062 Providing Your Business in a Box with Kristina Salcido

K2 omni group is based in Albuquerque and serves all of New Mexico. But Christina Salcedo and her husband Kiki recently expanded to Boston and Dallas. How do you do that? By finding the right business partners and providing your business in a box. In order to do that, you need clear standards for agents and an operating system that's centralized and under constant improvement. And Christina is here to break all of it down for you. In this conversation, she shares how and why their first expansion attempt failed and provides a fundamental caution for others. You'll learn how and why they expanded from a teamer model to a hybrid model and allow agents to shift from being team agents to being independent agents on a six month basis. And you'll learn the key people, processes and technologies behind their business that are packaged up and made available in other markets. Here's Christina Salcedo 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 real estate team. Here's your host, Ethan Butte.

Christina, we've actually met in person, which is something I can't say about all of the guests that I've had on the show. I'm really excited to have you here. What you and your husband Kiki are doing is, in my observation, like aggressive and impressive and really, really cool. You started in Albuquerque, expanded to cover all of New Mexico, expanded to Boston and Dallas with other markets in the wings. You started your own brokerage that all of this is happening under. And of course it's all powered and made possible by the operating system you've designed behind and underneath it all. So we've got a lot to talk about. Welcome to Real Estate Team os.

Yes, thanks for having me. I'm super excited.

Well, we always start with the same question, even though we have a lot of things to cover and some of the things we haven't talked about on the show yet because no one's doing them quite the way you all are. And that opening question is what is a must have characteristic of a high performing team?

I think ever changing, you can't get stuck in your ways. Something that may have worked yesterday is not going to work tomorrow. So I think being consistent with, I guess, auditing your team, seeing what works and what doesn't, and being real honest with yourself on if something isn't working as opposed to being stuck on it because it's something that you created and that's Something I had to kind of hurdle that both Kiki and I had to overcome in starting our business is just, we liked it and it worked well, but it wasn't perfect. And we had to be okay with being like, okay, then that's wrong and we need to change it.

Okay. There's a lot I want to peel into there, but we'll only spend a couple minutes on it because we'll. We'll wind up talking a lot about the operating system that you all built. I feel like there are a lot of elements of that that fit into this category you just described. I want to ask a question on behalf of people who struggle with this, which is how do you know that it's time to pull the plug or change on something that you set in place? You know, this constant improvement is definitely a thing we talk about all the time, but something a lot of struggle with is perhaps defining what success looks like in advance of implementing something. So knowing whether you're on track or not, or they don't necessarily have the metrics to know while something is in flight, that it's not working, they realize at a certain point, like, that wasn't working and that didn't work and they realized like kind of late. Any tips or thoughts around any of that in terms of, you know, how do you set up things to know while they're in progress, whether or not they're on track and you do need to make those changes or even just kill it altogether?

Yeah, I think for us, the second that we don't see that it's continually growing and then it's staying stagnant. And I know that's a little ambitious for a lot of people. Usually if they're saying like, hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Our mindset's always been, well, if it's not doing something better than everybody else and it's not scaling the business continually on a daily basis, then there's something that needs to change. So for us, I think we are a very high metrics based company and I know that in the beginning we were not. And I know a lot of people aren't. They kind of run and gun like how we did in the beginning. And I think getting their metrics situated is very, very important to be able to decide when you need to make that adjustment. And so I think that basically that's. That's it. If you're not looking that day over day, your numbers aren't better than they were next week, than they were last month. And you're not. I mean, for us, we've almost doubled our numbers year over year. Not necessarily adding seats on the bus, it's just adding, you know, actual transactional volume. And I think that once you see that and you see that the trajectory is just kind of doing like this and it's staying complacent, then something needs to change and there's something you can add to your repertoire at that point.

Really good. Okay, we're going to get a lot more into that. But to honor the structure of the show, tell us a little bit about how you got into real estate and kind of how you got to where you are today. And then we'll kind of get into those big pieces of market expansion, your own brokerage, when, why and how and kind of the operating system behind it. That. That is those numbers that you were just talking about.

Sure. So we started real estate. We actually lived in Los Angeles, California at the time. I had started getting my license back in Maryland when I lived there, or Virginia actually, and then California and then I just basically never finished it. So we started off on with Fortune Builders, which was a system, they're an investing plat, investing school essentially. And we started with that in California, realized we had negative money so there was nothing we could really do. And honestly it was just too big of, I guess, bites in LA, where you're buying a burned down house for $800,000 on your first flip, it's not really ideal. So for us, we decided to move to New Mexico, which is where Kiki was born and raised, and realized it was a little bit of a bite sized pieces to start with investing. Then once we got here, we kind of realized that we got in a situation where we had a really bad experience when we were trying to buy our first house. We found out as we packed up our entire life in California and we started the road trip that we weren't closing on Monday like we were supposed to. And actually the contract and the process with the loan had stopped two weeks prior and no one told us. So we were moving basically, you know, three states over and had nowhere to go. Um, so that's kind of how we started in real estate. We said, you know what, we're going to do the investing side, but I think also the education side and the structure and the systems on the real estate side would make sense. So we got our license and at that point we were with ReMax in 2017, May of 2017, got our license and then we were with them for about a year and a Half, actually, two years. And then we opened up Simply Real Estate In August of 2019, the day my son was born. Literally delivered him. Got a text from our. Our qualifying broker at the time, who was our business partner that we are moving and started Simply Real Estate. Got that to about 150 brokers over the next couple of years. And then just this previous February of 2024, we opened K2 omni group separately. So it wasn't a brokerage with a team operation. We opened essentially a teamerage at that point just to make it easier for expansions, logistics names. You know, when you have this name powered by so and so a team by this person with this person, it gets way too confusing. So for us, we, you know, still maintain we're sister companies. We do everything together. Nothing happened with that, but we all decided that it would make sense to kind of separate the two forces and kind of operate as a team.

