How To Drive Per-Agent Productivity with Jonathan Campbell | Ep 055

The 20 or so real estate agents on the John Campbell team each average about 45 to 50 closed transactions per year. For the 2024 Real Trends Verified Team Rankings, they're the number one team in Pennsylvania with more than triple the units and nearly double the volume of the second place team. How do they achieve this level of success? How do they drive that level of per age and productivity? For answers, Jonathan Campbell welcomes us into his his business model, his strategies and his philosophies. In this episode, we talk a lot about profitability. You'll learn the two main drivers behind their per agent productivity, more opportunities and more leverage. You'll learn specific ways that ISAs qualify opportunities and set appointments to help drive that production. You'll get tips to increase lead conversion and to vet your lead sources. Get tons of helpful ideas with Jonathan Campbell right now 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.

Jonathan, welcome back to real Estate Team OS. I so appreciate you being part of our two end of year episodes at the end of 2024, on 2024 wins and 2025 game plans. I knew that I needed to have you back when I heard you share a 45 to 50 unit per agent productivity with that long setup. Welcome.

Thank you. I'm excited because yeah, we were already planning for 2025, so I'm excited just to get back in here and talk to you about everything going on.

Awesome. Because you've seen or heard some of these conversations, you know what's coming next and that is what is a must have characteristic of a high performing team.

Yeah. So I wanted to think about this and my biggest thing is profit actually. So I' a lot of people, I've talked to a lot of high performing teams and the one thing that really stood out to me is like I hear the pros and I hear the cons. And the biggest thing to me is you have to still run a profitable business. And if your business is profitable, nine times out of 10, your agent's business is going to be profitable as well. So I just see it all the time and it's something that doesn't get talked about too often in these inner circles. When I'm talking with teams, they talk about volume and sales numbers and it's like, cool, how much money did you make?

So yeah, yeah, okay. I love you starting off there. And what I want to pick up on is what you observed about if you're running a profitable business, odds are your agents are running a profitable business. What I hear in that is probably, it's how you operate. It's. It's just part of who you are. It's part of what you focus on. It's a key definition of, you know, high performance, you know, in your point of view. And so you're attracting people, educating people, guiding people. They're looking to you, they're learning from you. And as a consequence, you're just going to perhaps osmotically pick up a bias toward profitability. But is it. Is it something more than that?

Yeah. So it all starts with the leader, obviously. And the leader just has to be humble and transparent enough to, like, tell their folks what's going on in their actual business. So I tell my team all the time, like, hey, this is what I see in our actual business. This is what I actually see in our market. This is actually what I see in my personal life. Like, I can't tell you, and I won't get political here at all, but I can't tell you how big of an impact like this, this last election has had just with people's psyches and like, being able to talk to them about that and going through that. You have to get real with people, you have to get personal with them, yet understand that there's a business to be had. There's. There's a way to, to make profit in real estate, even with high interest rates, even with low inventory that I'm seeing in my market, even with all the political chaos going on, you need to understand that you still need to feed your family, you still need to be profitable. And at the end of the day, there are conversations that we have every single week with my team.

Why do you think it's not more openly discussed and therefore more normalized? Is it exclusively. I would give two big zones that it might fall into, so I'd love for you to maybe weigh those and introduce other ones. But one of them, of course, is kind of ego. Like, you know, all my numbers look good, but. Except that one, so I don't really want to talk about it. The other one is, and this is definitely a real thing too, lack of understanding. Some people straight up don't have a handle on their business. Now, the. Some of the, you know, the larger teams are at least, you know, have basic understanding at a minimum, for the most part. But like, individual agents in particular, generally don't come up that way. And it comes to a surprise to some of them that they're actually running a business and actually have a pnl. No matter how they're structured in anyone else's organization, do you think it's more ego and reality or in lack of wanting to discuss that or expose that and. Or I guess I'll throw vulnerability in there too, to be fair to the ego side of it. And then on the other side, just kind of a lack of understanding. Like, I just thought this was a sales job and I'm out here selling stuff and, you know, getting these nice checks as often as I can get them.

