like, how's it going? Tell me, what are you looking for? The next real estate organization that you join and let them go. And they're going to tell you. And if someone says, you know, I'm looking for leads, say, great, this is how our lead program works. I ain't lying. I'm all, yeah, we, you know, we have ISA set appointments, we use follow boss. This is what I expect. Any questions about the leads? No. Great. What else is important? Oh, tell me about the training. Well, we got our training person do this and at the end I'm all, you know, any other questions? No, I think you explained it great. What do you think? Give me the paperwork. Do you want to know, do you want to know about, about any of the money? No, I can just look it over. It's fine.

So it really just going back 10 or 15 minutes. I forget when we hit it. But like, it really is a simpler conversation. What are you looking for next? Awesome. We have that. And into the degree that someone wants something that you don't have or that you don't care about or that you don't prioritize.

Yeah, I don't know that. Yeah, no, sorry.

Yeah, give me a minute. On ISAs, what, what do they do? Like, when did you add that layer as a function and what do they always do and what, what don't they do and that. And what I want there is like, do you have ISAs doing something that might surprise somebody? Because I think most people think of them as when new leads come in, they follow up. Do you have them doing other things besides that? So speak to the ISA function. When should someone be thinking about adding it to their organization? And what are like kind of some of the zones of activities that they can cover on behalf of agents to keep agents more productive?

Great question. I was hoping you would come up. Another one. My favorite things. So we talked about recruiting emails and ISAs. We're. We're doing good, Ethan. Good. All my favorite stuff. So, you know, I brought in ISAs in 2021 for the same reason that anybody really brings them in is because they get exhausted of chasing people to. Chasing independent contractors to do something. Right? And that's called the leads. And you know, I'm sure everybody wants to, but people get distracted. That's the nature of being an independent contractor and feel like, like real estate. And there's other ways to get around that. I was just, we were having a really great year, so why not do some growth, right? And so I brought in two local ISAs. And you know, at the time I had some VAs and I brought in some VAs to help them out, you know, you know, follow up with the agents to update leads at this time to update premier agent manually because that was never happening. It was when Flex just first came out. We were the first flex team in NorCal. So it was when it just first came out I really wanted to update the portal. Right? And I was asking the terrific agents on my team to update two sites. Like no one was doing that, right? Like, come on, no matter what, no matter what strategy. Everyone said, well, you just tell them this. No, no one's gonna do that. Have them do it in one. Okay, problem solved. Anyhow. And really quickly I was all, well, let's just pour a lot of gas on this. So we grew it really big locally in the US and internationally. We grew it really big in the Philippines and really, you know, you know, we hired three people. It's not really anything but more than anybody else ever met. Three Egyptians, which was three Egyptian VAs, Mexico we hired from there and the department got really big. And you, you know, as the market has slowed down, I really chop graded and a lot of people were checking off a box and a lot of people were busting their ass. So I got rid of the people. One of our managers got poached and that's okay because she's great and so is he. And I saw him at the club conference and he's a buddy. So all good. He didn't even know, of course. Right. Some headhunter that he paid. All good. So she got poached and you know, one of the managers like was wasted at 11am one day. One of the managers like send somebody, send an agent an inappropriate part, inappropriate photo of a private part. So there's a lot of rogues in the isa and now we're down to six in the Philippines who've been with me for three years and one in Sacramento. And the performance is very good. What do they do? They have opportunities on all new inbound leads. They follow up with agents, they follow up with other lists that I have. They call, for example, expireds, FSBOs, any kind of data, Basically any kind of list I can get, I send over to them to call. They'll call on follow up for my course stuff. So I just have a real good international phone sales team and leveraging the Philippines and just really good people there. It's, it's lights out. I'm happy as hell.

What are the characteristics like just. And we don't need to get like super detailed. This is like kind of like a one follow up layer. Question, when does an ISA hand an opportunity off to an agent? Like when you know from the new lead perspective, like what needs to happen in your system for, for an ISA to say, okay, I've done my job here, now I'm handing them over to an agent. Like what is, is it an appointment set? Do they do everything up to that moment or is there like what is the handoff point?

I want the handoff point really early because it'll give us more opportunities. The friction always comes in that initial conversation. Right. We do a lot of live transfers. They'll get somebody on the phone, see if they want to talk to an agent, then do a live transfer through the follow up boss number. Right. It works great. And are a phone appointment, in person appointment. I mean I think our average met rate is 70 something. So it's, you know, it's taken out a lot of friction because otherwise I'd be waking up pissed seeing leads come in and wondering if anybody's going to call it. I didn't want to do that anymore. We have plenty of teams and reside and Preston also like they don't leverage that piece as much anymore. My piece is mostly overseas. They're highly trained and I'm very happy to go.

Awesome, thanks for all that. One last question here before we go to some of my fun closers for you. I'm super curious to hear your take.

On.

