035 What's In Your Real Estate Team Operating System?

Real estate Team os. What's the OS stand for? Operating system. What's that, you might ask? It's everything behind the agent. It's all of the people, processes and technology that we put in place to create leverage and to keep agents in dollar productive activities. People includes, well, people roles and positions and organizational structure. Process includes our standard operating procedures, systems and processes, even some cultural components. Kind of the health, how we do it around here aspect of our teams. And of course, we're supported by tools and technology to empower and compliment our staff, our agents and our clients, adding efficiency and transparency and accountability and seamlessness to all of the work that we do. In this special episode of Real Estate Team os, we go inside the OS of seven different team leaders and Team Ridge owners from New Jersey, Virginia and Florida or over to Colorado, Arizona and Texas. Specifically, I asked them, please share one or two people, processes or technologies that you could not grow and optimize your team without.

There's two key hires.

There's two roles in particular that I think are unbelievably valuable.

We used to have an ISA manager. We now call her director of opportunity.

We can pretty much predict where we're gonna be in the next 60 to 90 days.

If we do something more than once, we have to document it, and we have to document it the absolute best way that it can be done in the most efficient way.

How we have things set up and the processes that we have in place will really be able to, like, highlight where the true difference is between how we operate versus maybe how an agent who's maybe not as experienced is going to be able to benefit the consumer.

It was a company that I felt that impacted my team because we grew together.

Dollar for dollar has been the best investment that I've made in my business and that we've made in our team.

A solid enough technology to help maintain your database and maintain your own sales processes in one place.

And now here are the teamos insights from seven different team leaders and teamer. Jonas. 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 teamos, your guide to starting, growing and optimizing a real estate team. Here's your host, Ethan Butte. First up, we've got Dave Ness of Thrive Real Estate in Denver, Colorado, an independent Team Ridge. And like many teams in Team Ridges, they operate via eos, the entrepreneurial operating system. So that's related to one of the two roles he shares here. And pay attention to the specific caution that he adds that things are always changing. Your os, your operating system is a living thing that's constantly evolving. Here's Dave.

Well, from the people standpoint, there's two roles in particular that I think are unbelievably valuable, and they get titled in different ways across teams, I've noticed. But it's the same general role. We're really big and kind of hang our hat on eos, the entrepreneur's operating system. And so for us in our world, it would be the integrator, someone who I've heard it called general manager, president, all these different titles, but essentially someone who owns and falls asleep at night and wakes up in the morning thinking about the entire organization, not just from an operational standpoint, but also from a financial standpoint, and being able to have the oversight to put all the pieces together and make the organization run well, I think that that role is unbelievably critical. And then having someone who is 100% responsible and owns sales leadership and understands what the company's goals are, both on a monthly, quarterly, annual basis, and then long term, three, five, seven years out as well. Those two, when we had the right people sit in those seats, everything changed. It was a really big deal. So from a people perspective, those two roles are critical.

Yeah. Any of them. Are either of those harder to find than the other?

Or.

What I'm really asking is, how many iterations did you go through before you found that kind of match that you just described?

Oh, yeah, well, 12 years worth. It was a lot. Yeah. And I think that's important to actually test certain things and not, I think oftentimes we. It's kind of like an indictment, like, oh, I tested that and it didn't work. And it's like, no, you tested it and you didn't work and you learned and then you figured out what was the next best thing, you know, for you. But yeah, lots of iterations. There's probably four or five different iterations. We had a term called growth partner that, that we had that was more no salary. It was more of like a team leader, except on a. On a bigger level. And that worked well for about 36 months. And we outgrew that for a myriad of different reasons. And so quite a few different iterations to where now we're landing here and it's been about a year and we're already looking at it and projecting out, going. The current structure has been amazing to get us where we are, but it won't be the structure to get us where we want to go. So we're already projecting that it's going to change again.

Yeah, yeah.

Constantly, all the time.

Throughout this episode, you'll hear more about the challenge of finding and keeping the right people in the right seats. You'll also get some tips to help. Next up, we have Micah Harper of Exquisite Properties in San Antonio, Texas. And he is using ISAs in a very unique and powerful way. There are a number of tips here. If you're not watching or listening and prepared to take notes, you should maybe do that. Here's Maika. What is a piece of your operating system that you couldn't do your business without?