Yeah, I definitely think it's just a lack of understanding. And to me, a lot of it comes down to simple clarity. Too many people don't provide clarity to their actual agents. So. And what that tells me is that you as the team leader don't have clarity on exactly what you want or that clarity is something that you just don't know about. Like you're not in the right room to have somebody that's been there before or a mentor, somebody that can tell you like, hey, this is what I've seen before, this is what's happened. Or you're in like a collaboration zone as a team leader to understand that. So a lot of times it just comes down to simple clarity. Like if you don't have clarity as a team leader of exactly what you want to do to lead your team to whatever it has to be, well, how are you going to actually communicate that down to your agents? And then they're going to just be sitting there being like, well, what am I supposed to do? And that's the worst thing you can have in a team. And I hear the word culture all the time. It's like, well, yeah, like if you just bring clarity to people, the culture will naturally form because everybody's going towards the right thing because you're the one providing them the clarity.

Yeah, really good. I guess last thing, kind of on profitability. It'll probably bubble up throughout perhaps as we get into per agent productivity. But obviously this is a very cyclical business. And when you're in the business of building a team, you know, you're doing something that a solo agent is not. I mean, they have to solve all these problems for themselves anyway. They need to figure out coaching and training. They need to figure out where their leads are going to come from. So they have to pay for it one way or another. But you know, when you're doing it in a scaled environment, you're maybe taking bigger swings and sometimes bigger, more consequential guesses, educated guesses, hopefully guided guesses and informed ones. But, you know, you're, you're putting into place some hard costs, some very specific overhead. Certainly a lot of the costs remain variable, and you can kind of turn those up and down. Where I'm going is like, you have costs that sometimes you can't, you know, unplug or turn down quickly. How do you manage to stay profitable in a. And in such a clear ebb and flow environment?

Yeah, so. Well, you have a couple things in real estate. So, yes, you have your clear ebbs and flows. So I'm in the Northeast, I'm in Pennsylvania, and we just have ebbs and flows from weather like, like we're not down in Florida where it's sunny and rainbows all the time. Like, we have snow. It's cold outside right now. So we have, we have ebbs and flows just from the weather itself. But, but then you have ebbs and flows from interest rates. You have ebbs and flows of what's happening just in the world in general. And so what's interesting to me is too many people, they rely on, like, hey, what got me here is going to continue to be what works. And that's not the case. And we've been around. I mean, I've been doing this since 2007. So I've seen the markets not only go up, but and go down. We got shut down during COVID for three solid months. There was things and challenges that you have to do. And if you can't pivot, if you can't understand and have clarity of, like, what is actually going on in your business, you're going to have a rough time. So I make everybody read this book called who Moved My Cheese? And what that book talks about is when times are good, like right after Covid and nobody knew what the market was gonn do and the market exploded. Well, everybody thought, well, especially if you got into real estate at that time, like, oh, this is easy. No, you have to, you have to move as things happen. Radio and television used to be incredible for us. Well, as traditional media dies down, you have to pivot. Like, what works? Other lead sources. I won't name all the different names they've worked in the past where. Well, some of them get bought out, they get acquired, they change, they change their models. So many different things change. And if you don't pivot and you can see that and that you need to understand, like, what's happening in there, you're going to get bogged down. And somebody just moved the cheese. That's where this book comes into play. And you didn't go after it, you didn't move with it. You decided, well, that cheese. I'm going to sit here and that cheese is going to come back. Now, when I got into real estate, I was 19 years old. One of the biggest things to me at that time, everybody's like, oh, wow, that's young. Yeah. Imagine being on the other side of it going to a listing appointment and they're like, where's the realtor? Or wherever. It's like, no, I am that realtor. So I had to overcome like the age differential. And not only that, when I would like put offers in, I would always hear this all the time. And they'd be like, son, I've been doing this for 19 years. And it's like, cool. You've been doing the same thing for 19 years and your business really hasn't grown. And so you just have to like, like those guys, I call them dinosaurs. Like, like they don't. Like I've been doing now 17 years, which is crazy to me. Yet it's like you have to move with the times. You can't just stay there and hope that the business is going to come to you.