Ridge.

And then just like a regular brokerage.

Okay, so Simply Real Estate is a brokerage that is operating in Albuquerque or multiple markets. Like, like separate those two, like even more clearly for folks and why they're separate.

So Simply Real Estate we started in 2019. It is just a regular brokerage. So we had independent brokers, we had teams under it. We had investment platforms and everything like that. We, Kiki and I basically operated our team underneath that brokerage, just like you would a Keller Williams and you have a team. And so we helped obviously grow the brokerage as well. But our business partner, Carrie, was running like the brokerage side and we had the side. So it was essentially kind of feeding each other. Whoever wasn't a good fit for just being a broker, they wanted to go to a team, they would come to us. And then when we decided to make the split, Simply still operates. They are a regular brokerage for independent brokers or teams as well. And then K2 omni group is our brokerage that we started, which was essentially a teamerage. And then just recently, over the last few months, we actually turned it into a team side. And then we also have an independent broker side so that when our brokers decide, hey, you know what, the team might not be a good fit for me right now I have a good business of my own. They don't have to leave the brokerage. They can just push over into our independent side and then vice versa. If they get scared, they tried it for a little bit, didn't work. They always have the team that they can run back to.

Wild. What an interesting opportunity for someone who Gets engaged with either organization to have that flexibility to really explore what's right for them. Talk, talk about any of the. I didn't expect to go here, but it's super interesting. That's why I love these conversations. Do you have any stories that are kind of top of mind about movement from a team to independent or from independent to a team? Like, what are some of those motivating factors for folks? Is it someone just finding the right fit in the way that they want to run their business or their like life changes that drive people to make these moves? Like, what have you seen given the fact that you kind of overseeing and even created these opportunities for people?

Yeah. So I think like right now, like simply, they operate fully separately from K2 omni group. They're its own brokerage and so they independently operate. I think for us, since we're such a high accountability, high paced team, a lot of times people will go through life change. They get married, they have children, they're doing kind of maybe a move from one house to the other and they want a little bit of a break, but they want to still be able to do their own business on the side. They can go over basically for six months at a time. They can go independent for six months. And then if they're like, you know what, it didn't work, or hey, I'm ready to get into the hustle and bustle again, they can dive back into the team. So for us, we, I think we really started realizing it when people wanted to do their own form of business and not necessarily take the full advantage of what the team has to offer, but they didn't want to leave us. And at the time we weren't equipped for that. We were like, okay, go to simply back in the day when we were attached to them, but we still used to refer people out. We were like, that's silly. Because they would go and then sometimes they would come back and it's just paperwork. And so we realized, why in the world are we doing that? Why don't we have an option where people can do that? There's other times where people are like, you know what? I think I want a team, but I just started real estate and I kind of want to do it on my own first. Well, they land on our independent side. They get to see what the team's doing and they get to kind of trickle in. And then they go, okay, you know what? Yes, I'm ready to go. And it's more. So they're more bought in if they have the option on both sides.

I think one of the big differences between being a solo agent inside a brokerage and being a team agent or being an agent on a team, one way we can define that or a big, you know, dividing line is like, this is what the splits and services look like over here. This is what the splits and services look like over there. How do you all draw that line and do you buy that as one of the primary ways to define those separately?

Yeah, I think that for us we define that difference where if it's the team you get, especially with us, you get the full experience includes leads, includes our concierge team, all of the bells and whistles. And on the independent side, you're still going to get a lot of our systems, but we're not as invested in your business and you can kind of do things the way that you deem fit for how you want to run your business. So one is more like entrepreneurial side. If they want to run a little mini team or something like that, or they just want to test the waters or they want to do it part time, they can do that. We don't take part time on our team side. So that's another way for people to kind of trickle in. And we do make that very. We have two different like pamphlets when we talk to them. Here's this one. Here's this one. It's you know, one or the other and you guys can choose what is a good fit for what you are going through in your life at this point.

For the folks that choose to go solo or independent and they go that direction, what is like, is it a la carte from, you know, like, you know, concierge team probably includes listing management, probably includes some marketing. It probably includes TC and some of these other elements. Like do they get access to any of that stuff or is it like.

Yeah, they do. They're going to get more of. I guess they'll still get the bells and whistles in terms of all of the systems, but I think it's the actual manpower that differentiates a little bit as well as leads. So they will still get all of our operating systems, all of our marketing. We do have an in house marketing team. They get access to all of that. I think it's more so the. They have their transaction coordinators on that side. They still have their director of sales scripting, all of that, but they don't get necessarily like the pipelines. They don't get the concierge team, which is booking appointments for them, which is re engaging Leads. They're not getting our agent assistant team, which goes in and is literally an assistant in the CRM for them. And so they aren't getting that extra piece of accountability. It's more so you can run with it. Here's all the systems, but you kind of need to figure it out. We'll teach you how to use them, but like it's on you to do whatever business you want. And the team side, we have a lot of metrics that they have to hit weekly to even qualify to stay on the team. So it's just kind of one's a little bit more lax than the other.

