019 Building Your Real Estate Practice by Vertical with Mike Heddle

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 Mike Hedle. A few fun facts before we get started. Among his many sales and performance awards is lifetime member of the Royal LePage Award of Excellence, the company's highest award, as well as the A.E. lePage National Realtor of the Year, which is based on productivity, leadership, engagement with the brand and embodiment of the company's mantra, helping you is what we do. Some have called Mike the doctor of real estate in part because he grew up in a medical family among third generation physicians. And we were kindly introduced by an earlier guest on the show, Kathleen Black. Thank you so much for talking Team OS today, Mike.

That's awesome. Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to chatting with you today.

Yeah, me too. We're going to kick it off where we always do, which is a must have characteristic of a high performing team. When I ask for that, what comes to mind for you?

Yeah, I love this question and I know that you ask it quite commonly and I've watched how some of your guests have been exceptional in their answer. And I'm going to say there's a few things I don't know that I can pick one single asset or characteristic. I think it starts in my mind, it starts with, you know, effective leadership, you know, whether it's a sports team or you know, the Navy Seals, the highest performance team. I think it really starts with leadership and that follows with like a clear vision, you know, a mission or understanding of the group or the team, the organization. And then of course, you know, values, core values I think need to be aligned, you know, within the personnel, within that team. I put a lot of thought into this question because to me it's not a single single answer. Approach, I think, you know, drive and hard work and determination. I've never seen any successful team that doesn't, you know, embrace that hard work and desire or drive to win. You know, I think you've got to have strong systems to ensure both efficiency and, you know, productivity. We're, we're a small team, but we produce, you know, very on a per capita in real estate, quite high. So, you know, the systems, whether that's a hockey team, as a Canadian, we often think and defer to hockey but you know, showing up for practice and that leads to, you know, the next example or the next characteristic characteristic, which I think is accountability. You know, you've got to be accountability to your teammates, accountable, accountable to your, to your leader. And that's kind of the bottom up, but also it's a top down. The leader has to be accountable to his troops. And maybe we'll talk a little bit about some of my leadership style, which also leads into kind of. I think the last characteristic which I love is culture. I've never seen any winning or exceptional or highly productive team that doesn't have a great culture. And in sports you often see the Cinderella story, not the favorite win. You know, that that effective team just has such a wonderful culture within it. And I'll chat a little bit about how we try to handle that culture. I think, you know, to tie all of this together, you know, leadership, we've. I've flipped that leadership organizational chart upside down where I believe that my leadership style is for me to get up every day and make the phone ring for, for my team and my sales partner. And when I show our organizational chart, I put myself on the bottom and, and then I've surrounded myself with a great foundation of administrative and operations and a marketing team. And I think of it similar to that of a bee apiary, where we're hardworking and data driven and we help one another when somebody needs help. And that bee apiary approach isn't linear, it's three dimensional. And the queen bee is often kind of at the base of that. So long winded answer to I think what often perceived as a general question but to be high performance. I don't think there's, in my opinion there's one attribute or one characteristic.

Really well done. You covered all of the bases. I've, I've heard each one of those answers and certainly, you know, everyone has. Some people feel committed to the, to the actual exact question, as it stated, and so they only go to one. But you really painted a very comprehensive picture and I want to double back into kind of leadership off the top. You know, because you mentioned sports teams or the Navy Seals or, or a group like that. You know, typically in that case, there's one mission I'd love for you to go one layer deeper. I think culture might speak to some of this. You talked to quite a bit about teamwork and supporting one another, your own role as the leader. So I think I'm just curious to hear you speak to in particular the idea that, yes, as a real estate Team. We may have a collective sales goal, but kind of also at the same time, what matters most to me is that I'm hitting my goal in service of that bigger goal. So, like, you know, you know, we've certainly seen some athletes kind of go off the end and they're really more concerned about their own statistics than the team results. I could name a couple off the top of my head right now, but you know, obviously when it's clicking, both of those are happening. Like, I feel like I'm succeeding relative to my own goals and my own production and my own, you know, measure of success for myself in service of and aligned with the team. But real estate has that kind of characteristic where it actually is meaningful for you to achieve your own goal.