Oh, 100%. The ISA department. We used to have an ISA manager. We now call her director of opportunities because we've changed the language from inside sales agents and appointments to opportunities. Because that's really what it is. Right. And an agent here's appointment, and they think, I'm going to meet a person, they're going to write a contract, and I'm going to have a contract in a week. And it's no, you're meeting a person. That's an opportunity.

Right.

And that opportunity may be that person buying a house. That opportunity may be that person referring you, somebody that buys a house. Like, there's an opportunity there for you, and it's for you to uncover what that opportunity is. For us, the inside sales department is not just a bunch of people on the phone, you know, pounding the phone, setting appointments. They're building relationships. I always joke, they're labor and delivery.

Right.

They're birthing relationships into our world. And then the agent's job is to service that relationship. But the inside sales agent goes beyond the appointment. Right. And they follow up with the consumer after the appointment. So for us, they're at a level of accountability to the agent because they're also paid on commission. So they care a lot about what happened on that appointment. They care a lot about how the communication is. And not just did the agent follow up, did they follow up effectively? Did they use what we taught them to follow up? Are they using the drip campaigns and all the things in the CRM? Are they logging everything like they're supposed to? A sales manager to get to that level of granularity Be very difficult. Right. But if I have one ISA for every five agents, that ISA can follow up with those agents because they're also following up with their compensation. Right. So without the inside sales department, I don't think we could do what we do.

Yeah. So it's a base plus model, plus being the commission.

Yes.

On performance, performing on some granular detail that makes the agents more effective and births more opportunities. Any other aspects to it that when you share what you're doing with other team leaders, they're like, oh, I didn't think about the ISA that way.

Yes. The ISA is empowered to take the lead back without asking. Right there they have rules by which they can take the lead back. So if it's not. If it's not being serviced properly, if it's being neglected, if it's not a good fit, you know, if the consumer just says, I met with so and so agent, they're. They're fine. You know, like, we're not looking for that. That's not, that's not what we're looking for. We're looking for. I have total confidence in this person. I really enjoyed meeting them. I'm very excited about my home journey. So the ISA has the ability to take that client, put them with a different agent if they feel like that's the right thing for the client. Now, agents aren't super stoked about that, but they understand our North Star is the client. Right. And so we want to make sure that everything we're doing puts the client in the seat to win. So if the agent that they're with is not responsive or just. Even if it's just not a good personality fit, giving the ISA the opportunity and the authority to take that person and reassign them or take them back and work them is a game changer because the agent knows I can't just hide this in my database and every once in a while click a button and say that I talked to them and I didn't. They know somebody's checking and someone's actually going to talk to the customer and find out how their journey's going. And if I'm not doing my job, I'm going to lose that opportunity.

Really good. I love this, especially in a team context. It makes me think about the way an ISA who's treated as, you know, some kind of assistant.

Yeah.

Feeding appointments to an agent. Just the language that you've used here and the dynamic and that the, the power in the relationship is more level and complimentary and I think just a really reinforces the team concept.

It's a huge partnership and there's a huge level of trust and we talk a lot about that when. So our agents, when they come onto the company, they don't get ISA appointments. They have to earn their way. Right. Because the ISA needs to be confident that they're working with a professional agent who's going to do the follow up and the conversion necessary to be successful.

Right.

And in the beginning, we put everybody on appointments and the ISAs was like, I love appointments to this agent. And this one I feel like I'm throwing it in the trash. And this one I know isn't going to do anything. And so now we have a team of agents that only do high production. And that's what the ISAs are supporting. And we talk a lot when an agent comes onto that team about the trust. Right. The ISA may work for two years to chase that lead. They have to trust that I'm going to put that in your hands and you are going to service it and close it. And the agent has to trust that the ISA did everything they could to find out, do you have an agent? Do you understand what you're doing? Do you know why we're even meeting at the house? Or did you just click a button and end up at a house? You know, the ISA has got to make sure that they set that mindset correctly and things go wrong. People show up with agents or people tell the ISA they don't have an agent and then they do. Or they get to the house and they're like, oh, I thought it was for rent. You know, like there's miscommunication. And if you trust, then you know, the other person did the best that they could. Or the ISA may set an appointment, the person's super hot, they want to write a contract today, and then they see in the notes, you know, that that's not the case. And they have to trust that the agent did everything that they could, but that the consumer's in control of their timeframe and it's not up to us to make that happen.