I have not heard of someone going in this direction before. I'm sure it exists. I've definitely heard of a team merging into a brokerage. And you know, the, the original brokerage people can join the team if they want, but the team is there and like we're recruiting to the brokerage and you can choose to be on a team within the like. I've definitely heard versions of this, but I haven't heard. We started as a team bridge and then we broke off this other opportunity for folks, is this relatively fresh to you with regard to, you know, the folks that you connect with and the mastermind groups that you're in and the other kind of, you know, peer groups that you, that you learn and grow through?

I think the, the difference with, with us is we structured it different. Right. So a lot of your big giant teams, they're with these big box brokerages. So they don't have the opportunity to have an independent side because the independent side is just the brokerage. And then the team leads or the person that's running that particular business is out of the loop now. So we're in a unique situation. And that was. We were very strategic on not joining a big brokerage and having everything organic. And I understand, like the national reach, some people have worries about that. Well, I'm national reaching by myself. I don't need somebody else to do a national reach. So it's possible to do it and it just needs to be, I guess, ironed out in the correct way. And so since we. I haven't seen anybody else honestly do that. I don't know of any places here that have it. I know brokerages, like you said, that have a team or if they leave the team, they go into the brokerage. Like how when we were at simply. But I don't know any that have that. And honestly, this is going to sound a little off the cuff, but I think A lot of people, when they leave the team, the hard part is a lot of teams don't make it a good separation with us unless you do something that is ethically incorrect or you do something that is just horrible. We have people that used to jump into simply and then jump back into the team. And so I think that's where the concept came from. It we make it such a good exit clause. It's very clear and cut in the very beginning what your exit's going to look like. And then from there, we make it such a seamless process. We're not mad. We understand, hey, your business is going a different direction. And I think it kind of organically grew. Where we had one girl that said, look, I don't want to leave you guys. I want to go independent for a little bit, but I don't want to leave. We're not attached to simply anymore. What do I do? And we kind of just created it just to keep her. And, you know, we had. I think we've had over a handful of people that were on the team years back, went on their own to another brokerage, sometimes not even simply. And then they ran back and same thing. They were like, I don't want to leave. And I think we were in a unique situation where we did have that relationship with past team members that we needed something like that to be able to keep them.

This falls into the category, like, my big bucket mental categories, as I enjoy all these conversations, as I have for almost a year and a half now, over a hundred of them. The category of, like, unique and creative ways to continue growing our businesses together like we are business partners. The situation right now doesn't work. Let's figure out a new situation. Oh, I think a lot of other people might benefit from this. Let's formalize it and figure it out. I really appreciate that. I want to go back a little bit in time. I'm going back to something that you told me in one of our earlier conversations, maybe even a year ago, which is that initially you and Kiki aspired to be like a SEAL type of team. That was kind of like what you mentally were thinking about going into it. Like, at what point did you choose to grow beyond that? And what were some of, like, the pros and cons as you were laying out, whether or not to push past that, that. That informed your decision?

I think we still. We still fight with that a little bit, because we do. We do. Everybody does. They're like, we do.

Simpler than the profit margin was easier. Easier than like, yes.

And it's easier. Like, you know, there's a lot. Like, again, these big brokerages, it's a numbers game, right? The more butts you have in the seat, the more money you make, right? And we were just never that way, that our brains never operated that way. However, I think for us, we realized, okay, we can have the brokerage side where you have basically your passive income, essentially, because you have your brokers that are operating on their own. You're giving them the tools and support and everything that, like, just a regular brokerage would. And then they have the option of, hey, let's jump into the team, right? Or vice versa. And then for us, we do. Even though right now we have about 30 brokers, not including Kiki, myself, or our director of ops just in the Albuquerque location, we still are very seal. So you can be on the team, but if you don't hit your metrics and like, for us right now, currently, and they change all the time, like we talked about this earlier, right now it's one to two transactions a month that you have to maintain in order for us to keep continually giving you business. And there's a million, I think there's like seven or eight categories you have to hit every single week in order to be on leads. So we still operate on that SEAL level because you're not getting future business unless we know that you can harness and close the current business we already gave you. So we do have people on our team that don't necessarily take leads right now because they have enough. They're good with the one to two a month, and they're steadily doing their business. And then you have your others. I have multiple crazy people that will do, you know, your 5 to 12amonth. And they're the ones that are consistently on the lead team because that's their SEAL mentality. They want to just keep going. So I think we kind of created a little bit of a hybrid in there. We still operate very seal. They have to go through rigorous training. Like next week we have our summit training, which is two weeks of systems oriented. The entire first week and then the second week is all contracts in the field, negotiations, etc. They can't even get on the lead team or even talk about the lead team until they complete that. And then there's metrics they have to hit and continually hit in order to continue to receive those leads. So we kind of created a little bit of a hybrid. And we do still operate seal. Same with Dallas and same with Boston. You know, they all have metrics that they have to hit in order to continue to get the business.

We're gonna get to Dallas and Boston in a minute, but I do I'm not gonna ask you to name all seven of the performance standards, but I would like to go a little bit deeper, dive there. I know folks struggle with this too, which is, you know, what are the minimums? How do I enforce it? So I'm saying that they're on probation, but what does that mean? What are their paths forward? What am I going to do for them? What do they have to do for themselves? You know, when do I actually close that door? Like some of that is just someone's own discipline to truly hold people accountable to the standard that we all agreed on on the way in the door. Part of it, of course, is being really clear what those standards are and communicating them as people are thinking about coming through the door, as they come through the door, and after they're through the door, you know, making sure that that communication stays clear. But can you share a little bit about formalizing some of the standards and if you can name a few of them, that'd be great. If not, you know, again, I'm not asking, I'm not quizzing you about your multiple standards, but like, share a few of those and like, how have you dealt with how to formalize? Maybe a probation period? And what is that? And how does that go in the this is just another benefit. I'll just say it's our it should be obvious to most people listening at this point that one of the benefits of having the team and the broker like the independent paths is that they're essentially just getting pushed into the independent path, I assume. 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.

