049 [Part 1] 2024 Wins and 2025 Game Plans

The framework to scale your team, the gatekeeping of development from realtors, and the blueprint for success with online leads need to ramp up.

We're coming at you with all this.

Business, you know, we're closing out the first full calendar year of Real Estate Team OS by meeting and learning from your fellow viewers and listeners.

Those episodes, to me stacking them together, it's kind of given us a framework to help expand and grow the business here.

Four of them right here in one episode on 2024 wins and 2025 game plans.

Now I gotta figure out scale here in part one.

Cory Martin from Oakville, Ontario. Lawrence Pritchett from Austin, Texas. Meg Shafer from Shelburne, Ontario. And Scott McEnany from Jacksonville, Florida. And you'll meet four more in part two next week.

Every single episode, I find a nugget that I get to hang on to and implement.

Right now, part one of 2024 wins and 2025 game plans right here on Real Estate Team OS. 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 a real estate team.

Here's your host, Ethan Butte. First up, we have Corey Martin, broker, owner and team leader of Martin Group in Oakville, Ontario. Learn about the cooperative nature of their five agent team and their framework to build it out further in the year ahead. Corey, I so appreciate you spending time with these episodes of Real Estate Team os. Really glad to have you on one. Thanks for being here.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Ethan. Before we get into how you found the show and kind of how it's been helpful to you and your team members as you're figuring out kind of the next steps of growth, tell me a little bit about your real estate business. I think you've been in the business almost two decades, but, you know, just kind of give us a quick roundup of where you've been in the business.

We're based in Oakville, about a half hour outside of Toronto in Ontario. I've been doing this for, I guess it's going on 16 years now. I'm a broker, owner and team leader of the Martin group. We're top 1% nationally to about 600. We've done about 600 million in sales. So, you know, I started at 20. It was a very young age to get into real estate. And so, you know, back then you really had to know your stuff had to be cutting edge as far as technology. And competitive. And so we've kind of still maintained that today that we're still constantly trying to improve and take it to that next level which you know, brought us the follow up boss and ultimately led us to your show.

So it sounds like you're operating as essentially what is commonly referred to as a teamerage where it's a brokerage but you're running together as a team.

Yeah, that's correct. So Martin Group, essentially we're a team of five and it's really everybody within the brokerage is part of the team.

Talk about like the collaborative nature of that team Ridge dynamic versus you being a broker owner in a kind of a more traditional brokerage where it's a, you know, five solo agents who know each other well and maybe assist each other now and then. Talk like it sounds like a subtle difference but I feel like this idea that you identify as a team is important.

Yeah, it's a lot more collaboration, a lot more cooperation as far as the listings are concerned as far as you know, coming up with plans for how to sell it, whether it be staging the marketing materials that we choose. It's very, very collaborative in that regards which helps. We all have different strengths so it kind of we can play each other as far as setting everything up. And so yeah, it's been, it. I've found it's been very beneficial as opposed to just operating as an individual and just even for the client experience it's, it's, you know, we're much more available. There's never a time that we can't meet or can't accommodate to the, to the, whether it be a seller, buyer schedule. There's always someone, someone there. So it's, we found it to be, you know, very beneficial to both ourselves and the clients and I don't think we'd have it any other way. All along we've been operating this way. Even when we brought in, when we added two additional agents they jumped straight into as that team mentality. It's just been beneficial to all like even as far as, you know, marketing as opposed to just creating marketing for one agent. We can spread it across all of us. Same with the leads. Economies of scale you can scale the business much easier. So it's been much more profitable for everyone doing this.

So how did you find the show and what was interesting to you about it and do you watch or listen or both?

So we found the show once we got on with joined up with Follow Up Boss which is earlier this year. So been watching all the recent Episodes as well as some, some of the old ones, as it's been very beneficial as we start to build out the framework of how we're going to grow the team and how to. How to go about doing this. So I do, typically I watch on YouTube if I'm jumping on the elliptical or something like that, and if I'm in the car, often we're driving to appointments that I jump on the show and listen to it as well in the car. So just a great opportunity. Keep learning and growing while we're heading to appointments and whatnot.

What are. I mean, you mentioned kind of say we're at five people, we're thinking about the next step in our business. So this was kind of, I hope, timely for you. Hopefully it's been valuable to you. But like, as you reflect back on the episodes you've checked out what are one or two people or episodes or themes or topics where you're like, I'm so glad I encountered this.

I'd say there's been a lot of great episodes along the way and it's just even been interesting kind of seeing different takes that a lot of it seemed that the big dream was always build this teamer Ridge model with a ton of agents. But the more we listen to the show, it seems sometimes that SEAL team of, you know, eight to 10 agents is, is actually more profitable and just overall potentially a better experience for the client and then for the team itself, that's been very beneficial. If I said the top episodes that kind of have helped us, I look at it like there's kind of a stack of episodes when I, when I kind of run through it that for me it would be, you know, Greg Harrelson was a great one to start with that I liked his take on the fact that, you know, staying in production versus stepping back from the team. I think that was important to kind of hear that keeping your finger on the pulse of the industry, it just keeps you much more relevant when you're talking to, you know, mentoring other agents. So I thought his was a great podcast. I like the Kobe Sway and Lisa Ryan about building the operations manager or director of opportunities because it gives you that next step of, okay, you've. You're looking to grow your team, how are you going to onboard how you're going to properly service these. These clients and how are you going to sort of these agents and how are you going to start bringing on the ISAs? You know, they even laid out compensation and they laid out things like, you know, along the way, how you develop these isa. So that was, to me, those were great kind of building blocks. From there, you know, it seems we kind of look at that, okay, if we take those two episodes, the next step is now we've got the ISAs, we've got the leads. How do we start bringing on agents? How do you start training them in the Jose Simano, Jeffrey McConaughey I think was the name. They had a great episode on that kind of 30 days of training, how to get these agents up and running. And similarly, Sean Getty, I think was your recent one. I liked how he kind of laid things out that when someone asks a question, answer it in a video the first time, save it. It keeps you more efficient now and for the future. For as far as onboarding and TR in support of your agents, I thought that was great. And we're starting to use Loom a lot more. And then last but not least, I think, you know, you've now got your, you've got your building blocks, you're staying within production, you've got your operations, you got your ISAs, you're building your team. And so how do you keep these agents and help them to grow without just leaving you? And so the George Lawton episode was fantastic on building in levels for them to grow within the organization. Because if you don't do that, I think it was a concern of ours that as soon as they become profitable, they take off on you. And so kind of building out those proper growth patterns, I guess, or systems as he laid out, how that can really help to keep these team members long term. And so often people always think that it's the commission splits is the way to keep them. But at a certain point, maybe it's not commission splits, maybe it's adding support and, and different things in the process to help them to continue to grow and maybe grow a team within your team. So those episodes, to me stacking them together, it's kind of given us a framework to help expand and grow the business here.