Yeah, we spent some. I've been in the business for about 20 years and I'm sure we'll talk about my journey. And as team kind of started to form, I think that was a really interesting approach to building an organization, is having a very clear and concise mission. You know, where are we headed? What's our North Star? You know, and for us is to deliver a five star experience when buying, selling or investing in real estate worth telling friends and family about. And that kind of ties into that. That component that you talked about, it's not just, you know, sell 500 homes a year or specialize in luxury real estate. To me it's. It's putting the client first. Um, and, and I grew up in a family of physicians. You talked about this and, and I sometimes speak to this. Cause it was a pretty unique upbringing. Like we, like many of us have, unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for me, you know, it was very stable environment, two working professionals. You know, I don't know that I've got any stories about my journey that, you know, are coming up from, you know, real challenges. And you know, that is very, very fortunate. And sometimes that's perceived as perhaps privilege. You know, over the years I've had people come and say, you know, you're just so lucky, you know, to which I kind of respond like, why? And they said, well, your father was a plastic surgeon and your grandfather was a doctor. And I fail to understand the correlation to being successful in selling real estate with, with that foundation. But, you know, I think it's, it's perception. So, you know, mission is really important. And to kind of come back to your question there, having a clear vision and that North Star, as you start to collect a group of people is vital. Making sure that, you know, when challenges present themselves or you know, when there's questions, you know, tougher markets, that we always go back to what it is that our mission is. And as we went through that, that exercise as a team, I think we also pulled something or extracted, like, what are our core values? And I loved this exercise. We did it probably about 15 years ago where collectively all members kind of said like, what does it mean to be a part of heddle Real Estate? And. And we just kind of brainstormed and threw all of these words out onto the wall and. And then I kind of picked them all up and put them together in. In what I felt like five values are. And they're things like, you know, having a strong foundation to tie this into housing. You know, the strong foundation starts with, like, relationships, having strong relationships with one another and with our clients, and strong, effective communication, you know, amongst one another and to our clients. I talk about kind of our heartbeat. The middle of our core value is one of giving back. And it kind of reads like we give more than we take in all aspects of our life. It's how we're perceived individually and, and collectively as a team. And I love that as my favorite core value. We do a lot of charitable functions. I always try to lead on the side of generous and to tie this back into that upbringing in medicine, I've never saved anybody's life. When there was a phone call in my household at midnight, it wasn't because somebody wanted to buy the house of their dreams or they were in a tough negotiation. It's because a child had been attacked by a dog and their face had been bitten, or somebody's wife was in a bad fire and had third degree bur burns over all of her entire body, or somebody's husband or father had cut his hand off with a reciprocating saw. And so they were really, really important life events. And I think I've tried to keep that humility and humbleness in what we do in terms of selling real estate. Should be all about the client journey and the process. And I'll often say I see a number one on every billboard I drive past. There's a number realtor in every market, and we're also number one. But I've never saved anybody's life yet. And when I do, because I believe I'm going to have that opportunity, I'm going to be really important, I'm going to be number one to that person. And I think that's kind of helped this, I don't know, overarching kind of tone to the way we take selling real estate. So those are those three values. And then at Pinnacle, we get great results and excellence. So, you know, back to kind of the point there. As a leader, you know, I think it's. It's really important to have the team have, you know, collective visions or a mission, but also to have people amongst the team that align with your core values and that really contributes to culture.

Yeah, I think that sets the expectation before probably even a recruiting conversation, should that even come up. It's just the norm. I. Folks that have spoken in similar clarity and passion specifically around values and what drives us and attracting people in general have heard us. They don't need to do any recruiting because their reputation being on the other side of all these transactions, it kind of comes off in the experience. And so people know who you are and what you're about. And those conversations don't need to be solicited. They actually come to you. Has that been your experience?

You know, it certainly has. I mean, I think, you know, I'll often say you should, you should hire our team because you trust us, number one, and we're competent, number two, we're really good at what we do. But, you know, I guess to that point of having aligned values in a group of people, like, imagine a sports team that had, you know, a rotten egg, right? Somebody that doesn't show up for practice and is so great that they don't feel they have to contribute. I found myself, you know, running a team where I didn't like the people and their character and it was awful. You know, I didn't want to go into the office because I didn't enjoy some of the personalities or characters that were in the team. And you can imagine how dangerous or impactful that was on culture. So, you know, I think having fun, it doesn't feel like a job. You hear that often, like, enjoy what you do. You know, I love what I do. It doesn't feel like work. My daughters will often say, like, you know, you're. That was work today, what you got to do. You know, it doesn't feel like work a lot of days, but there are other days where certainly it does. It's, you know, high stress, high pace environment. But I think that culture component is really important.

Yeah, absolutely. And I hear you on that. I. I've been in an experience myself where I looked around a meeting that I was in and I was like, gosh, you know, I. I don't know that I feel like I belong here anymore. And part of it, like, fun is that Fun is the super upside. I think at a. At a minimum, you want this mutual respect, right? Like, we may not like, click in like a really highly social way. We may not be best friends or even have that potential. But as long as there's this mutual respect, like, I have a lot of positive things to say about this person, even if I don't want to, like, go on a ski trip with them.

Like.

Like that's where it starts in my experience.

Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, you see when you get to a. And we're not a big team, you know, in terms of staffing and personnel.

Yeah, yeah, sorry, go into that a minute. Like, share a little bit about your team. We've talked a bit about culture, but like size, location, kind of how you're structured.