Yeah, nothing changes. Their independent contractor agreement just adjusts a little bit, but other than that, nothing changes. Same qualifying brokers, all of that. So for us, I think the way we were able to, I guess, have the high accountability is from the beginning when you sit down and meet with us, we're trying to scare you, honest to God. So when you sit down and if you ask about a split within the first, unless we bring it up, you already have a check mark against you because you're not listening to value and your mindset's in the wrong spot. So for us, I think we do tell them, hey, here's all of the stuff. And then we show them the metrics that they hit every week. And so for us it's do you have a pending, do you have a listing? Those are something that you have to have one or the other at all times and then a closing. And then do you. We have the team meetings, we have pipeline reviews and then we have scripting every single week. Unless you are at a certain production tier. You miss one of those, you're off leads. There's not even, not even a question. You can book your appointments around them, they never change. Your slack channel reminds you of them every single week. You have a calendar, we talk about it. There's no if, ands or buts. And my team knows, do not contact me if you're going to complain about not being at one of those. And then from there it's basically performance, it's conversion. How is your conversion with what the concierge is sending you? Did you go to the monthly brokerage training which is either on contracts or in the business? And then other ones are with regards to follow up boss, like, are you clearing out the smart list that you need to. Are you updating your Zillow in time? And then open houses, they're required to do two open houses a month. If they haven't hit their metric. If they held one open house and they didn't do an open house in that four week, it's a revolving four week. They're off leads. There's no, I think from the beginning we showed it to them and on their independent contractor agreement, it shows them the metrics that they have to hit not to be on the team but to get leads and to get the full, I guess, kit and caboodle of the team. You have to do these metrics in order to get continual business. And for us it's never been an issue. We have one on One training bi weekly with our director of sales. So you also have the one on ones with him consistently. Myself, Kiki, the other qualifying brokers were all accessible at all times too. So I think because we're so in everyone's business at all times, no one has an excuse because they operate at such a high level, because we provide so much on the back end that they're literally just opening doors, creating the relationship that most of us got into real estate to begin with and then doing the negotiations. Everything else that's on us. So your metrics aren't that hard to hit as long as you're doing your business and being true to how you're actually doing the process without it within. Within it. And are you actually being honest about how hard you're working?

Yeah. And I assume that some of this is based on your own success. I think that's pretty standard in a lot of organizations is what we're trying to do ultimately, as we start going down the team route, is systemizing our own success. So I assume that some of these expectations are just based on your own experience when this was what you were doing all the time yourself.

Yeah, I mean, Kiki and I used to do. I mean, for me, I think my lowest year, I did 50 transactions just by myself. And so Kiki and I would both do 50 to 100. And so I think with us, and we had one TC at the time. So for us, it's whatever we tell you to do. It's because we've piloted it, we've seen that it works, and right now we're out of production. So my director of sales, Kiki and I, we don't do production unless it's a past client that we can't hand off or if it's some weird nuance. But we're not in competition with our team. And I think that is also such a huge piece. If you have a team lead that's also in massive production, it's good to dabble in it. So, you know, you're staying current with everything. But if you have a director of sales or a team lead that's in massive production, they're worried about their own, and then you're in competition with them. And how much can they really spend on the systems in your support system while they're trying to figure out their own business and put out their own fires? And I think once we were able to go, okay, we don't have to be the rainmaker anymore. We're okay taking the backseat and letting them, you know, Be the stars of the show. That's when I think it really was a big catalyst for our business where everyone was excited, everyone was doing really well because it's about them, it's not about us. And I think that was like a big game changer for us.

Was that a process of tapering for you, or was that a process of you and Kiki looking at the numbers, picking a date in the future, and saying, this is what will be financially ready to pull out of production ourselves in the. Because the team is producing enough that it can carry and we can afford to invest in our team and let them carry the top line.

I wish I could say that it was a lot more organized than it was. It was more so if we threw deals at people and they could close them, and then more and more we were able to do that and trust them to actually close them to the standards that we were used to, you know, providing our clients. We kind of started tapering off a little bit. Kiki also took a break for about a year and a half. We opened a grocery store in the development that we're at. Whole other thing, don't ever do it. But so he kind of tapered off naturally, because he had to really dive into that also staying in here doing commercial and doing, like, the marketing. So I think his side kind of organically was just like, look, I have too much on my plate, and they're going to have to take over my business, essentially. And then for me, it was as we grew, obviously doing 300 transactions a year with, you know, 16 brokers. You're putting out a lot of fires. You're dealing with, you know, 30 to 50 to 60 under contract a month. So for me, it was kind of, I can't take deals because we are so much in the thick of things. And then we realized that, you know, our team's very good with communication. If they see something that they think could be better or something that isn't working, they will come to us and they'll say, hey, this is crap. It's not working. Fix it. And then we're all scrambling, trying to figure out how to fix it. And so for me, it made more sense for me to taper off of production and only take the clients that literally I had to fight to not push. Like, they were just. They won't go. And I think it was kind of a natural progression. It wasn't a planned time. It was more so like, hey, look, we don't have time for it. And it's. It is what it is. And so it's going to have to go to everybody, and then let's give them the systems to make sure that the quality of work doesn't change.