Killer, man, that was such a great rundown, Corey. I really appreciate that. For folks watching and listening, I will list down below all the specific episodes mentioned and I love the ones that you picked out and the way that you structured those one. I want to plus up. I mean, of course I love all these episodes because it's just such a joy to be able to do it, but that the George Lawton like how to keep people, you know, if you design your team in order to in your developer recruiting message, consistent with the design of your Team because you're designing to bring on a particular type of agent. You know, once you take them from. Let's just say our agent avatar starts here in their career. And let's just say we specialize in that agent that's been in the business for, you know, say, 12 to 24 months. They've only sold two or three properties. You see some potential in them, and they just haven't had the right people or systems around them. That's what we specialize in. And we take them from here to there. Well, when they get to there, what's next for them? You know, if you've designed the whole thing around that. And so that. That Inside the Lawton team series, multiple people in that series talked about that, you know, level one, two, three, four, that they designed. Of course, we heard from two agents who leveled out of level four to start building their teams inside that. You know, when this episode releases, we'll be right at the end of Inside Whissel Realty Group, where we'll hear the same thing. They call theirs bronze, silver, gold, platinum, but they collaborate a lot. Whissel Realty collaborates a lot with the Lawton team, so they have their own kind of spin on it as well. And we will close that series with two of their top agents. And they said something that you just said, Corey, which is, you know, I asked them both very specifically, what was it about? Whistle. Because one of them said she interviewed Carly Van Dyke, said she interviewed almost every single team and brokerage in San Diego before committing to Whissel. And I was like, you know, you had a lot of these conversations, like, what was it? You know, what. What role did the splits play in it? She was like, none. You know, I'm looking for the best path. And you said it too, like, how do we grow profitably together? And so that's not necessarily about having the best slice of the pie. It's about how do we just keep growing a bigger and bigger pie and do it together better? So anyway, you said a lot of. Really said a lot of things that delighted me very much. You know, as you look forward to 2025, what are you all thinking about? You mentioned the ISA model. I know that you've been experimenting with AI texting. I think when we talked last, you mentioned that there were maybe some nuances coming in terms of online lead opportunities in Canada. Like, what are some of the things that you are focused on and where do you hope to be a year from now?

So, I mean, I think a year from now, our goal is building a lot more of our tech stack. So we're fine with follow up boss. It's been a huge difference maker for us that as far as you know being able to integrate all the different systems, even you know, the leads and you know, connecting into your Google AdWords and Facebook marketing like there's just so many ways to connect things in. So it's, it's definitely been building our tech stack as has been something we've been focused on the last few months that will just help add benefit, you know, benefits to these realtors as we start bringing them on. So the goal would be to start bringing on some agents. We, we actually wanted to start recruiting and bringing agents on this year but follow up boss, to be honest it made us so much more efficient with the automations and the follow ups and everything that it actually allowed us to bring on a lot more business than we thought we could have done in the past. So it's, it's been extremely effective and we've, we've tried many different systems in the past and this seems to be without a doubt the best. So definitely the goal would be continue building the tech stack that we're working on here, start bringing on some agents and as far as the leads, a lot more video putting that human interaction into the lead follow up. That's something that we're going to try and do a lot more of because it seems we've tried the AI that sort of thing and it just doesn't seem to provide the same results as getting in front of them. And so you know a lot of people, they're hesitant to, to answer their phone or the tech, the initial text but I think the videos it just helps to show that you are actual real human and, and maybe start that initial discussion with meeting these new clients. So that's kind of our goal is just a lot more technology but with a more human focus I guess moving forward. Cool.

Well I'll point you and folks watching and listening to two other episodes on that. I had a really fun talk on video email and video messaging with Kyle Draper who I think released right before Sean Getty and in the Chase Whitney episode, the last episode of our Tech Timber series we themed September to Tech Timber. He runs a very small team with his parents actually are the foundation of the team. I think there may be eight or 10 people in total now and he talked a lot about implementing tech with a human touch. I'll also extend an offer to you Corey and your team members start going down the road of incorporating Video. I spent a dozen years in that zone, wrote a couple books on the topic, and I'd be happy to, to hear what your vision is and see if I can add some value. Just as a thanks for taking time to do this.

Yeah, no, it'd be great. And, and honestly, we do appreciate these. Everything you do here in these episodes, it's been a huge benefit. It's, I think, definitely saved us a lot of time and money by learning from other people's experiences and mistakes. That has put us on a much better track moving forward. So, yeah, we appreciate it.

Awesome. Thank you.

Oh, great.