What you reminded me there is experience is not expertise. People often confuse the two. Just because you've been doing something a long time doesn't mean that you're an expert at it. Likewise, just because you haven't been in the business a very long time, it doesn't mean you could not have developed a meaningful, significant and valuable expertise.

Nailed it.

You just mentioned a couple things about your start in the business. Give us a quick run through of when did team occur to you? Like what was going on in your business at that time? What were a couple of the key first steps and then walk that up to being the number one team in Pennsylvania today. Like, characterize your team as it is today.

Yeah. So I'll give you a five minute breakdown of it. So I got in real estate at 19 years old. I joined a massive company called Keller Williams at the time. They were absolutely incredible. I mean, they still are incredible. And they were growing like bonkers in 2007. And so I joined them. I actually joined a team. So I joined a team and I was actually a buyer's agent on that team. And so what I learned very quickly on is just how to actually show homes and do repetition and do different things from There I actually left that team and I became a solo agent. As a solo agent, I noticed that my production went down, yet my profitability actually went up a little bit. Now, I'm not saying that everybody should do that, because one lesson I learned. And so I met a man named Don Wenner. So Don left Keller Williams, and we were like the young guys back in the day for that. And then he left. I watched him take a quarter of that market centers listings and become an independent broker. I told him, no, I'm not moving over there. I love where I'm at. And then what ended up happening was I left and joined him. And he was the first man in my life to ever ask me, what are your goals? And I sat down, I said, that's an interesting question. And then he asked me, how am I actually, like, going to accomplish them? And he helped break them down for me. And that was one of the first, like, turning points to me. Like, oh, there's more. More than just trying to be a solo agent and doing that. So he told me, he goes, hey, run on this appointment with me. And so I did. And all day long we went on like two or three appointments listing appointments. And I was like, wow, he just ran on two or three listing appointments. He goes, yeah, I have six tomorrow, I have two next day. And I was like, holy smokes, what is going on? Now, keep in mind, this market was different back then. In 2009, 2010, there was a lot of listings. And. And what ended up happening was I started to understand processes and systems because I was like, how is this man running on this many appointments? I would run on like two or three a week at most. And so I start to understand what volume was. I understand what that was. So I made a decision right then and there to be his listing agent. To be his listing agent. So I actually got him out of production. Fast forward another six years to 2017. Basically, I became the sales manager at that company. From that sales manager just last year, he said, hey, what are your thoughts about owning the company? So I've been running the day to day for the last eight years, actually at the actual company. And I took ownership of it last year. And so the biggest thing to me was to watch the evolvement. So I understood the team aspect because I was part of the team. But then I learned what P and LS were. I learned how to look at marketing. I learned how to actually talk to people in transactions. And what a lot of people don't understand is that shift from sales to Actually, being involved with people's lives is completely different. So the funny thing is I had a goal of selling 100 homes a year my entire life. I never got there. And what happened was it's because I had 88 homes sold that year that I went into sales manager. And he said, no, you have to become like, you gotta get outta production in order to make this work. I said, this is strange. So I actually technically took a pay cut during that time. So I sold 88 homes that year. I remember walking away from, like, a hundred, some listings, forty under contract. Like, I was the man for sales. And what ended up happening was two years later, one of our heads of HR wanted to become a real estate agent. She had all the. The cadences of being a really good agent. I helped her sell 100 homes that year. So I started to understand what talking and understanding people's goals were and getting them to them. And so that was my pitiful moment of, like, hey, sales isn't everything. Like, getting people and getting them to do your dreams. That blew my mind. So when I helped Cindy sell her 100th home, and it actually happened on New Year's Eve, like, the day that, like, the next day was starting back at zero, and we had her sell her 100th home, it was the biggest celebration. I was so happy for her. And I was like, man, this is the best thing ever. But a lot of people don't have that. A lot of people can't see past them just selling homes.