What would you say to an agent? Because in having these conversations and I've done dozens of them now, but I'm still early in it. I'm not a practitioner like you, although I'm surveying the scene kind of to the degree that you're kind of coaching and surveying the scene as well. Yeah, a lot longer. I've come to the observation that there are tens of thousands, if not maybe even a couple hundred thousand agents in North America who should be giving serious consideration to the team, to the team model at joining a team as an agent, not even starting a team, but like that the value prop is super compelling and they're getting hung up on a few key issues like splits or whose brand is it or you know, some of these other types of things. How are you communicating or what would you say to an agent to provoke their curiosity in the team model or if you have someone that you've maybe attempted to recruit that's really getting hung up on this, how do you kind of coach them through that or kind of ask them questions to, to turn them on or open them up or to determine whether or not a team model is even right for them.

I believe like it sounds, you do that the team is the best option. You're not going to get as much support or resources in any unless the team rich right team option is the best. And let me ask any listeners, viewers who maybe get hung up with something like would you rather have what is it a bite of like a pee or a bite of a watermelon. Right, like which one? So you're going to be getting so many more opportunities from a team, any good team. And if you don't and if you can't find a good one, like look a little bit harder. Right. Like something that I'm very proud of myself about for doing early on it worked for me was I didn't call my team the City Daggerwall team and I never had it that way. And I started it with SOI splits similar to other, you know, traditional brokerages in my market. I was able to do that by having 100 layer there and that helped our growth. So there's other teams like this team of ridges in your market. Find somebody, make sure they're using follow box that they're probably doing it right then and just be open minded. I mean it could be your career on the line and your stubbornness keeping you out of making money straight up.

Yeah, really good. Appreciate that. And this most importantly the call here is interview some team leaders, talk to some people and there's going to be, there's going to be a good fit and there's going to be some not great fits and but it's, it's there to discover. And it's not only more money, the other thing I hear a lot too is like better lifestyle, better backup, more consistency, things like ISA teams to support you so that you could focus on the activities that you enjoy the most and they're most profitable for you.

Yeah, I mean I just, you know, money speaks to so many people. I just start there. What do you want to bite of, dude? And they're all, well, you put it like that and then yeah, yeah, I.

Mean I, I immediately thought, well, I'll save watermelon. This has been great. I look forward to the next time we connect in person. I was really glad we were able to connect in Austin just a couple of months ago. A few fun pairs of questions and you only need to answer one or the other. And the first one is what is your very favorite team to root for besides your own real estate team? Or what is the best team you've ever been a member of?

This team I've ever been a part of. Okay, I know the answer. The best team I've been a part of so far is Reside. Like working with other great minds and super accomplished people is like incredible awesome.

And we'll link up Reside in the if you're watching this on YouTube, it's down below. If you're listening to your podcast player, it's down below in the description of the episode. And if you want to check it out at real estate team OS.com we write up all these episodes. The link there will be there too. And it is a fantastic team. I love what you guys are doing. What is one of your most frivolous purchases? Or what's a cheapskate habit that you have held on to even though you probably don't need to?

I mean, so this is frivolous. This was frivolous. I was with DJ in Nashville. We were hanging out Gary that same later that day and I bought this. I don't even like this one. I like this one. And this does not make me feel as bad as this. I'm like, oh shit man. But yeah, it's awesome.

For folks who are in your podcast app, he's got a bunch of guitars hanging on the wall and one of them he regards as frivolous. Last one here, Cindy. What does it look like for you to invest in learning, growing and developing? Like, what does that look like? What are you doing? Or. Or what does it look like for you to rest, relax and recharge?

I am all in on learning and coaching and I spend a bunch of energy, a bunch of time, read a bunch of books, belong to a bunch of masterminds, take a bunch of courses, have a bunch of coaches. I see that already. So yes, I'm all in. And two, and I'll answer both is I recently got a PlayStation 5 and I love playing Diablo and Slay Monsters. All my friends know. I won't quit talking about it. It's very relaxing. Yeah. Playing video games. Dungeon crawler video games. That's awesome.

I do not know that one. I'm not like a big video gamer. I told myself this lie like years ago. Like I've outgrown that. And I don't think. I don't think I really have.

I told myself that too. Then I got a PS5 and I went to Target looking for some toothpaste.

And bro came out with like, did you find everything you're looking for today? Like, yeah. Plus this PS5. It's funny, they always, yeah, they always ask that question everything like, yeah, plus this thing.

Yeah, hurry up.

Right?

Like, how am I gonna tell my wife I brought home a video game system? She's all, what's this? Yeah.

Awesome. I appreciate you so much, Sunit. This was super fun. If folks have reached this point in the conversation, they may want to reach out to you. They may want to connect with you or some places you'd send them.

Yeah. Sunit Agarwal S U N E E T A G A R W a l sunit agrawal.com Sunit Agarwal916 on Instagram. Yeah, hit me up. I got a bunch of free resources on my website and on my Instagram, so go out there and grab my free stuff.

Awesome. As mentioned before, it's down below wherever you are watching or listening. Sunit, I appreciate you and I hope you have a great rest of your afternoon.

You too. Thank you so much, man.

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