That's why we invest in Real Estate Team OS and bring it to you at absolutely no cost so you can meet and learn from other people so you can save time, save money, and be on a much better track moving forward. In the words of Corey there. Next up, we have Lawrence Pritchett, managing broker and partner at Modus Real Estate Austin. He shares with you the unique value prop of Modus, how the hamster wheel of constantly increasing, increasing production as an agent led him to the gate kept world of real estate development. He also shares with you why he credits Real estate Team OS with his sanity. Lawrence, I so appreciate you making real estate Team OS part of what you're watching or listening to as you cruise around. And we'll get into that. I love what you're up to with modus. I like what they're doing in Denver. I love what you're doing with them in Austin. So we're going to learn a little bit about that. Welcome to Real Estate Team os.

Yeah, thank you for having me, Ethan.

So tell us a little bit about Modus. I think your, your value prop to the agent and what you're doing in the market are both very, very unique. I'd love to learn a little bit more about your path into real estate and what you're up to right now.

We can start, maybe go backwards. So what we're up to at modis, I think is a little bit different than what most value propositions look like for real estate brokerages in our marketplace in Austin, specifically, we started the Austin market. I've been in Texas my entire life. Grew up in Dallas, been in Austin for a little over a decade. Been in real estate for nine years now. And my entire career path has always been, you know, how do you sell a property, how do you market a property? How do you prospect to get more clients? Rinse and repeat and very fulfilling, very exciting. Something that I sunk my teeth into and realized it was Definitely the career path for me and I really, really enjoyed that. I think where I found myself looking for more was when I was working with the high net worth investor client who was going to be that repeat client forever. And I got to the place of not being able to fulfill their needs, whether it was on the acquisition side and finding a lot that they could develop themselves or the fix and flip client. I kept trying to figure out ways to help fulfill their needs and be a good resource, be a proper fiduciary for them, them. I kept getting to this place of I don't know that, therefore it's time for me to hand this off. At which point I would, you know, cross my fingers, hope they called me at the end of the project to sell their property. And I got tired of just being ill equipped. I think that's where it naturally kind of put me. So I started exploring, I think where I got in my career. I was, you know, at a place where I had a goal of just doubling my business, doubling my volume. And that was fun, fun, you know, competing against myself every year. But it did start to feel like a hamster wheel. So I started looking at how do I diversify, how do I improve, how do I add more tools to the tool belt per se. And I started doing some flipping, so house flipping with some friends of mine, my wife, my friends, their wives and actually a set of parents who were, you know, I would say not risk averse in a sense to go in with some, some kids in their late 20s, early 30s. And that provided me with a wealth of knowledge, it provided me with a wealth of experience. It provided me a ton of confidence when speaking to folks not only doing house flips, but folks who were just looking at doing their own home renovations. Because I can now speak to the process. I could speak to how do you pull a permit, how do you find trades, how do you execute this in project manage all the pitfalls that could come from that. And I think that confidence that I saw in myself was a huge benefit. It was a huge boon to my business and something that I just continued, I wanted to continue down that path. Real estate development for the most part is, I like to call it gatekept. It's not a part of the industry that most realtors get, get to peek behind the curtains. So, you know, a real estate developer, they're going to go build a house. Whether it's workforce housing or whether they go build a luxury product, they don't generally have a realtor by their side through that process. They have a realtor at the beginning if they decide to use one at acquisition and they will obviously hopefully find one at disposition when they sell the property. In between is usually we don't get to watch how the sausage gets made. And so I looked at my myself, I built a career selling over $30 million. Felt very good about my, you know, my take home income, but I was working myself to the bone, had my daughter on the way and I started looking at life. I think took a zoom out and a macro view at what I was doing and realized it wasn't sustainable. You know, if Lawrence and his competitive nature was going to continue trying to double, how was I going to do it? So I really started to look at what does development look like, how you know these, these folks are. You talk to every developer, they're like I got started usually a humble beginning, you know, it's not a, not something that is usually handed down. Of course at the larger scale you can see that a little bit of nepotism, but for the most part these guys are rolling their guys and girls, rolling their sleeves up, getting after it, figuring it out themselves, trial and error. And I think the reward just ends up being a little bit bigger. Obviously it's a bit more risky of a business, but definitely something I wanted to equip myself with from a knowledge standpoint, a knowledge base so that I could help those clients in the future. So where I first saw the opportunity, I got introduced to a MODIS agent from Denver who's now my business partner, co owner of the brokerage here in Austin. And she was moving to Austin, relocating from Denver and just interviewing agents to see what brokerage she was going to land at for her relocation. Started telling her about the amazing brokerage I was at. You know, one that I'm very fond of, a brokerage here in Austin that has I think built a lot of good real estate agents into great real estate agents. And I had a very, very great experience there and I had no intentions of leaving. She told me where she was working at Modis and kind of how they were built and the way that the brokerage in Denver, our HQ is currently operating, it's got a development arm. So the owners of the brokerage are developers. They also will take on fix and flip projects, but they go from as small as a flip to as large as a 500,000 square foot adaptive reuse project in downtown Denver. So the breadth of their current project pipeline, but also what they're able to do, I mean it's something that I Hadn't seen before. I hadn't seen a developer in Austin take on that type of work scope. But additionally, once I got to meet these guys, I realized how they were doing it and how they were utilizing that with the brokerage arm in tow. So something that I think is a huge calling card and a testament to who they are character wise, is they teach a lot of their agents to be developers themselves. So it's a very collaborative environment. I think that that in and of itself was something that spoke to me, you know, if they're willing to expand and. And interested in taking this into a different market. I think Austin and Denver are kind of sister markets in a sense. Very similar demographics, similar migration patterns. We see a ton of the Colorado Texas pipeline. Whether folks are purchasing second homes or just trading their primaries, there's definitely a connection there. So it was a big step. I had taken the step in my career to go get my broker's license. I had not much intent. I didn't plan on using it. It was just, again, another tool that I could equip myself with to help substantiate. This is my career. This is how much I'm dedicated to it. And so Madison, my business partner, and I, we began talking about what this could look like. You know, could this be something that we do? Neither of us had run a brokerage. Neither of us had ever really thought about it until it kind of slapped us in the face. And she had basically explained, you know, I don't think that there's anything like this. And I confirm there is nothing like this in town. What do you say we give it a go? We have a third business partner here, so there's three of us. Philip and I were working side by side at our former brokerage. Always used each other. We kind of say iron, sharpened iron. And we would bring our teams together. We had small teams that we were working side by side. And we have probably a very opposite approach, but we complement one another's skill sets really well. So it was a really neat environment for us to bring our teams together, workshop hear from another expert in the industry. So we had a ton of respect, and we would always help each other out. You know, real estate agents try to take vacations, and that's always a difficult thing to do. But I always had somebody to lean on. So Philip and I were actually talking about merging our teams together. Madison entered the fold, and it was kind of this trio that just had to. Had to become. And what we've been able to do, we've been around now for about 18 months in Austin. So still relatively infant in experience as an industry staple here, but growing. Well, we're just eclipsed 30 agents here in Austin. There's about 75 in Denver, and that's kind of the number they stay at. So it's not this idea of growing with volume. It's growing with the right people, and that's kind of of the approach that we adopted from them. So the agents that we target here in town, you don't have to be a developer. You don't have to be, you know, the top producer in your. In your current brokerage or where you're working. But I think where we lean on is kind of a more entrepreneurial mindset. You know, somebody who wants to grow their business. And if you want to make development a subsidiary of your production business, you know, we'd love to help you fulfill that. So we're very involved here locally. You know, we call ourselves small but mighty. You know, we like to be present in industry events. We like to help collaborate and work alongside some of our friends in the industry. Austin's a really collaborative market as an agent group as it is, so it's been really nice. I think we've had a nice reception here. I think we've fit in into our own niche. I don't really feel like there's much competition, and that might be my serial optimism getting at me. But the future is bright and we're super excited. Ton of energy. It's been a tough year in real estate overall, just how the markets move. But I think what we've maintained here is a positive mindset. Everybody really collaborating and working together for, you know, how do we help each other? How do we workshop to navigate this tough time? And then, you know, on the backside of this, hopefully we're all ready to take on what the. What the market provides.