When your business is based in Albuquerque and Santa Fe and Las Cruces, Boston and Dallas don't happen by accident, what is that about for you? Like. Like, what were some of the first steps? What were some of, like, the green lights that had you say, yeah, let's keep going. Yeah, let's keep going. And then ultimately, yeah, let's do this.

Well, so I think for us, you know, the biggest thing, I think a big catalyst for us, too, is getting on the Zillow board, right? So that was where I got out of my little Albuquerque bubble, right? So once I got on the Zillow board, I'm connecting with these massive teams throughout the country, and, you know, I get to kind of see what their. Their issues are and, like, how they are expanding. And then I never even really thought about it. I had a friend that was like, hey, look, I see that you're doing amazing things. I'm born and raised Boston. So I think that's also a big reason it helps. And a friend of mine said, gosh, what the heck are you doing over there? And how can I get your business in a box? And so it was kind of one of those things where it was always in the back of our mind, but it was never an active thing that we were doing. And when my friend said that, I said, huh, I don't even know what that would look like. And so it kind of was one of those where I was like, if you trust me, let's run and gun this and see what it looks like. And we're taking pieces from what other people are saying they did with their expansions, and ours are very different. And so I think Boston organically happened. Went to Zillow and said, hey, I want to expand to Boston. I said, okay, here you go. Boom. And then Dallas was one of our brokers, he came over. He lives in Dallas. He would go two weeks here, two weeks there because he had family. And he was like, I want your business. Same thing. I want your business in a box. And we opened our mortgage company in December of 2024. We had, basically, we were already in the process of doing it since, like, August. And one of our partners for the loan side lives in Dallas. And so it was kind of one of those things where I was like, okay, there's these two pieces that are talking about wanting to do more business. There it logically makes sense. Let's open. And so we officially, you know, now have a flex team in Dallas and Boston and Albuquerque. So it was kind of. We didn't choose them. It was just kind of more so the people were really good fits and we just kind of were like, okay, well, let's figure this out and see what happens kind of thing.

Yeah, it's again, this theme of good business partners. How do we continue growing together? I love the way that that came together. Like, logistically, what was easier than you expected or what was more challenging than you expected? You know, for someone who's like, I know some people over there, I have a well run system that I think, you know, could be centralized here, but run well over there. And, and I have a good partner on that side locally that can carry it kind of day to day. And I'll come in say, month to month or something. But like, from a, just from a pure logistics perspective, what's been easier and what's been more difficult than you expected from those initial conversations?

People just need to be really honest with themselves on what they can actually provide. And I think in the beginning we were kind of hesitant on doing expansions. When people originally started talking about it is because I was like, well, I don't have anything to provide you except for leads and anybody can, can provide leads or buy leads. Right. So I had to really strategically think of what, what makes me different and why would they want to attach to, you know, our brokerage and our business. And so for us, the hardest part is adoption. So we did have one failed expansion. It was one of those where we were so excited. It was the first one. We were going to pilot it and, you know, figure it out. The people were amazing, but unfortunately, they weren't of the same mindset. They weren't like, yes, let's adopt everything you say. The reason we wanted to go with you is because we wanted the business in a box. They were set in their ways. And so it was kind of a battle from the beginning. The agents were confused. They didn't know who was right and which, which process to use. And it was a nightmare. So I think the biggest challenge is finding the right partner, not necessarily someone you get along with, because we love the heck out of them. They were amazing. They just weren't in the same mindset as us. And so it wasn't a good fit. And so we had to pull out of that pretty quick because we realized it was hurting our Albuquerque location, our poor concierge and our admin. Were confused and it just took too much of a toll that we were like, you know what, we love you guys as people, but it's not working business wise. And I think having conversations of their expectations and then them truly understanding, like for us, and every expansion is different. Understanding the clear line of are you commandeering their team and they agree to just be commandeered and trust your systems, they can still run their business? Or do they just like the idea that you're going to trickle some ideas for them but they're still going to run the same way that they were? That wasn't really successful. And I think those were conversations we didn't have out the gate. And ultimately, unfortunately it was the latter where it was like, no, we have stuff and I like the way we're working, but we kind of would like just this little piece and that's just not how we operate. So I think that was a really big thing that I think a lot of people will run into depending on the expectations of the other side. So for me, I homegrow them. Now. I don't necessarily want to go and find, you know, Betty Smith in Arkansas that wants my team, but already has a team that's used to their systems that I have to readopt into mine. I kind of want them where one person, I'm helping them organically grow and they grow with our systems and how we do things because that's going to be the most successful.

Yeah, it makes so much sense. And the micro version of that is a lot of team leaders really prefer agents new to the industry rather than, you know, people who have existing habits and expectations and things that aren't necessarily communicated when they join the team. And so you wind up having to like, we get into that conflict. Well, this team is designed to run this way. And that's why our agents are able to do, you know, X number of transactions per year on average. That's why our average agent tenure is Y. And this is how I'm gonna get you to, you know, income Z over the next 24 months. But you have to play by the rules. And they're like, but I come with some of my own rules. And it's like butting heads there.