If you're using ISAs, how would you describe the relationship or the partnership between the ISA and the agent? Are you doing some of these things or all of these things that Maika shared? I would love to hear from you. Go to realestateteamos.com at the top of the page is a contact button. I get all the notifications when people fill that out again. Realestateteamos.com Next up, we have Becky Garcia, a team leader from Phoenix, Arizona, and she shares two key roles for her operating system as well as a key piece of technology and some of the challenges and benefits associated with it. When you think about where your team was when you started and where you are today, what are one or two of those things from any of those three categories that you couldn't have done it without.

When it comes to people like for me, key hire, there's two key hires. One was operations, our operations manager who just oversees everything from payroll to accounts receivable, payable tracking, where the agents are. Production wise, it's. Those are just things that are out I have no interest in. I know how important they are, but I'm not necessarily the best person to do that. So I'd say people was the production manager and then also a personal. My own personal assistant who can go in and like read through my emails and determine because email I would spend three to four hours a day figuring out my emails. So she goes in and vets everything. And what does Becky need to see versus what's. What can I handle? So I'd say key positions. Those are the two that either saved me time or just took over. Was just better at something than I was. As far as a system, for us, it would be follow up boss. We just moved over. We were on a system for 10 over 10 years. I did not want to switch, did not want to do it. But once we did that switch, then there were a couple key pieces in there that really made a difference for us and were able to automate and all the integrations we were able to do with it. So I'd say when it came to that, it would be follow up boss.

Cool. How long ago was that migration on to follow up boss?

Just October. Well, final and we were all set and like ready to start using. It would be October of 2023.

Okay, cool.

So pretty recent.

Yeah.

And what was harder than you thought about that process and what was easier than you thought about that process harder.

Was trying to get over 10 years worth of, you know, data from one system into the other. We did hire a third party that I went ahead and just paid the extra to have a third party do all of that for me. So I'd say even though it just took more time than I thought it would, I'm sure it would've been a lot faster if we didn't want everything moved over. So I'd say probably that was the hardest part. Yeah, cool.

And then what was like from an upside perspective, like, gosh, this is an unexpected benefit of going through that acute pain of making a switch.

Some of the things that it seemed like it would be super easy, but like having an email that looks like it's coming from a Gmail account, not like this long email address that's hitting spam. So a lot of emails stopped hitting spam. Being able to group text was really important. Being able to time text messages so that if I'm up working at, you know, midnight and I can time it to go at 8 o' clock in the morning versus midnight saves me a lot of time. So just those little things that you think would just be automatic in one system, you don't realize like how important they are until you actually start using them. So I'd say things like that. Cool.

See what your contacts are doing on Zillow Monday, December 8Join 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 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 know, 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. What are you looking for next? When you think about where you are and what your needs are for, where the market is going for you and the way that you're running your business, is there anything that you're vetting or looking forward to, and if so, what is that process like?

Yeah, I'd say where the industry is going to in terms of having to like agents having to like show their value to a buyer when they're working with, you know, a buyer and having to actually have the conversation up front. I've always pushed for buyer consultations with my team. We've gone over it, we've trained it, we've gone over everything and then, you know, they're still not implementing it sometimes. But now it's like you have to do this now. So I think just what how we have things set up and how the processes that we have in place will really be able for us to like highlight where the true difference is between how we operate versus maybe how an agent who's maybe not as experienced or has it together is going to be able to benefit, you know, the consumer. So I just think being able to differentiate yourself is what's going to be important for me.