And maybe it's not right for everyone either. Like, you have to. Like, you have to get that glimpse. You have to hear these stories. You have to talk to people who've done it. Any other, like, advice for someone? Like, we've had your story, a version of it on the show once before, and that was way back on episode 10 with Ryden Rodenbeck and Johnny McCarthy down at Spyglass in Austin.

I know Ryan. He's a great guy.

Where Johnny plugged in to that team, he was moving back to Texas from California. He had developed his entire plan. Ryan agreed to sit down with him and talk about it. And then Ryan was sharing what he had built, and he was like, oh, I don't need to build all this. I'll just plug into what you did. Mastered the systems, mastered the processes, really reinforced the systems that Ryan had built and then took over as sales manager. So because it's been, you know, many episodes since then, any other advice about that shift from being in production to being a sales manager or even just to being. Not just even to like being a leader of any kind. And then the other transition I'm kind of curious about is what changed for you day to day, week to week, when you took over ownership of the company. But speak specifically to that agent who's at that cusp of having another level of responsibility. Maybe they are running the numbers or other people have, you know, suggested you might be taking a bay cut. But it's like, I assume for you it's obviously been a, like a one step back, many steps forward situation with regard to that aspect. But any other dynamics that maybe surprised you or that you'd like to recommend to other people that they have on their radar in these transition moments? Yeah.

So the first thing I will say is exactly what you actually said earlier is it's not for everybody. And because I was at a point when I was at Keller Williams in the early days where I was that solo agent. And I tell aspirational team leaders, I always tell them that, like, you as a solo agent, that is basically you as a team leader, like, you need to understand that you are the CEO of your own business. And you need to understand, like, what the marketing is, what the people are, like what are the roles and responsibilities in your organization and what's happening. So what I tell people all the time of that aspirational thing is just understand what are you actually looking to replace. And if you replace that, are you as the team leader and owner, actually gonna use that time? Cause I see this all the time, use that time to create more opportunities for those people. So too often I see that, like, they think they're going to like, remove things and then they actually get more relaxed and it's like, no, you don't get more relaxed. And you have to shift that energy and put it into, like generating opportunities. So those opportunities is what's going to drive the future business for you. So yes, it's going to look different. Like, you're not going to run on like buyer's appointments. Probably in the beginning, you might have somebody take on showings for you, a simple transaction coordinator to get you out of that. But you can't let your foot off the gas. You have to just use that. Not to be like, oh, now I have a team, I'm gonna go take vacation, I'm gonna sit back. No, it doesn't work that way. You have to use that time to actually focus on what actually matters and drive opportunities to those people that now are relying on you to actually drive the opportunities. And that might be Whether it's just, hey, you're really good at getting new construction business in, you're really good at networking with people, you're really good at understanding lead sources and ROIs and what that looks like, you're really good on social media. But whatever that is, you really have to go all in to use that extra time. And then what I really recommend people to do is just start reading, like simple sales management books and leadership books. Too often people think that a leader is natural, and that can be the case, but leadership can actually be learned. It really can. I'm on this podcast now with you. I never thought about that. As a sales agent, I now want to help people and spread my message and get. Get as much help out there in the world. And that is now my impact to this real estate industry that I want to do so that leadership can be learned. I was not a good public speaker. I just spoke at Zillow Unlock in front of hundreds of people. You can actually, like, teach yourself these things, but you have to be intentional about it. You have to, one, want it, and then two, be intentional about it and actually take action on it. So really good.