Yeah, yep. So we're based. I know probably a lot of your audience is North American and perhaps us. So we're based in Canada. And if you look at a map of Canada, you see the Great Lakes and one of those lakes which. One of our large provinces of Ontario. We're right at the western part of Lake Ontario in a town called Hamilton. So it's a very unique area. It's highly densely populated. We're just outside of Toronto, about an hour outside of Toronto. And we serve a large geography, you know, kind of around that western part of Lake Ontario. The team, as it stands today, consists of seven licensed agents, myself included, and three administrators. I call them the A team. So, you know, whether you want to take that as like an all star team, you know, we refer to them as the A team. And one's involved or in charge of operations, one, you know, coordinates all the administrative functions. And then we have a marketing personnel and staff. So, you know, that really, I think is. Is the foundation. We've seen sales partners, you know, come and go over the, over the years. And you know, we do have a good group. A couple of my sales partners, in fact, one of them, Shauna, my senior sales partner, has been with me since the inception of Team and team for me was kind of a byproduct of. Of necessity. I just had too much opportunity on my plate that I recognized I wasn't, I wasn't servicing the clients the way I'd intended or the way I had. Had started in the business. So, so for, for me, team was really just a byproduct of necessity, of. Of opportunity over the years. I mean, I could, you know, when you, when you're talking about somebody's journey, I could go on and on and on. So interrupt me if I.

Okay, so how about this? What was going on in that moment? Like what was going on in your business? I assume that it was like a lead gen situation or maybe a partnership had come along. I've heard that story sometimes. But like what was going on where you had so much in front of you that it was like, I'm starting to let people down and that's not okay for my long term reputation, so I need to bring some people alongside me. So like what was going on in that moment for you and your business where you're like, I need to build something around this to support it or was it even. Next right step, next right step. Oh, look, I have a team.

Yeah, yeah, I'll share kind of the way I, you know, I, I remember this and I tell this cute story from stage that, you know, I got my real estate license like everybody in the province does and they're hungry and they think they're going to go out and make a fortune. And you come into the office and back then, you know, bricks and mortar, you saw a lot of people sitting around. You saw some people just waiting for the phone to ring. And I think it was, I think it was Thanksgiving that my sister and I were visiting my folks is last time. I remember having a nap, but I had a nap one afternoon and my phone rang and this was my first real estate call on the, you know, I jumped out of that nap and on the other end of the line kind of heard somebody say like, is this my kettle? To which I replied, yes, you know, yes it is. How can I help you? And they said, I'm looking to buy a home. And like I just lit up inside like I had no idea what to do next. I scrambled to grab a notepad only to hear my little sister on the other end of the line burst into laughter and say, get downstairs butthead, it's time for dinner.

Oh no.

I'll never forget that point. It was awful. And I've never gotten her back for it. But she taught me a lesson that no matter how hard I stare at this phone, it's not gonna ring, right? No matter, you know. So my mind went to a point of creating relationships. And in Hamilton we've got one of the power medical research centers in, in Canada, Hamilton Health Sciences. It's one of, it's world renowned for attracting top research, fantastic physicians. And because I had the, the ability to open a door, I sat down with the dean of medicine and said, let me help put a recruitment program in place. I want to help you showcase that Hamilton's not just a steel town. We've got these amazing outlier communities. And that was the first vertical that I put in my practice was the phone started to ring because, you know, I proposed a value proposition that was, that they'd never seen before. Nobody had ever thought of, of helping attract and landing these recruits. And it was fun. We had people coming from New Zealand and Italy and Germany, all over the world, you know, to consider working in Hamilton. And they were competing with, attracting these people with, you know, versus like Miami or, you know, Australia. And so we had to really showcase, you know, some of the strong value of not only the job opportunity, but the community. So, so that first vertical was, was really pivotal, I think in, you know, creating a relationship or a vertical business that just makes the phone ring. And, and I think the second vertical was, you know, I started to become a higher producer and a builder. A fantastic, very reputable family based builder, third generation builder in Hamilton approached me and said, Mike, I love what you're doing. You know, we'd love to have you help represent us. And I think I was pretty naive. I, you know, I kind of told him, like, can you give me a week to think about it? And you know, this, this poor builder, I think he probably almost fell off his chair thinking like, who the heck is this guy? But I wanted to make sure if I was in that, that I was all in. And I think that was the pivotal moment for me to, to know that I had future revenue. You know, I had. We were selling projects that were closing two years, three years out. And that gave me the confidence to hire my first, who is now my senior sales partner. But Shauna, one of my partners that, you know, was right out of university, she, you know, started in an administrative role. So for me, the first hire was administration. And she is exceptional. She is, you know, strong academic background. It wasn't long, you know, before I realized I had to move her into a sales role as well.

So from that path, just for, you know, for someone who is at that stage, no matter how the opportunities have been created, they're trying to decide, you know, I look, I feel like I have a really good growth opportunity in front of me over the next 12 to 24 months. You know, from there, you said first hire as admin. You said now you have seven sales folks, including yourself and three admin.

Yeah.

What, what is that order of. What was the order of sequence? Was it just again, next right step or did you have a plan for like, okay, when we get here, I probably need to turn over the marketing responsibilities or we need to step our marketing game up. Like how did you approach that and. Or how are you advising other people that are maybe, you know, a few steps behind your journey? Because I know you engage and connect with all kinds of folks at all stages of your journey.