I so appreciate the example and lesson that Becky closed down there specifically around buyer agreements. And when we think about a team operating system, sometimes we can focus on the rigidity of it, right? Standardized, repeatable, that's what allows us to be efficient and scalable. But on the other side of that, when we have the right people on the team, when we have systems and processes and a culture of accountability, when we're empowering people with technology, yeah, there is some rigidity baked into that because we need things done a particular way at a particular time, particular, particular number of times in a particular way. But what it really does is it unlocks flexibility. It allows us to respond to changing conditions, it allows us to respond to dynamic conditions in the market, which of course are present all of the times. A super powerful foundational aspect of a successful business. Next up we have Marcus Larrea of Palm Paradise Realty Group and he shares two key roles that he added early on when they went independent with their team Ridge, as well as two key pieces of technology that they use all the time. Pay attention here in particular to the way that they're leveraging and the feedback that they're getting on cloud CMA in particular. So when you think back about like, gosh, I couldn't have gotten here without that lever, what are a couple of things that come to mind?

So I would say one of our first hires was a transaction coordinator. It was kind of a do it all transaction coordinator slash ops manager. That was a key hire because we were developing the systems at the time as well. So you know, everything that we were doing with that first hire we tried to document so that way we could start building these systems out. That took me realistically about a year to make that first hire. After we went independent, about six months actually after we went independent. And very quickly we hired a marketing person because you have to be on social media and that's one thing. It's like do as I say, not as I do because I personally, you know, have a love hate relationship with social media myself. But it's a necessary, you know, thing that you, you should be doing if you're in this business. So we hired a marketing person to, to help me out because that was one of my weak points. And we're, we're consistently pushing out two pieces of content five days a week and that's a non negotiable. Been doing that for probably about three years now. As far as systems go with your tech stack, Follow Boss has been great. Obviously cloud CMA since day one has been clutch. To this day, I always say Cloud cma, dollar for dollar has been the best investment that I've made in my business and that we've made in our team. We provide Cloud CMA to everyone on our team from a buyer's agent standpoint, showing up with a bound packet of the buyer tour and along with relevant information to educate the buyer, showing up with that, that's something tangible that someone can take notes in. And everything we do, we attach one of our company pens and everything. We've gotten more compliments on that bound buyer tour booklet than any anything else we've ever done consistently. And it to the point where, you know, back when there are multiple offer situations on every property and lines to get in into to see homes, it was like our buyers were bragging about our agent to other agents and other buyers walking into the property saying, did your agent give you one of these? And you know, everyone, it's all about presentation though, and that's something Cloud CMA has been awesome with. I would think that's probably one of the best tools that I'd recommend.

If you'd like to hear more and learn more with Marcus Larreya, be sure to check out episode 31, why Growth Doesn't Always Look Like Growth in It, Marcus shares a number of things, including three specific times in his business when growth didn't look or feel like growth, where he had to take a step or two back before taking two or three steps forward again. That's episode 31 of Real Estate Team OS and YouTube in your preferred podcast app like Apple Podcasts or Spotify or at realestateteamos.com Next up is Mercy Lugos Strothers, who leads a team in Northern Virginia. And like Marcus, she shares some people tips and some tech tips. And in particular pay attention to what she shares about finding the right people for your organization. Kind of speaking back to Dave at the beginning on the challenge of finding and keeping the right people in the right seats, here's Mercy. I'd love for you to highlight one or two people or processes or technologies that you couldn't build your team the way you want to build it, or you couldn't have the efficiency that you have, or you couldn't operate the way you want to operate without.

Oh absolutely. I have two, please. But I'm going to give you a little bit of a, I mean I think one piece that is missing in my mind because I made the mistake of not say I'm running a team. I'm doing all of this. But people, process or technology will do no good within a team if you don't hire the right people, if you don't have the people that have the grit to make things happen and they really want to be held accountable and really want to be part of something larger, that's very important. I will put that as a baseline, as an example of people, processors, technology. I will have to pick two that have been essential. And I'm not saying it because who you are, but truly, I'm one of the OJs for two things. I'm one of the OJS originals for Follow Up Bust and for Zillow. Follow Up Bus. For us, I try many different things. We've been in the industry for about 15 years before that. We tried and nothing really sticked. Nothing really worked. We started Follow Up Boss and back then I was talking directly to Dan Corkill and I was working late and it was like 8pm and he will call me back. I was like, wow, this guy. And then I saw the transformation because I'm pro change, I'm pro what else is new? So it was a company that I felt that impacted my team because we grew together. Follow up us have been very attentive to what the industry, what the agents, what the consumer needs, and has put that together. And it has been evolving. And I have been with Follow Up Boss for long, long, long time. And I think that it's the glue of the team in many different, many, many, many different ways. The second one, I was definitely, I will say that is my business partner, Zillow. I've been with Zillow as well for about 11, 10, 11 years. And in real estate or in any business, you grow, you plateau, you learn, you grow again, you plateau. And I can tell you that in every single time that I have plateau, my business partner Zillow has really helped me go to the next level, without a doubt. And I can give you plenty of examples.