The theme in both of the core messages that you had in that pass are proactivity versus reactivity. And what I hear is a caution against that person who might be telling themselves some version of, consciously or subconsciously, I've made it, I'm in this place and now I'll just help people as they come to me versus this proactivity of now. I have an opportunity to grow this business in a way that can impact even more people in addition to myself. And I need to be proactive about that same thing with regard to taking on leadership skills and developing that. You're absolutely right. So many things. I think that we look at the people who are ahead of us and we think that they were born that way and some of them are, or they maybe had like a bias or an instinct toward it. But there's no question, a lot of work went into that. It's reading, learning, listening, watching, talking to other people, failing a little bit, asking for feedback and being humble enough to actually hear it and take it when it's critical or the positive spin on that is constructive. But a lot of people, and I went through a lot of that myself, even in my own career and in my life is like, I used to be a much more defensive person because I was so attached to the things around me that that helped define me as a, you know, person who had achieved some things or Something, you know, and letting go of that stuff is really important. Okay, I don't want to go any deeper to this conversation without getting into per agent productivity. We don't talk about it enough on the show. It is, in, in my observation, one of the most fundamental keys to running a profitable business because of the leverage we're putting behind agents on teams. The more productive they are, you know, the better off everything is. And just as a point of reference, because you don't strike me as the kind of person who could introduce these number. I just don't want viewers or listeners to miss that. You have approximately two dozen agents. Those two dozen agents did more than triple the units and nearly double the volume of the number two team in Pennsylvania in 2023, per the 2024 Real Trends report. So that's 45 to 50 units on average per agent. I want to walk through that a little bit step by step, but I'd like to start with asking for the obvious. Why does per agent productivity matter so much? When did this dawn on you as a key to running a successful business?

Yeah, well, I'm a very driven person. And it like If I had 300 agents and that whole Pareto, what is it? Pareto's principle, the 8020 rule, I call it. If I had 80% of my people of the 300, let's just say that were unproductive and the 20% were driving it. I don't want that headache of those hundred, some other agents that aren't doing squat. I would much rather pour into all the people that 20% that's doing the work. And so to me, that's why I chose, hey, let's focus on. I know Tom Ferry calls it the Navy SEAL team. And different things I want to focus on, like, hey, how do we drive people that are driven and really want to make something happen here?

What were some of your first steps? Or is this just part of how you were operating and the way that you were running the business that merged in with Don?

All of the above.

It's just been part of the whole journey.

It is. I mean, because what I inherited from Don even a couple years ago is just. It's not he. I mean, I've been running this for about the last eight years now. Ownership, yes, last year. But at the same time, things have completely changed. The markets are different. Everything is different. The one thing I need to tell all team leaders out there, this type of model that I'm running, you need to provide opportunities. If you cannot provide opportunities, this is not the model for you. I don't care how you get those opportunities. I don't care if you have an REO contract with bank, a large bank out there, if you have connections with new construction sales that are out there, if whatever, you're massive on social media and you just get a ton of people or you have the number one Zillow spend in the whole entire country. You need to provide opportunity and there's no right way. It's just the one right way is the word opportunity. You need to provide opportunities to people. So that's my biggest thing in the per agent productivity. I need to provide opportunities to them based on my model. So what I do is I strip it all down and I say, all right, hey, I'm going to take all these things off your plate, like banging a sign in the yard, entering things into the mls, just like simple stuff like that. And yet I want transaction management, I mean all of the above. And what I want to do is I'm going to provide you opportunities, you're going to provide me opportunities by also following up with things. And we're going to convert leads and we're going to make things happen. That's what we've done here to really increase profit, not just profitability, but per agent productivity. Because we have the ability to not only just provide them support, but they know what their clarity is, they know what their mission is, is to produce and actually convert leads.

My assumption is that they're, unless you have an ISA team, they're engaging their opportunities, they're following up, they're maybe moving through, you know, some version of a smart list where you know, these are the new people in since yesterday, these people active on the site, these people I haven't talked to in the past three months even though they fit two or three criteria that say I should talk to them, like, do you work.