It's a great question and thank you for putting me on a pedestal to kind of suggest that I know what I'm doing and that I've done it right. And I think that hard work back to some of those original characteristics. I'll share my journey. And I think that I wish I could say I was intentional and methodical and I studied engineering and economics and commerce. So I'm a real data driven mindset and very planned, very thoughtful. But my journey was to start with administrative bring on, you know, a couple of sales partners and to the point in which we kind of really stress test that foundation. We put so much pressure on that administrator. We got to a point where there was three of us selling and Spencer was processing 140 transactions a year, you know, for only three agents. Like we, she was working at a capacity of 120 or 140%. So, you know, we then moved into marketing. You know, that was kind of the next evolution, finding somebody to handle, you know, and you got to remember 20 years ago, like social media, not that we've got an exceptional social media presence, but you know, social media was, was, has really come into play. I think as I'll pause there on the growth plan and I'll share a little bit more about these verticals because I think for.

That's exactly where we wanted to go next. Anyway, you already introduced the medical partnership, you already introduced the builder partnership.

Yeah.

Share a couple more of the verticals that you ended up building around.

I think that's something that, as I speak with other top performance teams or individual agents, it's something that we've done very uniquely and I'm very proud of because it makes our phone ring off the hook. We don't buy any leads. We inbound, I don't know, about 120 to 140 organic leads a month. And these are through like referral partners. So number one was a physician's new medical community. They spoke the same language. I knew what they were looking for when the lifestyle that they grew up. The second was the builder component, which was vital because back then I thought you're either a resale agent or you're selling a new home sales agent. And I think we are one of the first in our marketplace to really cross the threshold on both and do both really, really well. The third relationship that, that we built was, you know, the hockey analogy. Much like, like Wayne Greg, she always found himself to be at the right place at the right time, you know, but he would, he would, as a lad he would draw where the puck went on the ice. And I think he probably developed some muscle memory or at least subconscious memory as to, to where to be. And I, I would translate that. You know, that was kind of our same, it didn't fall in my lap. I found myself in the right place, I at the right time through a lot of hard work and we developed a relationship with what's now become Canada's largest real estate investment network. They have about 300,000 active members. They subscribe to be a part of this membership. But I can remember back in those days we had rooms of 60 investors. We would spend three days at workshops teaching people how to invest in real estate and specifically about how to win in the Hamilton market. And that vertical just really, really took off. It represents about a third of what we do today. So we do about 300 transactions a year and a third of them or a hundred of them are involved in income producing investment real estate, primarily multi residential. So that's a vertical I think we should come back to because I think.

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A lot of value, you know, surrounding how we, how we grew that tier.

Because it's the kind of thing most people could probably do in their market.

I think you know there's that's one is most people can probably incorporate it. You know that Vertical into their practice. Number two is the best from a business standpoint. You know, if I do my job really well and I sell you your dream home, I might not see you for 15 or 20 years. Yeah. But if I do a job really well and sell you a great revenue producing or income property, you could be back next month. That's right. Bang on. So the, it's a lot of work condensed, but you get a lot more, you know, not even turnover acquisition or you know, over a long lifespan you get some disposition of those assets. So that's, that's a great vertical that, you know, we've really become known nationally as, as, you know, one of the, I guess, forefront teams that take a consultant's approach around, around, you know, advising. And I want to talk about. Let's come back to that. Okay.

Because to that vertical end of the language of consulting and advising, I think that that's super important. More vertical. More vertical.

Yep, yep. It was in 2015, I guess it was. I was so busy in the practice, I had Sean as an administrator and one other sales partner and, and my broker came to me and said like, congratulations, you've made it your, your, you know, top 1% of realtors in the country. To which, you know, my reply was great, like, do I get a cash prize? Like I didn't care. I, you know, I've never saved somebody's life. And he said, no, you get invited to this retreat and up until that point in my career I'd spent zero time networking, zero time, you know, speaking or giving back, aside from helping other agents out within, within the brokerage. And Royal LePage, which is the country's largest real estate brokerage, from a staffing personnel standpoint, has really kind of attracted this, this amazing group of individuals through, you know, their top 1% club or their chairman's club. And every year they invite the top 1 percenters to a retreat. And that this particular year the retreat was in Italy. And you know, so I was at a point in my career where, you know, I hadn't seen anybody in my marketplace that I thought was doing an exceptional job on team. It was a lot of ego driven team, all about the team leader. So I decided that I was going to get out of my comfort zone, hop on a plane and land in Italy with 100 strangers I'd never met. And that was a pivotal point in my practice because I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know if I was going to expect Eagle. I didn't know if I was going to expect any mind share. My hope was that I could model, you know, some best practices that some of these other top teams or top individuals were, were utilizing within their practice. And that was like that moment to get on that flight was game changer. It was like, you know, you hear the analogies of kind of like if you have a 1% shift in your direction, like five years, 10 years out, that was like a 10% shift that moment like just from the mind share. And I like people, I get along with people. I began to network with these other powerhouses and that created the fourth vertical which was a huge referral based system. So across the country the top 1% refer to the top 1% within kind of our region near Toronto, which is the largest city in the country. We see this migrating trends. Everybody's sprawling out of Toronto and we're about now outside of Toronto. And the recent trends over the last decade we've seen is people driving until they qualify and you know, being referred out of Toronto. And 80% of this, the chairmans, the top 1 percenters reside in Toronto. So again, I wish I could say I was strategic. I wish I could say that my intent was to go and meet all these people and rub shoulders. That wasn't any of it. I just knew I was in a place where, you know, I wanted to see what some of the effective brokers were doing. And one of the unique things I think within this company everybody's willing to share, you know, we give one another our playbooks on, you know, how we're doing certain things, whether it's hiring or firing. And that's really kind of unique and also neat. So that fourth vertical there is referrals. We spend about, I don't know, last year we spent about $300,000 in referral fees. So you won't drive through the city of Hamilton and see any billboards or what I would call EGO Inc. We, we pay, you know, this operational cost or marketing cost in the form of a referral, which is also a variable cost. I'll take that variable cost any day of the week over a fixed card cost of, you know, maybe billboards or whatever other strategy you might look at.