Man, what a great rundown. That was really succinct. It was loaded with useful information. And by the way, if anyone wants to hear any or all of that again, that's why you have a back button in your podcast player or in the YouTube app. I love some emphasis on infill. I love that it's a traditional brokerage that you can show up and operate as a, you know, traditional agent, which of course, for you, started to feel like a hamster wheel. And as soon as you said that, I'm sure someone watching or listening was like, yeah, I know what he's talking about. And then this unique aspect of you can go as deep down this road into development as you want to. And that, that's, you know, a unique aspect of this brokerage. The knowledge is in house, the opportunity is in house, the network is in house and you can explore that as much as you want. I think what you're doing is really, really unique. I had missed in our initial conversation the new brokerage, new broker. I'm gonna put my broker's license, you know, to work here, which leads me to the show. Like, how did you find the show? And do you watch or listen or both? See what your contacts are doing on Zillow. Monday, December 8th join follow up Boss for a sneak peek webinar where you'll be among the first to see how to get Zillow searching, browsing and saving insights for the contacts in your database directly inside. Follow Up Boss so when a past client of yours gets that late night and extra bedroom would be really great right now, kind of feeling, you'll know before anyone else who's showing high intent to buy or sell insights about what's happening right now so you can deliver a personalized touch at scale. See what your contacts are doing on Zillow. Monday, December 8th at 1pm Eastern, 10am Pacific. Learn more and sign up through the link in the description below. You're in your podcast app. Check out the description of this episode right down below. It's the first line and the first link. Now back to the conversation.

Oh, that's a great question, Ethan. I watch it. I listen. I typically listen in the car. I utilize the, the quiet drive time in the morning to the office. This, as you know, this is my opportunity to. I feel like I'm detaching, but I'm, I mean, listening to Timo, I don't know if that's true detachment, but I feel like it's a great way to start my day. If I'm not ending my day with calls, which it's typically pretty frantic from 5 to 5:30 before I get home because I like to like to end my calls as I enter the house and the kiddos run up to me. I don't want to have the phone in hand. So yeah, you know, it's something that I think is just, it's, it's such great insight into. I think what, what I felt like initially was something that, you know, this is not necessarily a wheel that I need to reinvent. However, there aren't many people I can pick up the phone and talk to. There's not a lot of people who I can, you know, test an idea with or Bounce, you know, different thoughts or strategy with. And I think that's what this provided me. I, I want to say, you know, a follow up boss marketing email came through that clued me in to the podcast that this is probably at the beginning of the year, at which point I was, yeah, we, we were not even at a year old yet. Definitely, you know, it's been, it's been long hours, long days and I tell everybody I come in contact with. I mean it's been the most fulfilling time of my career and easily the hardest I've worked and it's been in the toughest market. So I think that's a true testament to what we're doing, what we're building. Got a ton of confidence as we move forward. But I have to credit Team OS for, for my sanity. I think that just hearing some of the struggles and you know, I kind of utilize it as a therapy session for myself and just hearing, I think a lot of the positive mindset that a lot of these teams have, I think that's kind of the calling card and the common denominator.

Love it. Any themes or topics or even episodes or guests that stand out as like, I really heard that at the right time. That was useful to me.