Your follow up boss.

In any case, like break that down a little bit. What does it, what does a day look like for these agents? What are they doing and what, what aren't they doing relative to agents in other organizations that you're familiar with?

Yeah, all the above. So one thing that they're absolutely doing is follow up and going through those smart lists. So they're going through all of their opportunities that they're bringing in, they're going through all that and at the end of the day, my biggest thing is opening up their calendar to opportunities that my inside sales team is booking for them as long as they have insights. So I have an inside sales team. They are actively running through. We have about 50 plus lead sources that are generating different online stuff, traditional stuff like radio and television and different things like that. And I'm not saying all of this works. Keep in mind that whole who might move my cheese? You have to pivot with things. Because everybody asks me, what are your best lead sources? And it's like, well, that doesn't matter. To be honest, there's so many other things because one lead source that works for you might not work for me and vice versa. One that works for me is not going to work for you. And so I have to always watch myself when I do that because I've been in those conversations with team leaders, like, I love this platform. And I'm like, I just canceled them two months ago because it was terrible for me. So you have to understand that, yes, there's opportunities from there. There's organic opportunities just from our PPC and Google stuff. And then also right now we're doing a lot of new construction. So I'm the one out there hunting down opportunities to get in front of people for new construction. Years ago it was actually REO with REO properties. So again, that's not really there anymore. I mean, it's there, but it's nothing at scale. So it's like you as the team leader need to find those opportunities for people. But to get back to the agents, I mean, the agents here, they're here to convert opportunities. So at the end of the day, whether it's the inside sales team booking things directly on their schedule, them running out to the appointment, them going on the listing appointment, getting the listing, sending into my support team, My support team will schedule the photos. They'll, they'll take care of all the paperwork. They'll enter into the mls. The agent is really just there then to approve the marketing. Be like, this looks good, they review it with their client and then they're there to keep communication with that client. If the inside sales team sets them an appointment, they, they, they follow up with that appointment. They don't get the appointment for whatever reason. Then it's the inside sales agent and that agent that are actually working together to convert that and, or put it back into a pond and follow up boss, and then have the team that's here reach back out and do all that. And then yes, we have a ton of emails and stuff that will target them and market updates and things that keep people engaged.

Cool. What is the ratio of ISA to agent?

I don't know what the actual ratio. I mean, well, what Is that it's 2 to 20. I mean, so I have two ISAs, currently about 20 agents.

Wow. So that's, that's a really good partnership. I was going to ask, as you're kind of describing that, what's the key to a good appointment set by an ISA for an agent to engage that person appropriately? What needs to be communicated to the client and what needs to be communicated to the agent? Kind of like, what are the nuts and bolts of that? But. But I also heard in that, that there's a lot of intimacy. There are only two ISAs, so I.

Know it's very family oriented like that. And the biggest thing is that ISA is actually asking questions. They're actually digging deep. They're not. Just because I've seen different ISA models. There's nothing worse than just setting an appointment for somebody else. And then what happens is they go out to it and they're like, no, I really just wanted to know the value of my home and that's it. And it's like, why did I just send my agent out to wherever it is? They just drove an hour, half hour, whatever it is. And they just wasted all that time when my ISA could have just had that conversation with them based on their motivation and been like, hey, like, yeah, no problem. What we'll do is we'll give you an estimate of value. If you really want somebody to come out, we understand this. But hey, we'll just give you your estimate of value right now. And then when you're ready, we'll be here and then just get them on a drip campaign and you do that. So to me, an ISA needs to actually dig deep and probe to give them a quality appointment. Because again, I want my agents to be out there converting appointments, not just being like that, like, person that's like, oh, we like, we just want this information. We're not moving for the next two years because we want little Johnny to finish high school. So we, the ISAs have those conversations. So they're setting very quality appointments upfront.