Yeah, give me one or two. Is it, Is it who they're connecting you with? Is it some of the guidance they're providing you? Like what, what takes you from a plateau, which a lot of people, I mean, you could be satisfied, say, oh, yeah, it's a new plateau. But you're the type of person who's like, what's next? Yeah, like what kind of sparks are they, Are they generating for you or information or ideas or help are they giving you that allows you to push to the next plateau?

It started way back then when Zillow started a program that it was called Zillow for foreclosures long time ago. Zillow was like, like mercy. You have the perfect area, the perfect skills to help us bring this, you know, to the next level. And that just like kept, you know, like increase my business that I was like so ready for the next level. Another example that I can give you is zillaflex. We're a Zilla Flex partner. And even though, you know, I, I want, you know, I operate a team as a business, it's always good to have on another at my level an accountability partner. So the same way that I require from the same things that I require from my agents, I do have somebody above me that, you know it's also requiring the same things and is expecting me to run a business like it should be. So I think that it helped me, I was serious about it. But it's kind of like taking it to the next level. It's like, yeah, we are running businesses right here because they are KPIs, their expectations, there is information about consumers, what consumers really want. So all of that together I think that just really, really has helped me throughout the year. Tools. I will say that the list is endless but I think that those two being part of test, being open to new ideas, being pro consumer understanding really how can we make an impact and how can we empower the agents to deliver a better service? I've been able to do that with both actually with Follow Up Boss and with Zillum.

Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. And that's all any of us is looking for as a partner in the business. Before I let you go, I would love for you to double back to where you started in your key question qualifier. I would love for you to share like a recruiting or hiring or interviewing tip for everyone watching and listening to make sure, I mean I remember grit and maybe perseverance. I forget exactly the. You use like three or four keywords. I'm sure you know them. But I'd love for you to share like in whether the someone uses those words or they're looking for different words or qualities or core values or whatever. Give a couple tips about interviewing or recruiting or selecting or hiring the right types of people no matter what your 2, 3, 4 keywords are.

I try many different ways trying to identify the perfect candidate from doing tests like disc profiles and stuff like that, that really help. But I am the type of person that when somebody gets to me, I have all the people that interview before I do. I just want to get to know the person like production, all of those. I mean, I know that ahead. I just want to get to know who you are. But now in this industry, I want to know how serious you are about growing a business, how serious you are about collaboration, how serious you are about being coachable and being held accountable. Because if you are not willing to do that is not going to work. You really need to have the right mindset. And as much as I would like to give an advice to someone or to have a magic bullet or secret that says okay, this is exactly what I do. I tend to be, during those interviews, I get a lot, I think that people tell you a lot. Sometimes even it's going to sound bad. But sometimes people even cry during those interviews. And this is the first time that I go to an interview and I cry and. Because I really want to dig deeper and get to know that person to see whether or not I envision myself supporting their growth and vice versa. Because it works both ways. But it doesn't end in the interview. Because as much as we try to get information and explain and see whether or not that person has the right qualities, I want to see action. So I have this seven day process where basically it's an evaluation. Seven day evaluation, 30 day evaluation, seven day evaluation. I mean, of course I'm not going to be evaluating you on how good you are on the phone yet, but I'm going to be evaluating you like how committed you are. Are you here on time in the meetings? Are you coming on time? Do you do your homework? That's so important. Because if you start giving me excuses at the beginning, if you don't show up, show up late, whatever it is, that's the first thing you know, you're showing me the real person, right? Not necessarily, you know, it was somebody that I.

Not the person answering questions the way you want to hear the answers.