So it's the four verticals are your primary verticals?

Yeah, well the fourth I would call like center of influence resale business, you know, kind of what we all do. What we all do. So those, those four pillars or four verticals, you know, have really created, you know, I would call it a unique business certainly within our area, you know, and, and they're able to keep marketing costs down. You know, we certainly, you know, do some other unique stuff. And I think it's probably worth coming back to that investment component because.

Absolutely it is. Yeah, please.

Yeah. One of the big kind of growth, growth moments in the career, going from, I don't know, 50 or 60 units, you know, a year to 200 units a year. You know, my partner, my senior partner, Sean and I would spend weekends every, probably about nine weekends a year speaking to the country's largest investment network and teaching people how to invest and what to look for, you know, when analyzing cash flowing properties. And not a get rich quick like what I would call a consultant's approach, much like what I would expect my financial advisor to give me is the same approach that we take on assisting people in building generational wealth through real estate. And after about the third or fourth year of really kind of being involved in this network and growing the practice and I find that during holiday season my mind gets quite creative. I came up with the idea of delivering an opportunity on a silver platter. And I'm going to use an analogy that was shared with me that I loved. If I had you into my home and we were sitting in my den and I said, they feel like a chocolate cookie. I've got one of those tubes in the fridge and I could go put some cookies in the oven for us, you'd likely say, no, Mike, don't worry about it. But if I walked into the room with a fresh smell of a warm chocolate chip cookie on a plate, you'd probably find it pretty irresistible. And we took that analogy and we adopted it into what we call now is our weekly deal of the week. So each week we put out to a large database. We're probably up to about 15 or 16,000 organic. Like these aren't, you know, we didn't acquire them. They've been either referred or in front of them. We put out the best investment properties in the markets that we represent. Hamilton, Brantford and St. Catharines. And we break down the Performa in a real easy language that doesn't use terminology like our industry does, like cap rates and payback periods and all this stuff that's way over everybody's head. We break it down simply to how is this investment performing.

So it's essentially this is the upfront, this is the monthly, and this is the monthly return.

Yeah, we break it down into kind of what I call the four fundamentals. So cash flow, like on the equity investment, 20% down plus closing costs, how much Is that property yielding in cash flow. So that's fundamental number one. Fundamental number two is principal recapture. So how much principal is being paid down by a tenant. And then fundamental number three or four are appreciation. And we can get that from one of two ways, either forcing some appreciation, renovating, putting in a kitchen, adding another unit, or passive appreciation, appreciation over the long term. And, you know, I was quite excited about the, the concept and we started rolling it out and we went through a period of 22 weeks in a row. We sold that property on Friday when we put it out to our database and, and Sean and I knew we were on onto something golden. And, and I still speak about this, this mechanism today because we, we probably have the largest database within the country. We actually often share it with other Realtors in other markets because I would say, like, don't reinvent the wheel. Don't go out and try and figure out how to do it on your own. Like, subscribe to our deal of the week, it's free. And model what we've done and take a snippet of it and incorporate that into your practice. And a couple of real key components that we've had success with anyways are consistency, like it's got to go out every single Friday no matter what. So when I speak to it, I've spoken about it in some agent circles and I'll have somebody raise their hand and say, like, Mike, I've been getting that for five years and I love it. And you know, they might just be watching our market. It could be a market intelligence tool, but it really, I think, is one of the most, I don't know, one of the strongest value propositions that we put, you know, to prospective clients and certainly to our clients. And I'm going to just throw it out there because I know you've got a big stuff subscribership, like model what I'm doing. If you go to www.dotw.ca dealoftheweek CA, we're in Canada. Just subscribe to it and incorporate that into your practice. It's one of the easiest things that you can do that delivers exceptional value to a client base.

It's fantastic. I just think about, I assume there are a number of realtors who might even want to invest in your market from afar.