Well, and team leads have that problem too. I have a bunch of people that have teams across the country and they'll come to me and they'll say, gosh, I can't get them to listen. And I said, well, you set the expectation wrong from the beginning. You let them. Do you have A, B, C, D, you let them do A and C and then trickle and D when they felt like it. Like you don't have. And it's not necessarily ruling with an iron fist per se, but it's expectations. And so when we meet with people, it's not like, hey, like yeah, no, go do your business on your own. That's the independent side. Go for it. Do whatever you want to do on the independent side. Team side, this is the show. If you don't fit in with how this needs to run out, you are not going to be a fit. And you'll have a 90 day or I think we do a 60 day probationary period. If in that time you don't get something under contract, you don't show up, you don't do your things. I am done investing with you. You can go to the independent side or you can find a team that will be better suited for you. But we are intense, that's how we are and that's why our per age and productivity is higher than honestly, I've really seen even talking to other teams around the country. You have massive amounts of people that have hundreds and hundreds of team members and they're doing 500 transactions while your per age and productivity is two a year. Mine, they have to do 12 in order to even stay on the team. But our average is 15 to 30. And so I think that's where you just have to set that from the very beginning. And you do kind of have to. Sorry, you didn't. It's metrics based. It's not. It's no emotion. It's a business. And I think a lot of people dive into the emotion side. And I think as long as you say these are your metrics and if you have an X in your metric, that's not. I adore you as a person. You have an example. Be better next week.

That's it behind all of this. And you're even. We've been talking about it essentially along the whole conversation is your operating system in which I describe as like the people, processes and technologies that allow all of this stuff to happen. So in the team context, I would love for you to describe. You've already mentioned some of them, but feel free to like, you know, re mention them as kind of like a ground up build of like what are the core people, processes and technologies that give you this foundation that allow you to build in Boston, build in Dallas, build in other markets as it makes sense as you find the right partners. Like what are some of the key people, processes and technologies Underneath all of this system that is run the system or do an independent thing like break down that system a little bit for folks. 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 5 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.

I know we've been with Follow Up Boss since the day we started Real estate. So that honestly, and I think what we love so much about it and Dan's amazing as well, is the malleability of it because I am very like Type A and I need to have things work the way that I need to. It's very pluggable. So Follow Up Boss, obviously, huge piece. That's our information station for our real estate side and our mortgage side. Our mortgage side is run through Follow Up Boss as well on its own platform. We do everything through CCU. CC's, our metrics. That is like. And it talks directly to it. It's amazing. We have a few others that we're piloting with I guess, developers across the country. One is an AI training software and basically it records your calls and tells you how you can do better. And then another one is an AI assistant within Follow Up Boss. And so we're piloting those. Those have been kind of game changers as well. And I think for us mainly we, we Slack is my favorite new thing on the planet. We just started Slack, like maybe, I don't know, Q2 or Q3 of last year. Actually Q3, most amazing thing on the planet that is like our information station.

Especially for you and how complicated the business is in your ability to kind of segment the conversations one to one, small group, large group, this market, that market, et cetera. Yeah, I can see how.

Yeah, I have that Thing so organized. Like, I. Like, I go. So my.

It doesn't surprise me.

My office manager is my best friend, and she's one of our partners, and she's just like, I just see you, and you just glow when you get to go in the system, organize everything. She's like, it's really pathetic. I'm like, I know it's really bad, but it is very.

Yeah, go to that side. Go to that side. Like, who are the key people You've mentioned a director of sales. Like, when did you find this person? What role did they take on? What did that alleviate for you? Like, why did that make sense? You mentioned your ops manager. I know you have, like, a concierge role. I don't know if that's an ISA or if that's like a ISA role blended with other things. I know you do TC in house, and that's part of, like, this. I'm sure they're doing TC for Boston as well as for Santa Fe. Let's say who are the key people or the key roles? And kind of. When did those make sense to you? When did you make those investments?

I think it's once I was able to let go of the reins because we just ran off at tcs, and my mom was my first tc. She was the only one I trusted that I could also yell at if she did something wrong. So I think we've got Bernice, who's our office manager. She was my first assistant. She was the first person that we hired aside from a TC, and that was in 2022, mid 2022. No real estate experience, nothing. And that girl knows more than, I swear, all of us combined at this point. She runs everything. Once I did that, where did you.

Where did you find her? I'm sorry to interrupt. Where did you find her and what was the shared vision? Like, how did you know that she would be this. And I'm asking again because a lot of people wonder, like, where. Who is your person for this and where do you find them? And so often it's what you just said, which is, it's not from the brokerage down the street.