So that is, you know, those seven days and I'm very honest. I tell them when I, after I interview them on the first day of onboarding, at the end of these seven days, not all of you are going to remain. And that is okay. That is okay. Because you know, this is not for everybody. That doesn't mean that you are not for real estate or a bad person. But you're not the right person for the type of person, the type of agent that I want in my team. And then when you get to 30 days, there's other things that I'm evaluating. So I will say that it's a process. But in that going back to your question, in that interview, the different for me is just really getting to know them more intimately and asking those questions that are going to help me understand whether or not real estate, the way that I see it, the way that I want to serve my clients, the one I want to support. Is there the same thing with staff? I will say that even more so because a staff has to be ready. I believe, and this is cliche, but I believe that I am as good as the people that I surround myself. They need to believe in my vision, they need to believe in my mission. And if they do, and they can be the best cheerleaders that we have, my best promoters, that's what I'm looking for. Great people that are going to promote because I am not going to be here. Everybody has, we have a due date. That part of legacy for me, I take it very, very seriously. Hiring, whether it's agent or staff, the right people that are willing to learn and be coachable to get to the next level and to really thrive in this new industry and understands that if we don't serve the client the right way, we're not going anywhere. It's extremely important when we do the.

Hard work of finding and hiring the right people the right way. As Mercy just informed us, we need to invest in those people. And next up is Joe Oz, who remotely runs his New Jersey based real estate team from his home in Orange County, California. And he shares a great example and a great story of this. This one is a blend of people and process. Here's Joe.

Yeah, so we have a director of operations. This is a person that we hired as in the red book that I mentioned, they talk about hiring an admin.

Right.

And so what happens in real estate is there's like when you're a real estate agent there I think there's like a $20 an hour job and there's a $500 an hour job. Obviously the more the $500 hour job is the sales. Like we need to be out there doing the sales and the list, the putting the, the ordering the photos and the sending out the mailers and all that other stuff which we by the way, we're not very good at and we don't like to do. We shouldn't be doing it. So I hired an admin and then the admin that I hired, the last admin I hired has really just transformed into our director of ops and really runs our organization. Her name's Lauren. She's. Yeah, we can't do, we could never do it without her. Right. And so she's so I believe that right now I don't want to do anything. I won't do something once if I can't do it 100 times. I want to be able to scale it and I want to be able to grow. And really, I believe that in the simplest form of all these things. So Lauren keeps everything just organized. Right. And so also, like a book like Rocket Fuel, like the Integrator. And she. She is definitely is a huge integrator, part of this thing where I'm the entrepreneur part. Right. And also she kind of keeps me in line too. Like in that book Rocket Field, they'll say an Entrepreneur will have 100 ideas and 99 of them will definitely be bad. And one of them might be a good idea, but we're not sure yet. And that's what the implementer's job is to do. And so, but ultimately, as far as scaling a business, there's this thing that happens where if we do something more than once, we have to document it, and we have to document it the absolute best way that it can be done in the most efficient way. And a lot of people don't do that. That's why they don't build a business. And so for us, my wife's cousin's a pilot and like, to this day, they like, there's a checklist before the plane takes off. Like old school checklist. Right. And so that's all when you really simplify everything. All a business is is systems. And then you hear sis. You hear systems all the time. And all a system is is a checklist. And so really it's just putting those things together and, and then having a director of ops who basically runs all those things. She uses everything our tech stack is everything from Slack to Dot Loop to Zillow to follow up boss to. She could tell you more. Right. And so. And so she just uses all those things to keep us all organized and, and help us scale.

She was your initial admin.

Yeah, we hired. She hired Hangman, just an admin just to do ITC work.

Tell me a little bit about your investments in Lauren, your relationship with Lauren, her own knowledge and skillset that allowed her to elevate in this way and allowed you to be in a position where you can run a team from literally the other coast of the country.

Correct.