Yeah, it was actually quite exciting because, you know, as we get to Toronto or Epicenter, one of the country's, you know, mega markets or the mega market in the country, there were many properties that weren't cash flowing or good investment properties and we started to Take that vertical to a point. If I go around to top teams and have them pull their high net worth individuals and we'd speak about what's going on in kind of the economy and how just an hour down the road there are great investment properties and you don't have to invest in Nicaragua or Panama to get great investment opportunities. In real estate, there are some just an hour down to 401. And we created these real strong referral partnerships. And in fact I, I wish I was on the reciprocal, the other end of the referral. I remind people, like that five minute phone call is the best yield or ROI in this business. If I can refer a client out to you and yield a 25 referral fee, that's the best use of my time, you know, not receiving. And, and so, you know, we love paying that referral fee. We have clients that rely on it as a residual. We always protect, you know, the source of where that business came from. So it's something that's been really exciting to see how it's grown. And I guess we got such a head start almost 15 years ago with doing this that I have no fear that even if you're a competitor in my marketplace, you'll never catch me. We've got such a head start on you that you'd never catch up to us. So that's part of the reason we lead with so much value and just say copy it, mirror it, mimic it, incorporate it into your practice, I think is what a really important, you know, piece of, of treating this practice as, as a consultant.

Yeah, really good. Okay. Stepping back out on verticals a little bit. Essentially my question is, do your sales team members or your sales partners, do they specialize by vertical in, in the, and I want to ask it like with, with another layer of detail here. So you know, you had the idea and you built the relationship and you started, started this referral program with the medical center or like, you know, this deal where you're going to introduce the market and talk about price points, kind of sell the value of the community and then in the end hopefully, you know, sell a physician a home or, or a medical researcher or whatever these different roles are. So you built that relationship, you got really good at it. But I assume that in really developing these other verticals that required a fair amount of your time and attention. And so like, did you hand that vertical over to like a primary point person or does everyone get like one fifth of each vertical? Talk a little bit about that because I can see benefits both ways. But My tendency would be toward kind of like the specialization in the relationships, but I could be totally wrong.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great, great point. I mean, you take 20 years worth of figuring things out and not having a roadmap and, and I guess that upbringing for me, you know, really set a tone as to. I call it taking a consultant's approach in selling real estate. You know, if we have a new sales partner join us and I always use the language partner for a number of reasons. You know, nobody wants to work with a buyer's agent or, you know, an assistant. You know, it empowers the partner in the field, it empowers the relationship or the. You called it a handoff. And I think that language is really, really important. So we call all of our salespeople partners. You heard me refer to them maybe as a senior partner. That's just based on time or experience. I think they've got to be a specialist in the discipline. So, you know, if I went to my GP and I was having a problem with, you know, my spine, I certainly would want to make sure that he refers me to a specialist within, you know, that, that, that person kind of micro area of specialty. So, you know, Absolutely. Sue, one of our new home reps, had had new home experience. You know, Shauna grew with me in that investment space. She manages or handles kind of the, the investment division amongst the team. And as we bring on partners that have an interest and certainly have the skill set, you know, to convey and put the clients, you know, needs first, you know, they go through some training, they get involved in, you know, mentorship, but also exposure to, you know, advising. So we take that more specialist approach, you know, to tie into one of the things I love about the CRM, which is, which is, of course, follow up boss. We've got the ability to, to create these pools or round robins, depending on the specialty. So, for example, a new home site, lead comes in, it goes to the new home team, an investor comes into the system, it's distributed to the, to the investment team. So we really kind of have built out the practice with the systems. We talked about that at the beginning to ensure that, you know, effective communication. We've got proper lead distribution and most importantly, the client is serviced appropriately. I use the analogy often. So you talked about the handoff and that's one of the tough things to do when, you know, team for me came out of being a mega producer individually. And with that, I don't know that it was ego, but it's easy in Our practice to go like, nobody can do it as well as I can. And we're not performing brain surgery or reconstructive surgery. My father was one of the first in the 70s to do a hand transplant in the country. There were textbooks written about this. Very few humans at that time could perform this type of surgery. Negotiating and buying and selling of real estate. I fail to see that it's such a unique skill set that not anybody or everybody could do it. So often that was tough for me to have that handoff and make sure the standard of service was delivered. Number one, make sure it didn't feel like bait and switch to the client. Like, hey, call me, and now you're working with somebody else. So the way that we leverage the A team is much like that of my financial advisor. If I call my advisor and I just need to see how much I contributed last year to in Canada, we call it registered funds or it might be a 401k in the US I don't need to speak to my financial advisor. His staff can get me an answer much quicker. And I often translate it back to medicine because it was my upbringing and, you know, one of those verticals. I'll use an analogy like, I'm the surgeon. I'm here to assess and to triage. And you're going to get to work with my nurses because they've got way better bedside manner than I do. They can respond quicker, they're kinder, you know, all of these great features. And they know way more than I do about that neighborhood or that market. Like, Shauna's in the field all the time. Shauna knows way more than I do about that market. Like, whether she does or doesn't. That language is so empowering, number one, to the partner. And number two, it builds that rapport with the client so that they've got that confidence and trust to work with Shauna. So then the latter part of that dialogue is if we need surgery, if I need to come back in, and we need to rely on my experience, I'm here to oversee into an assist. And that's been a real structure, strong kind of, you know, sales process for us that empowers our partner that, you know, gets all of these because I couldn't. I couldn't perform 300 transactions a year. You know, I just don't have enough hours.