No, she. Her husband was at our brokerage because he lived in the development, and he was kind of doing it, like, part time. This is before. This was years ago. And he was like. I said, you know, I'm looking for an assistant. He's like, oh, my. My wife would be amazing. She just had our baby, and she was on maternity leave, and she wants to leave her company. Why don't you Come and meet her and Bernice will tell you. When she came in, we did not like each other. I was like, she's too quiet. She's too timid. Like she is. I'm going to eat her. I'm going to eat her up. There's no way she's going to, you know, survive. But I was desperate. And so she knows. I was like, well, shoot. She was like, I'll let you know. And I said, well, you know, I already filled the position. I was kind of a jerk about it. The other position didn't work out. Someone came in for two weeks. I scared the crap out of her. She ran fine. So Bernice came in, and I was just like, look, I already trained another person. I really don't have too much time to train you, so you just need to follow me and you need to just figure stuff out. And no real estate experience came from the medical field. She was like, okay. So she just followed me everywhere and listened to every call that I had. And, you know, it helped her. And then eventually I appreciated her because she'd stop at 5. But if brokers called her or I called her at like, 7, 8 o', clock, she's responding. And I was like, ooh, okay. She sees the vision. That girl bleeds K2 more than I think I even do at this point. And so it was one of those things where she landed in my lap, thank God. And now we made her a part owner last year because she is so invested, invested in the company. Like, she doesn't take a day off. She is true blue. She figures out systems. So Bernice is the number one. And then Bernice has an assistant who kind of does office things like that. We do have virtual assistants as well that kind of help organize things, do all of our metrics, do all of our reporting, update our, you know, lists and things. We have four in house TCs. Two of them are qualifying brokers. Two of them are just regular licensees. And then they all have multiple licenses in multiple states. So one has New Mexico and Texas, one's getting Boston and Florida. And so they're all, like, dual licensed, and they work just for us. They're not allowed to take any other contracts. They are just K2. And then from there, the concierge team that we keep talking about, actually director of sales Nate, we got him last February, so he's coming up on his year anniversary. We got him from another big team here, and we just gave him a really good opportunity. And we said, you know, we need you to run and gun do the lead sources do accountability. He came from car sales, so metrics and numbers were like his thing, which was not mine. And I said, you know, here's our goal, get us there. And jeez, did he get us there like pretty dang quick. And he also opened the mortgage side with us on. So he's our partner on the mortgage side as well.

What is his, what is his main scope of responsibility? Is it like driving agent production or is it other things?

Yeah, it's driving it. It's honestly, he's kind of a conglomerate of everything. But mainly he does the one on ones. He does the pipeline, he does the scripting. And he is the one where it's like, hey, this was your goal this week. Why haven't you hit it? What's going on? Okay, let's, let's script it, let's figure it out. Let's do a pipeline next week and look and see where all your stuff is. Let's just do it, you and me instead of just the whole team pipeline. So he's the one that has them. His goal is to always have them up their goal every single, every quarter. And last year I think almost everybody doubled what they were looking to do when they first met with him and what they did. So he's agent productivity and systems. He also runs our concierge department. So Concierge is like ISAs but on steroids. I would say. They're all in the office with us and they take all inbound. So our brokers do not touch a lead unless it is a booked appointment. They confirm that they don't have an agent broker, quote unquote. People lie as much as we can. And if they've talked to a lender, either they hand them to ZHL or they hand them to our in house lender. So our agents aren't worried about answering the phone calls and jumping out of the shower to grab a call. The concierge do all of that. They do the full scope and they send them properties, they book the appointment, they do everything at the very beginning and then they follow up with them the next day. Hey, how did your showing with Tina go yesterday? You know, was you guys a good match? Do you want me to send other properties? Do you want us to book something? And then we have our assistance within the concierge that if you hit a certain tier, you have them in the CRM that they are actually following up with your clients and they're an assistant. On top of that, we have re engagement CRM concierge we have seller, concierge. So I think there's like seven or eight of them now that we have for all locations. And they are there 24, 7. That phone rings. If we're not 100%, I'm cracking heads. Somebody needs to make sure that they answer that phone. So they're carrying around like multiple phones all day, every day. And yeah, that's. That's kind of the main thing with it. And then, you know, everyone just kind of. We have a marketing team as well that does all our social media, does all the listing presentations, things like that. And then we have a media division as well that does all the photos, virtual tours, signs, you name it. So any aspect of real estate, we have a department for it and we have people dedicated, and that is their one spot they need to go to.

When you brought on Nate, your director of sales, what did that alleviate for you or Kiki, or did that take something off someone else, or did it add an element that you knew you needed, that you didn't have the time or attention or, you know, passion or expertise to deliver yourself? Did it fill a void? Did it take something off your plates or did it take something off someone else's plate?

I think it added and took off the plate. Kiki and I were trying to run and gun and do one on ones and then we weren't being consistent and that's so important. And it was like, shoot, there's a fire going on right now. I can't do your one on one. Can you do it later today? And I don't like canceling. I am like, I don't. Flakiness doesn't work for me. And we realized what, we were just too spread thin. And we weren't metrics people. We didn't really have at that time. We didn't even have sisu. So we were just kind of like looking at numbers on a transaction sheet and trying to figure out where everyone was. And it was. It was just too much of a message. So Nate came on at the perfect time where we had built all of our systems so he actually had a place to go to. And he is a numbers guy. Hey, based on this many calls, you need to do this many. That's way over my head. I'm like, are you converting or not? What are you saying wrong?

What's happening?

Why do the people hate you? Like, what's happening? So I think he added an element that we knew we needed. We just didn't know how to do it, nor did we have the capacity to do it. But now the brokers know, like who to go to and we make it very specific when we onboard them. They have a whole onboarding checklist in Slack that tells them, hey, go book your appointment with Nate. Hey, go book your appointment with Bernice to onboard, hey, go book your appointment with Jordan so she gets your marketing. So they have this full thing of what their expectation is so that they can't get on leads or even go into summit until they finish that entire checklist. So that we know, hey, if it's taking you too long to do it, maybe we're not a good fit. You've got two weeks to get everything situated. If you're not done in two weeks, you're probably on your way out. And so I think with having those departments of specific people as opposed to a catch all which Kiki and I were for so long, it just got too confusing and we were just not there for the brokers like we needed to be.

Yeah. Really fair. And I assume that these check, like you just mentioned one of the checklists. You can't even go into the two week program until this whole checklist is complete. I'm sure those checklists were built one at a time as needed. I'm sure some of those ideas were yours. I'm sure some of those. I think, Bernice, you said, I'm sure the team is just probably culturally part of the team to say, this is too loose, let's tighten it up. And that's just constantly going on.