It might be a lazy response in saying that. I do feel like it's all very appropriate, but I think because I'm still in production, Philip Madison and myself, we still, we still run a production team and I've seen a couple of brokerages come on in Austin or kind of set their flag here and, and really set up shop and I look at, I look at them having a, either a single owner operator or you know, a one manager scenario and I look at it and I just, I don't know how it's impressive to me because I look at what we're doing every day and while we, we've seen really great growth and you know, we have a lot that we've been building from the ground up. We had the benefit of being able to take the blueprint from Denver. Denver basically said, said you're going to go to Austin, you're going to be in your own market. You need to provide what your market needs because every market is different. So we've really just been able to enhance what's been there because we are taking on production and brokerage and I even kind of have a silo of development. Right. Because that's a part of something that most brokerages aren't or broker owners aren't operating with. You know, we have to Take on this new field of how do we become developers? Because when we started modus, we are not developers. I'm still not a developer. I have a lot of developer clients now. However, that's not necessarily something that I've done. I'm still watching and learning. And as modis, as a brokerage, what we're looking to do is start our first, call it a team development here, which will likely be funded primarily by our headquarter team in Denver. Something really neat that they do with most of their developments is they keep a portion of the investment open for agents at the office. So they call them you guys.

Oh, cool.

All the agents are brokers in Colorado, right? So all the brokers at the Denver office, you know, they may have the opportunity to chip in at a lower clip. Right. It's not going to cost you seven figures to get in this development. Maybe it's something like 10 grand, 20 grand. If you want to partake and be alongside and help share some of the workload. It's a really neat opportunity. So we hope to get that started here in Austin. As soon as the. As soon as the market provides us with what we need, I think we're interested. We have some interesting dynamics currently in our market where the cost of dirt is still a little bit too high. Construction costs are still pretty high. Sellers are still relatively proud of what they're selling and their price. And so the right opportunity hasn't quite presented itself. However, we have made a couple of attempts at properties, and I know that will come in due time. That's nothing that we're in a hurry to do. I don't think a good development is a hurried development, so we'll be patient there. But in regards to, you know what, I get to listen to every single episode. I feel like I find a nugget that I get to hang on to and implement. It's one of those things. It feels like you're at the conference where you write down 100 notes and you may get to implement one. But I think it's the idea of just staying in that mindset and hearing from people who are involved in the same data.

Well, I'm so glad that you found it. I'm so glad that it's been useful to you. Really appreciate you and again, wish you continued success in 2025.

Thanks, Ethan. Looking forward to it. Take care.

We all know the value of being at the conference or being in the room and getting really good notes and picking up nuggets, and that's the experience we're trying to create for you every single week here on Real Estate Team os, so it's always nice to hear that reflected back in the way that Lawrence provided there. Next up, we have Mega Shaffer, who's the founder of Pixel Mentor and a real estate broker with Revel Realty, Inc. In Ontario. She shares with you the biggest challenge of starting and growing a team. She shares with you a specific and unique way to use action plans. It's one you should do if you're not doing it already. And she shares with you her five favorite episodes of Real Estate Team Os, which she offered without any hesitation whatsoever. Meg, you are one of the first people to give me constructive feedback on the show in the earliest days of the show. I'm so glad we were able to connect virtually at that time, that we were able to spend some time together earlier this year at Unlock and to have you now on an episode. Welcome, Meg.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Tell us a little bit about your path into and through the real estate industry. And I know it has a lot of aspects to it, so feel free to share as much as you like.

Sure. So I come from a digital marketing blogging background, and then my. I have a family member who's in real estate, so I kind of fell into it when I had small kids. So I've been in the real estate industry for six and a half years now. I had, you know, experience with operations as well as marketing within that brokerage, and now I've started my own marketing company as well.

You started in marketing, but you are deeply steeped in real estate ops. How did that come to be? Because, you know, I think a lot of people kind of find their way into the real estate business. They get into sales, and it may or may not be for them. And now, you know, with the way that teams have shaped up, there's so many different opportunities and brokerages for that matter, but there are a lot of different paths to pursue. So, you know, I think of you as a real estate ops professional, more so than a real estate marketing professional, but you probably know both.

Yes. And I would say that the marketing is my love, but the operations is what I'm good at. So I try to mix it up. And how that came about was my mom, who had the original brokerage I was at, wanted to start a team. So now I got to figure out how to scale and train agents and figure out how to make that work. And from there it was just kind of doing the social media as well as, like, promoting the agents on the team to kind of keep the business going.

Yeah. So you were the marketing and ops person all at once. Share a little bit for folks who haven't been on that side of the business and maybe are where, you know, you and the. The burgeoning team were at the time. What are a few things when you look back at that time? A few things that were surprising or wonderful about some of the things that you mentioned, including, you know, training agents and starting to build a foundation that people could plug into.

Surprising and wonderful. What I would have to say, surprisingly surprising.

Horribly challenging.

Horribly challenging is just like, you know, culture getting everyone to like work together and get along. They all grew in together. But just like I think the surprising thing was how flexible Follow Up Boss was and how integral it was in growing the team for us. My very first project when I joined the brokerage before we started the team was to find a CRM. And I happily landed on Follow Up Boss and have never looked at back.

Cool. One or two. At the risk of making this a product conversation, one or two features that are helpful for building that foundation that that team members can plug into, like getting a couple of these blocking and tackling pieces right in Follow Up Boss so that you could, you know, easily run it for 24 people just as easily as 10.

Yeah. For me it was onboarding. Even when we had like an admin joining the team, I had all of the action plans set to say, you know, you need to do these 10 checklist things for each person. Get them a door code, get them a key, make sure that they have all their logins for all the things. And by setting up that action plan in the front end, it saved me so much time every time a new person joined. And connecting it with our Google workplace, which we had Google Classroom for all of the training, it was like a very easy process to set up with just very little work at the front end.