No.

So, you know, I need to empower the team and leverage the team, you know, well, delivering. Quite frankly, I don't think I can deliver the best, you know, field experience either. I Can't respond as quickly. You know, I'm spending an hour today on a podcast or, you know, going into, you know, a media release or for, for, you know, royal page. So it truly, you know, it's not smoke and mirrors. There's a lot of substance behind it.

Really good. I, this is going to be a couple of zones and I would just love to, for you to speak to it generally. I would assume that you're running a profitable business, even if I don't know what the Canadian market is like. But if inventory is as challenged in your area as it is almost everywhere, you know, your production might be down year to year, but. But I would assume that you're running a profitable business and some part of that is you being in sales production yourself. But I think general culture, at least in the US would have kind of a default expectation of, well, why doesn't Mike, as a top producer who's successfully developed multiple sources of referrals and opportunities, why isn't he leave production, get into recruiting and plant a bunch more verticals and make this a 300 agent operation? Like, yeah, obviously that's not the direction you've chosen. I introduce profitability in the beginning for a reason, because I think in your model it's a lot easier to do than at 40 or 60 agents or something. But, like, what is this about for you? I would assume that some of what I just described as a potential future for you is just absolutely alien. Like, what do you think about what I shared there in terms of, like, your commitment to be in the business every single day and to operate well with a high level of standard and high level of service, putting people in specialized positions to win for, for you, for themselves, for the team and for the client, like that. It seems like a good thing, but I want to know how, like, how you think about that because you have, you know, 2027 could look a lot of different ways for you, but I have a feeling it's going to look like this, but tighter and better.

Yeah, I think, you know, we're, we're about a decade into team and, you know, for me, I'm a, according to the Colby assessment, I'm a slow, quick start. I don't know if you've ever used, you know, Colby, but I like to gather lots of information before I make a decision. I have colleagues and friends that, you know, I would, if we're jumping out of a plane, I would want to watch him pack the parachute and then I would probably ask every possible question as to what could go wrong and what I do in each of those scenarios. And I've got friends that are effective team leaders, you know, that run great businesses that. That are, like, they go. They hear a good idea, like they're jumping on the plane and saying, like, you know, throw me. Throw me the parachute. I'll figure it all the way down. Yeah, I operate a little bit different. I like to gather information. It's my M.O. is just who I am, and it makes me feel more comfortable in proceeding. So I say, give that in that context to say, you know, is. Is mega team the goal for us. And I think we've kind of struggled with, like, you know, this feels like a nice little engine that could, you know, we're a small team. We hit big numbers. You know, all of our agents are very productive selling real estate. I know some of our competitors or teams within our markets that are mega teams, like some other people sell one or two homes a year. And I kind of go back to that position analogy, like, I'm not going to a surgeon that does it once or twice a year. You know, when we're dealing with somebody's largest asset, I want our clients to experience somebody that's in the field, very active, you know, an expert and very active in. In selling. Buying and selling. I've transitioned myself out of a selling role where I wear three hats. I. I do actively sell. And. And last year, I think I was around the 25% of team total contribution. You know, will I ever pull myself completely out of that? I enjoy the negotiation. I enjoy winning the business. I enjoy the competitive part. Like, when we've got competition, we're going up against one of the other big teams. Like, you know, that competitor in me comes out. However, I think it's, you know, I'm at a point in growth that we realize that, you know, we need to make sure that the team is. The team lasts longer than my involvement. You know, one of the things you asked, like, what's the driver now? I love the fact that we've got, you know, 10 people and their families rely on what we do. And we do a pool party every year in the summer at my home. I bring them under my roof, and all their kids are swimming with my kids in the pool. And that I find a lot of gratitude in, like, what we built here. And it's not just me. I have everybody's contributions, you know, provide stability for 10 families, you know, and their children. And, you know, I think when I do pull myself out of the practice last November, I was I was hiking in Ecuador. I was climbing the second highest active volcano in the world and we had our most profitable month when I was out of the office. And you know, every once in a while when that happens, I kind of go like, you know, maybe I should pull myself out a little bit more because the team just seems to rock and roll when I'm not hovering. But, you know, I think they would all agree that I'm still a vital part in not only, you know, operations and dreaming that big vision. You know, I've got great implementers, but, you know, that selling component I think I'll probably always keep. I'll probably always keep my finger on the pulse to some degree there rather than pull myself completely out because we are very profitable. I believe we're one of the more profitable models that exist in the marketplace.

Yeah, that's it. I've heard that a number of times on this show, which is like where you are is a sweet spot. You can maybe, when you get to the other side, you can maybe make it work again, but in the middle it gets really, really crazy. And in this per capita or per agent, productivity is the key to the whole thing. If you're going to build this support structure and have these fixed costs of staff members and tools and systems, you can't afford to be serving that equally across people that are producing one or two sales a year, people that are producing three to seven, and then, you know, the people that are carrying the rest of the team. The front half of that, by the way, was spoken like an engineer, the parachute analogy. The back half of that was spoken very much as someone who's, who spent a lot of time in self reflection and is very self aware. I really appreciate it. I respect and appreciate what you've done and sharing it with us. I know I've got to get you off to your next interview, but before I do, Mike, first, thank you. And second, I've got three pairs of questions, the first of which 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 besides your own real estate team?