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I think we just got lucky. And I mean, I believe in God and I believe in the universe and I think, you know, oh, and there's been a lot of, there's been a lot of really bad hires before Lauren. And I think it's a fun. I think it's like you just can't give up. You got to keep trying. I remember we narrated, we got so many apps for this role and we had, we narrowed it down to two people and it was kind of, I mean, I'm the boss, right? I have a partner. But like it was up to me to make the decision. It was tough, man. And I chose Lauren. And like I said her, she came in as a tc, which is, let's. Which is just transaction coordinating, listing coordinating and things like that. Because that's what everyone, the people in that role before her had done that. And she got to a point, she ran. The roles she was in before this were big. She was running operations. She knew this and she came from, she is, she was moving back from New Orleans back to New Jersey. And I don't know, man, we just, we just got her and. But the thought will tell you this. She outgrew the role very quickly. And we saw that, we saw the talent and we quickly, like, we almost didn't double it, but like her salary went way up the next year. Like we kind of knew what we had and we didn't want to lose it. And so we kind of came to her and since then we've made other arrangements with her. So she's like fully bought in. But she, yeah, she's just run, she's ran other businesses, restaurants, ran a zoo down in New Orleans. Like, she's like in like the food and beverage department and things like that. So she's a super talented person. And when you see those people, I have seen enough non. I've seen enough non talented people where I think now I can see the talented people. And what happens is, is she really like, she saves me for myself and she sees that, she sees the issues before they happen. She sees the roadblocks kind of before we get to them and fixes them before we get there. It's pretty amazing.

This ability to predict the future, see the future and solve problems before they happen comes up in the next clip as well. Two book mentions there from Joe. One, the red book, the millionaire real estate agent from Gary Keller, the mega agent model. It comes up from time to time on this show. It was a key part of the, you know, you know, 30, 35 year history of the advancement of the team model in real estate. The other one was Rocket Fuel. You might also be familiar with Traction. Both are written by Gino Wickman and are all about the eos, the entrepreneurial operating system that Dave mentioned in the first clip in this episode. So next up we have Abel Gilbert of One Path Realty and independent Team Ridge in Miami, Florida. He talks about the ability to use our CRM and its data to see the future and make adjustments as we need to in advance. Here's Abel.

As you're asking me this question, I'm just thinking about different, different times. Right. During the beginning.

Yeah, please stage it up a little bit. Yeah.

And then like where we are today. And the answer is yes, there's always something key but that changes, that evolves the systems and the people. Right. Because the people that for example, helped me at the beginning, some of them are no longer with me. Some of them, their, you know, their abilities just didn't evolve with, with the way that the company and the, the industry and just like how we evolved across the board though the one of the one systems that has remained and this is not because we're here today, is Follow A Boss is having a solid enough technology to help maintain your database and maintain your own sales processes right in one place. So as far as key system or system or platforms, definitely Follow a Boss has been one that has been with me since day one and, and you know, I've been lucky enough to have only used one CRM ever and it happened to be follow up Oz. So I chose right. And then as far as people, you know, a business in my opinion has five departments. It has sales, it has operations, it has finance, it has marketing and it has culture. Right now inside sales, you also have recruitment. Right. So you can either sub, you can, you can have a sub department or you can have a sixth department. But if we focus just on the conversation around sales, you got to have the right system to organize your database to organize, you know, your, your, your productivity efforts. You also need a system for mainly leadership to, to track and be able to have the visibility at not just your lagging indicators but also your, your productivity indicators, the ones that are going to dictate the future. Right? So, and that's one of the great things about Follow a Boss and the other systems that we use is that because they integrate, we can pretty much predict, you know, where we're going to be in the next 60 to 90 days based on the efforts that we see today. And if we see that the efforts are lacking today, then we can make decisions and we can then lead our agents and just our company in general on what changes do we need to do to improve our results.

If you'd like to see more or hear more with Abel Gilbert, be sure to go to YouTube or to Apple Podcasts or Spotify or to realestateteamos.com and check out episode 29 of this show culture as your key to sustainable success. It's an entire conversation with Abel and he also offers a great people play in that one, a role that I haven't heard in any other real estate team. It was really critical for the growth of One Path Realty again in Miami. Be sure to check out episode 29 with Abel. Thank you for spending time in this episode of Real Estate Team os. I hope you found it helpful. We are now well over 60 episodes into this series. Our whole goal is to help you start, grow or optimize your real estate team to build a very strong foundation to build a very strong team operating system with the right people, processes and technology. I hope this is helpful to you. Visit realestateteamos.com, hit that contact button on the top of the page. Let me know what you think or share insights into your team operating system. I'd love to hear from you. My name is Ethan Butte, your host of Real Estate Team os. Thanks again. Thanks for checking out this episode of Team os.

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