Awesome. So for anyone watching and listening, if you are using action plans or you're using another CRM and some kind of equivalent of action plans and you're using them exclusively for potential buyers and sellers and maybe for past clients, think about turning those inside and pointing them at new team members. It's a great way to do it. Okay, so Meg, do you. I'm surprised I don't know this. Do you watch the show? Do you listen to the show or both? Depending.

Both, depending. I generally watch it because I'm very visual learner. But if I'm driving, I'll put it on bluetooth speaker in my car, but generally I'm watching it on YouTube.

What are one or two themes or topics or even people or episodes that are top of mind for you as being particularly useful for whatever you were working on at that time?

Tech Timber for sure. Every single one of the people that you interviewed that month I've met in real life and have like a real love for what they do. So specific that if I had to pick one I would have to say it was Lee Adkins. I think I watched it twice.

For folks who aren't familiar, Tech Timber was five episodes running in the month of September. Really about Tech Stack CRM, a little bit of operations, we definitely talked a little bit of marketing, we talked about the design. A lot of different stuff in there. So this is the stuff that you've been living and breathing for most of your time in the real estate space. What was some of the nuance that you picked up in those?

It's funny that you say that because yeah, I do live in that space. But the reason that I like all of those people so much is I always learn something new from them. They're all high level people who are doing like top level down type operations or tech. And every time I listen to one of them, whether it's through your podcast or one of their own platforms, they have something that I didn't think of before that always gives me a good idea on how to implement it into my systems as well.

Cool. Really appreciate that. I'm glad you checked those out. As you're Looking ahead at 2025, what are some of the key things you're thinking about or working on or planning on? It'll maybe help me develop some of the episodes for the year ahead. Sure.

So being from Canada, I'm trying to get my tech stack dialed in and we face a few more challenges. I always say that you guys down in the States are a little bit spoiled because you have many, many options. But when it comes to us up here, like websites, even IDX doesn't always work in certain MLS boards in certain provinces. So I'm trying to, for my own business, nail down the ideal tech stack. And that's again why I liked some of those episodes. It gives me some new perspective on how I can make tools that maybe don't work for me work in other ways.

We've had a number of Canadian team leaders and operators on the show, primarily team leaders, I think, but I haven't had this conversation specifically. I would love for you to share just for the mutual understanding Especially with a primarily American audience, but represented in a number of countries at this point, which is a joy. Give me a little bit more detail on some of the unique aspects of real estate in Canada versus in the States because I know you know a lot of folks in the States very, very well. We've done a bunch of business in Canada. Hey, thank you so much for listening to these episodes of Real Estate Team os. If you're like me, you're listening to a podcast conversation and sometimes you have questions or you want to go deeper or it reminds you of something that someone said on the same podcast two or three weeks earlier or two or three months earlier. Good news for you. If you go to realestateteamos.com bot that's bot you can tap into the collective wisdom of every single one of our guests. Use text mode to type back and forth and get your questions answered. Get five tips to improve your recruiting, for example, or go to voice mode and you can talk to it back and forth, interrupt it, redirect it, ask follow up questions. It's totally free. It's available to you@realestateteamos.com Bot that's realestateteamos.com bot. I know you'll find it just as useful as the rest of this conversation.

Yes. So one of the reasons that like Follow Up Boss is so great is it doesn't have any restrictions on how we can use it here in Canada, but some of the the tools that are gathering data, specifically personal data, are protected in Canada. We have some legislation from our federal, we would call it government that doesn't allow two way sharing so to speak. And we have a little bit more regulation on like do not call lists and like cold calling. You can't record things without, you know, first disclosing. So one of the things that I enjoy is trying to figure out how I can work with what I have using some of the processes that are are widely successful down in the United States.

And in that sense I would say that the United States is a laggard and that this is all coming. You know, GDPR in the EU was probably the first big thing a lot of that started getting represented. I think they're, you know, last time I looked at it a couple of years ago there were maybe 18 of the United States had some version of data privacy, data protection, data management policy in place. It sounds like the federal government of Canada is a little bit ahead of a lot of that legislation, but it's all coming. So you know, as we think about our Businesses. Talk to your Canadian friends, including Meg, to get a glimpse of, you know, what it means to actually really respect people's digital Personas and data and access. Because I think we will continue to take for granted a lot of what's in play here. So. Yeah. And did that ring true for you, Meg?

Yeah, for sure. And there are changes happening here as well. Like all the time. The government changes a little bit lacks here, a little bit more here. So as things change as it does down there as well, you know, things might open up. Some of the platforms that I would love to use might be here in a year or two and I just have to be a little more patient.

Anything you would like to share with the Real estate Team Os audience as we wrap this conversation?

Interact. As someone who I live in the marketing and kind of social media space, I know that Ethan works really hard on these episodes. So leave a comment or share it with a friend who you think would really appreciate the information that Ethan is sharing because all of the hard work that you've done done, Ethan needs to be, you know, acknowledged and shared. So leave a thumbs up or a comment because a little bit goes a long way.

It really does. It's. It's surprising. Like, I offer my email address in episodes. Like, I get emails from time to time. But like, it's shocking how many times you can see these things consumed and how little direct engagement there is. So I really appreciate that. Meg, I appreciate you being a viewer from the earliest days for giving me feedback. I'm always open to solicited and unsolicited feedback. I might ask you for something in particular, but I'm always happy to hear from you one way or the other.

Yeah, anytime. I'm always happy to help.