You know, I shouldn't say, I'm ashamed to say this. I don't know if you're a hockey fan, but as a Canadian, it's bred into us. And for many years I was a Boston Bruins fan and then I became a Montreal Canadiens fan and over the past two decades I've become a Toronto Maple Leaf fan. They're local. Root for the Homeboys, you know, I don't know that we'll see them win a championship. That's kind of one of the unfortunate things, like Torontonians that bleed blue and white kind of go like, are we cheering for the wrong guys? Like, we've got such a great roster and why can't we win a championship? And that goes back to your first question. Like, you can have the right players, but I wonder what culture looks like, you know, and I wonder if there's hard work across the bench, so on and so forth.

So, yeah, support staff and systems and tools. Tools and equipment and. Yeah.

Yep.

Cool. Yeah. I grew up in. I grew up in West Michigan, so I feel like I'm a quasi, quasi Canadian. I've been over the bridge and through the tunnel a number of times over on the east side of the state, and I'm out here in Colorado now, so we do have. I'm a fan of both teams that were insane rivals at one period, the Avalanche and the Red Wings. So, yeah, I know where you are. I may, in fact, see the Maple Leafs in about a month from time. We're recording this up in Denver. Mike, what is one of your most frivolous purchases or what is a cheapskate habit you've held on to, even though you probably don't need to?

Boy, I can think of a lot of frivolous purchases I've made over the years. And I'm an engineer, so I'm pretty thoughtful, you know, from academic training. But recently I picked up skiing again. Speak of Colorado. I was in Vail, and that was part of it. A couple of years ago, I was invited out to the west coast with a good friend and I just fell in love with the mountains again. I've been skiing my whole life. So last weekend I went into our local ski shop. That's. That's exceptional. And I was speaking with one of the sales guys there, and I told him I'm skiing on 25 year old skis. To which he responded, like, you're due for a new pair of skis. The technology's changed. He said, you know, the. The technology from what you're skiing on to today is like going from wooden skis to what you're skiing on today. So whether it was. Whether I was due for it or it was a frivolous purchase, I recently purchased new skis, and I love them. It's something I do. Monday nights. I date with my daughters. They go for ski lessons and. And I'm back to one of my. My happy places.

So I love it. I. I appreciate that you would put that anywhere adjacent to frivolous because as soon as you included your daughters, I was like, well, that doesn't sound too frivolous to me. And the 25 years is a thing too. It's. That's great.

Mike.

When you are investing your time or energy in learning, growing or developing, what does that look like? Or when you're investing your time in resting, relaxing and recharging, what does that look like?

Yeah, I'll talk the two very quickly together just for the sake of time. You know, kind of that, that I think this is a Tony Robbins quote or saying like the can I c a n I constant and never ending improvement is ingrained in me. I'm always seeking more knowledge. I've always got an audible book I'm listening to or more recently into podcasts. The podcast focused around health. I'm loving kind of rejuvenation. Like what do I do to get better sleep? You know, to feel more relaxed, to focus on longevity. So guys like Andrew Huberman or Peter Attila have some great health focused podcasts. And some of the stuff that I've noticed works is I've never focused on sleep. I was going, going, going, going my whole life. And the last year I've spent a lot of time tracking sleep and focusing on deep sleep, almost becoming an obsession. So priming myself for proper sleep, ritual breath, work, meditation. I'm really enjoying kind of focusing on self. And maybe that's just a byproduct of building a team that has allowed me to get out of the grind that I once was in. I think I'm still there in many regards, but I feel like maybe it comes with this age, just focusing on doing those things to feel rested and rejuvenated and increasing longevity.

Yeah, really good. I relate to that very much. I've heard both of those guys multiple times on the Rich Roll podcast. That's the one that like, that's my, my curated feed of other people. Then to go deeper research. So anyway, fantastic. Really appreciate you sharing your journey, especially that, that personal journey toward the end there into health, wellness, relaxation, sleep. If someone has gotten to this point, they may want to learn more about you or your team. Where would you send people and feel free to restate. D OTW ca I think I got that right. Dealtheweek CA but like, where else would you send folks to follow up on this conversation?

I think that's a great point. If you want to kind of mirror or model or hear from Us Weekly Certainly the social media outlets like Mike Hedl on Instagram or Live in Hamilton is our website L I V E in Hamilton ca. Those are probably the three easiest places to find us.

Fantastic. Those are linked up for folks watching or listening. They're linked up right down below this episode. Mike, I appreciate you. I hope you have a great rest of your day and I hope you have a great rest of the season.

Likewise. Thanks for having me on. That was a lot of fun.

Thanks for checking out this episode of teamos. For email exclusive insights every week, sign up@realestateteamos.com.