Yes. Like literally yesterday I was in an onboarding checklist for our concierge. So I was like, oh, shoot, I don't have an onboarding checklist for Texas concierge and I don't have an onboarding checklist for Texas for the independent side. And I was building all that stuff out and then we're all adding things. And it's interesting because the brokers will even say to us, hey, I think the metrics need to be harder. There's too many people on leads. And I'm like, you want the metrics to be harder, like interesting. So they, they'll tell us things like that we need to adjust. And so every single day, my little happy spot, I'm changing sisu. I'm. We have a TC meeting once a week. We have the concierge meeting twice a week. So we're meeting with everybody. And my first question is, what do we need to fix? What do we need to delete? What is something that's in there that doesn't need to be what's an extra step? We can get rid of that. We can automate. And Kiki was really good at that because him stepping out for a little bit and jumping back in, my ego took a little bit of a hit because he said, well, you have all this stuff. It doesn't need to be there. And I was like, it is working just fine, sir. It doesn't need to go anywhere. And he's like, no, no, no. You have three steps that could be done by an email. And I'm like, well, it's fine. And he's like, you're not doing what we're supposed to be doing. And he's like, you need to rinse, repeat, remove, adjust. And I'm like, oh, he's so right. And so we did. We did a lot of that. And you have to just continually be.

Doing that really good. I also like the idea of him stepping out, coming back with even just a fresh set of eyes, you know, because when he's in it, like, day to day alongside you, like, it's hard to see those things sometimes because there's so many things to pay attention to.

Yeah, it's hard. And that's why he was like, oh, I'm glad I kind of went out. But now I can see all these pieces. I'm like, do not mess with. With my. My stuff that I've been operating on. It's fine. And he's like, it's not fine. I'm like, yeah, I know. I guess you're right. It's not fine. We can. We can adjust.

Yeah. Gosh, there are so many conversations I want to continue having with you, like, sub conversations, including the ego attachment to things that you've built or designed, things that worked yesterday but may not work tomorrow, and the idea that someone else is going to bring that to your attention. You know, so many other things, like ratio of leads to agents. Like, when do you know that, like, you're. You're at capacity in Dallas, you need, like, additional lead sources. We could go for hours. Yeah, but you have a lot going on. I appreciate you making time for this so much. Before I let you go, I have three pairs of closing questions. And the first one is, what is your very favorite team to root for besides K2? Or what is the best team you've ever been a member of Besides simply or K2?

My dance team in high school, that was like my. My little, you know, varsity dance team, Braintree High. That was like my little niche. And actually, some of the agents that we're going to be bringing in. They're from. They're my friends that are from dance team that are in Boston now. So yeah, that was probably one of my. One of my favorite teams.

Awesome. And I love that it's still alive in that way today. What is one of your most frivolous purchases or what's a cheapskate habit you hold on to even though you don't need to?

So I guess you could say one of my addictions is animals. So we live on a farm. I'm staring at my llamas and my goats and my chickens right now. And I have my bunnies running around my house right now. So I'm an animal collector because I can now that I have land out here. And my husband, he's even worse. He's the one that brought home the last idiot that we have our husky at an adoption event. So he's. We're terrible together because we'll just see something that's cute. We're like, oh, yeah, we'll take them home and we spoil them. So, yeah, I would definitely say animals, farm, lifestyle. We've got every animal under the sun out here.

Funny. How do you. What does it look like for you? What are you doing when you're investing time in learning, growing and developing or when you're investing time in resting, relaxing and recharging?

So workaholic. And my work is my hobby, which is kind of a double edged sword. Not necessarily great. I think the only thing that I do to unwind, to actually shut my brain off from kind of doing this, which is stuff that I enjoy, thankfully. I love Big Bang Theory. That's like my T. I like my tv because then it's something I can focus on and not have to think about. It used to be dance back in the day, but there's not so, so much dance in New Mexico. Maybe once I get to Florida, but that's. Yeah, I just. I need to check off and have like noise in order to. For my brain to shut down. I can't do the calming thing. Like people can do yoga or calm themselves. No. My brain will go haywire and it just makes it ten times worse. I need to be in more chaos to kind of stop the chaos in.

My head at this point in the conversation. Someone spent all this time with both of us. First, thank you again for spending all this time with us. But they may want to reach out to you. They may want to learn more about K2. They may be a potential business partner in the future. Where are a couple places you might send folks who have made it to the end of this episode.

Yeah, so k2omnigroup.com is our website, so all my information's on there. We're also on social media, same thing, K2 Omnigroup. And you know, they can always message me directly on any of those platforms. I do watch everything because again, I have to have my hands and everything just to some capacity. So a message will always get to me on either of those platforms. But. But definitely Instagram is probably the best, the fastest way. Christina Salcedo on Instagram as well, all.

That stuff is linked right up down below. Whether you're watching in YouTube, it's in that description. Just click See more. If you're watching or listening on realestateteamos.com where we put up all these episodes independently, you can always check them out there. Those links are right down below. And of course, if you're listening in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or one of the other players, there's a description and these links are all right down below. Christina, thank you again. I hope you have a great rest of the day. I hope you continue spreading your systems and energy into other markets where it can help other people grow their businesses as well. Continued success to you.

Thank you so much for having me. This was fun. Thanks for checking out this episode of Team os. Get quick insights all the time by checking out real estate team os on Instagram and on TikTok.