What does it mean to engage? It might mean following Real Estate Team OS on Instagram and liking or commenting on something that you find helpful or interesting. It might mean commenting on a YouTube video in the Real Estate Team OS channel. It might mean going to realestateteamos.com subscribe and signing up for immediate access to seven Subscriber Only episodes and getting email exclusive insights sent to you every week and replying to those emails. I'm always on the other side of them and I always welcome your thoughts, your questions, your feedback and your pushback. Whatever you've got for me, I'd love to hear it. Closing out part one of 2024 wins and 2025 game plans is Scott McAnny, a broker with Vreeland Real Estate who lives in Jacksonville, Florida. He Shares with you here, how he went from never having worked a lead to the top of the leaderboard, how Vreeland is building out real estate teams, and how he's focused on recruiting in a pretty specific way in 2025. Here's Scott. Scott, we've not yet met in person, but I'm so glad that we connected virtually and I appreciate you spending time here in this episode.

It's my pleasure. Glad to be here.

What I like to do with these is start with a little bit of your background, like give us a quick color of your real estate experience to date.

Well, back in 2014, 20, late 2013, I got involved with some of the funds that were buying single family homes for rentals. Right. And my brokerage in Northeast Florida was an acquisition brokerage for them and we were doing probably 200 plus homes a year. A lot of them sight unseen. Some of them at first were like bulk, you know, where they buy a whole portfolio and then sift through them and inspect them, either sell them or, or do the long term rentals. And then when Covid hit, there was a disruption in that, you know, people were concerned or the investors were concerned with, you know, the, the leases and if they were, you know, eviction, what people were going to pay. So they put the brakes on everything. And you know, I'm a workaholic, not a workaholic, but, you know, I enjoy what I do and I like making money and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. So I had done really well and so I took the next two years off and traveled the country with my family.

What a wonderful thing to do at that point.

Yeah. And my, my wife was or is a kindergarten teacher and at, you know, my kids are 19 and 21 now. So, you know, the summers were, were wide open that we take the entire summer off, see the, see the United States. We've been to all the lower 48. So that gives me something to talk to clients about when I'm, you know, when, especially new clients. Where you from?

Okay.

You know, always have a good story. And, and so we did that. And then my wife's like, okay, you're, you know, you're too young to retire, you got to find something to do. And I never, and I think this is really not key, but it gives good insight. I never dealt with a lead, but for ever, you know, I, I went from doing development, construction and commercial and then I was introduced to the, the fund, onboarded with them, but I, and so everything I was looking at Was like, leads, leads. And I talked to Zillow and, you know, I was going to get involved with them, but I was like, you know, I don't even know how to manage a lead, right. And I've been using Salesforce and I talked to a couple of companies and they were like, well, what do you use to follow? They were trying to give me hints to follow up boss. What kind of platform would you use to follow up? I mean, they would literally say like that I'm like, I have Salesforce. That's what I was using, you know, and so then I came across an opportunity just to enter a, you know, on board as a broker associate, just as an agent with this company to learn their how they managed leads really and where they came from and what you did with them. You know, I had zero experience. I actually, when I went into training, because this is me, I skipped ahead and finished all like the Y Lopo courses in a day and all the follow up boss online course. You know, I was like, I know.

How to run my business self paced. I can see something like you just running through it.

Running through it, man. And then, then I came across the leader board and I said, you know what, I got to be at the top of that leaderboard. And I've been there ever since, you know, and that was coming up on three years.

And is that the company you're with now?

Yes. And then what we did is we had some growth and some changes, and I went from being a broker associate to the qualifying broker of the company, you know, and then we started building teams.

Right.

And, and so I became more and more aware and, and accomplished it using the technology. You know, I'm an older guy, so it was a little slow, but now, you know, I'm on it. So that led me to fubcon last year where I saw you speak. Right. And then so I started following the podcast after fubcon, you know, not as much as I did after I saw the Lawton team when I saw George's first podcast and I said, you know what? I think they're giving us a blueprint of how to set up our brokerage to be successful with Zillow. You know, a lot of them seem to have gotten involved with Zillow in like 2017, 2019. And Zillow's like, you know, you need to do this, you need to structure this way, you need to onboard, you need to ramp up. We're coming at you with all this business, you know, and to me, I was like, you know, they're telling me right here how to structure my business, how to recruit agents, how to train agents to be successful. With the Zillow flex flow of businesses.

Coming in the future, all the best teams have a diversified lead flow, but, yeah, we've definitely had a lot of flex teams on. And in terms of teams that are really. That have scaled up with that opportunity and really learned a lot from it, that inside the Lawton team series is killer in general. The MO of the show overall was, you know, there are a lot of different resources out there, but they're kind of scattered. And there's no one place where you can hear from a different team leader or operator every single week from somewhere in North America about how they got into the business and how they built their team and really get into the weeds on kind of the operations of the team, lead flow, etc. So, Scott, do you watch or listen or both?

I watch. I try to listen when I'm driving, but it doesn't work. And it's just like when you meet a client, then I, you know, I like the body language, you know, and when. But when you're just listening on the phone, you're not picking up the nuances, right?

Yeah, I listen to a lot of podcasts and I wind up doing that a lot. It's like going back because the way that the moment felt, it felt important, like I should hear it again, but I didn't fully process it because I'm doing another activity at the same time and I'm only listening, not watching.

Right, right. So I prefer to watch it. And I've watched the. The Lawton team several. Each of the episodes, several times, just taking notes like the Unabomber or something.

You know, that's great. I've actually heard that from a handful of folks. I'm so glad that was useful to you. Is something that, I don't know, had been done before is going, you know, deep into one organization. So, yeah, you get the vision from, you know, George, the founder and CEO and team leader. Yeah, you get the vision from Billy the coo, who's been there for a number of years. But then we're going to walk it out all the way through the organization to the front lines, to the agents, to see how that vision becomes manifest in a, you know, in a realized and. And practical and operational way. When you think back about the. The themes or the topics, you know, where you are, helping Vreeland, you know, build teams out and things, any other themes or topics or guests come to mind in Terms of being particularly helpful to you.

I think first click for me was what Billy Hobbs was talking about. You know, it's, it's just not about recruiting. It's about that agent journey. How, how am I going to make this person successful in their real estate career? Not, I'm going to burn them out in a year by, you know, holding them accountable to chase my leads and, you know, call, call, call. It's about, okay, what's the next level? What if you, if you reach here, what's the benefit? Right. You know, and, and move them up that. Those levels, you know, and you were talking about the next group. They have levels as well that you're going to be interviewing. I think you said, like bronze, silver, gold, but it's the same thing, you know, and that's what I would want as an agent. I'm just not coming on for the short term to work leads, you know, I want to build my business.

Yeah. Show me a growth path.

Right, right, right now. And so that really stuck out to me and a lot of the guests you had emphasized that as well.

Yeah. Cool. Appreciate that. So as you're looking forward to 2025, what are you thinking about? What are you focused on? Or maybe do you have even some specific initiatives that you're, you know, excited to take on in the year ahead?

Yeah, well, what we're doing is we're focusing on, of course, recruiting, but in a different way also. I, you know, the other. I wrote his name down so I could give him credit. Justin McClellan.

Oh, yeah, right.

I thought it was fabulous what he was talking about. So, you know, and, and so that's what I think is key for the retention and that. And that's really what we're focusing on, is recruiting quality individuals. Right. Training them correctly and retaining them, not only to build their business, but build our business, you know. So what we've done is we've, we've come up with a second level of training. You know, we were training two weeks.

Okay, go, go, go.

Now we have a week, three through week five, right. Before they are even have the option of going on a team and having that team lead now be able to interview and choose who they want on the team. Before, we were just recruiting and sticking, you know, here, here, here, here, here. But now it's more, okay, two weeks where they get the fun, you know, because there's a lot of technology to learn, man. So we get, we get them focused on that and then we can bring that Justin McClellan level in where we're nuanced, you know, tweaking, listening, calls, coaching, where instead of it's not about all production and that team lead is trying to get them to produce and we're asking the team lead to back down and do those type of things because then production drops.

Awesome for folks watching and listening. Justin McClelland is the head of Agent productivity with the Lawton team. He was part of the Inside the Team series with the Lawton team in Phoenix. And for all of these conversations, folks are mentioning one or more episodes. So those are all be linked down below. Whether you're watching in YouTube, it'll be linked down below. If you're listening in Apple podcasts or Spotify or somewhere else, that'll be linked down below in the description. Of course, you can go to realestateteamos.com we write all these up with the audio and the video right there so you can watch or listen on the website and the links will be there too to check out those episodes. I love that that series was so valuable to you, Scott. I've. You're not the first person who told me that. They're just listening, you know, taking notes as they go. And I'm just, it's just a privilege to know that this has been helpful to you in your journey. I'll also point you to episode 28, Scott, with Jose Simono and Jeffrey McGonagall. That one was super fun. We brought those guys together under the same one, but they break down their 30 day onboarding program and then it's a 12 week training program. And I think that's one of the distinct benefits of the team model. We heard it in the earliest episodes. I'm thinking now of episode four with Jenny Weimert of Weimert Group Realty down in Orlando, where she was like agents coming onto a team versus coming into the business as solo agents. A solo agent needs to learn all 100 things right away if they're going to be able to do transactions on a team. You learn the first 30 things and then you learn 10 more and then you learn 10 more and you know, you might not even need to learn all 100 unless you really need or want to. It'll come over time, but like the team supports you in such a way and structures this onboarding and training so you know the most important stuff first. So I wish you and the Vreeland team success in putting that together in the year ahead. And is there any other place that you go, Scott, when you're investing in yourself? Like, okay, you know I'm facing all these problems and opportunities in my business. Do you tend to go to books? Do you go to podcasts? Do you go to masterminds? Do you get coach? Like, where else are you and, you know, looking for answers to your challenges?

Yes, I've been to a few Czech black masterminds and I really enjoy those and the speakers and the topics and. And then I watch podcasts. But I come here a lot. You know, it's. And you know, a lot of it. Not a lot of what you do, but a lot of the coaching is just reminding you of what you already know. It isn't the light, you know, it's like, oh, it's.

That's been the biggest theme, you know, is the market got tough with, like, interest rates, like jumping up a couple of years ago, and then, you know, inventory kind of locking down. That was the theme in the whole industry. It's like, you don't need new, you don't need radical. You just need to do the basic stuff that works, which is talk to poor people. You know, if your job is to recruit, talk to more people. If your job is to create buyers and, and sellers and contracts and closings, talk to more people. Just like, line it up, be consistent and get it done.

Yeah. And that was John's message last year at fubcon.

Yeah.

It's not, why do you need to go back to the basics? Why did you ever leave?

Great. Yeah, it's great.

Yeah, I love that.

That's good. Cool. I appreciate you so much, Scott. I'm glad you found the show. I'm glad it's useful to you and I really appreciate you spending this time with all of us.

Awesome. Thank you for having me.

Hey, thanks so much for checking out part one of 2024 wins and 2025 game plans here on Real Estate Team OS. You'll meet four more of your fellow viewers and listeners on next week's episode in a similar format. In the meantime, thank you again so much to Scott, to Meg, to Lawrence, and to Corey. Thank you not just for making Real Estate Team OS part of how you're learning and growing, but also for making this episode happen. I would love to love for you to make real estate team os part of your 2025 game plan. Go to realestateteamos.com subscribe and sign up. You'll get immediate access to 7 subscriber only episodes and you'll get email exclusive insights sent to you every single week. And you'll never miss an episode that would be really useful to you given the challenges and opportunities that are facing you right now. Thank you again so much for checking this out. Enjoy a wonderful holiday season season and let's hit the ground running in 2025 with a very clear game plan and very clear goals. Thanks for checking out this episode of Team os.

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