Cool. Yeah. So qualification is this is something that actually requires or would benefit from a direct in person conversation with an agent. Check. How does all of that context. Because that's really, you know, the basic model I like to think about and talk about a lot is, you know, discovery, diagnosis, prescription. So it sounds like a lot of the discovery is being done on the call. On that call, how does that get communicated from ISA to agent so that when the agent shows up, they're not repeating those questions.

Yep. So the beautiful Thing about Follow Boss is that Follow Up Boss has templates that you can make. So in the notes field we actually make a template and that ISA actually fills out the template and then drops it right into Follow Up Boss. And then they set the appointment again through fub and then that all is communicated it back to the agent. Then what happens is there's an automation within FUB that then creates another notes field with different questions that the agent then has to answer. And then what that does is that tells me and my ISA team what exactly happened at that appointment and what is the exact next step for that. And then what I do is I incentivize the inside sales agent by actually paying them 5% of the closing. So their job, they almost become like little micro sales managers because they are in Follow Up Boss looking at the notes, they're saying, hey, great job, this happened. Hey, what's up with this one? You didn't fill out your notes field from yesterday. I need details on this. So they're bought in because of how the comp structure is made in order to help facilitate that.

Cool. So you're providing a ton of opportunities. You've got ISAs doing a lot of work. You have these other functions. You don't have to go out and put the signs in the yard and these things like that. So I want to go back to kind of where we started because I'm sure someone is listening and saying, okay. What I've heard from him so far is those agents can do all those transactions because they don't have to do a lot of the, you know, a lot of the work that slows people down and confuses them and messes them up. They're not generating opportunities cold probably very often. I'm sure everyone's doing some repeat and referral business, but tons of repeat and referral. Yeah, yeah, but, but you know, a lot of the new opportunities being driven by Jonathan and you know, other investments that are being made by the company. How do we do that profitably?

You know, you start small. You start small. Like you don't need 50 different lead sources. You don't need. Find one. Find one.

Yeah, yeah, build that up a little bit. So let's just say I'm an agent who has a full time assistant and I've got two buyer's agents and I have a lot of opportunity and maybe I have one good lead source and I built my own great book of business and I'm looking to take my like my next, you know, three steps or five steps to dramatically transform my organization by the end of 2025. Like, I know that's a little bit loose, but, you know, based on your approach and your model, how do I start moving in that direction?

Yeah. So two comments to that. One too many team leaders don't actually know where their business came from. So you, as a team leader need to understand where your business is actually coming from. Is it actually coming from that lead source that you're mentioning, or is it coming from there, like those agents sphere of influence or your own sphere of influence? And I've done this exercise with other team leaders where they realize that it's like, whoa, the thing I'm paying for is not actually the thing that is giving me deals. And it might be only like three or four people that absolutely love you, and they're just giving you a tremendous amount of referrals. Well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to up my cadence of, like, meeting with those people day in and day out. Not every day, but, like, at least every month to be like, all right, hey, like. Like, you're my favorite client. Like, who else are you tackling? Who else are we getting? But we also want to do is if it is that lead source. All right, is there another lead source that's very similar in model to that one? Well, let me engage in that one. So let me go find that one. Let me engage in that one and let me actually, like, use it. And then it's like, all right, these agents are used to that type of platform. So those agents, it's a pretty easy switch to get them to move into that platform again, because there's not as much training when you have an agent that. And I've seen this with teams is they have like 10 different lead sources, and that agent is working all these different types of things. It can get chaotic. And they. Again, going back to that clarity, they don't have clarity because they're not used to doing that over and over and over. So you want to start to segment that. So it's like, all right, these agents are really good at converting XYZ company leads. Let me go find that XYZ company similar to that and let me engage in that platform and get them over there as well, because it's a very similar structure.

Love that. I hear that one a lot. Which is. In fact, we opened 2025 with a revisit conversation with Lauren Bowen, and she said, one of the key. Me too. One of the key things they did at Robert Slack to improve lead Conversion, she said it almost doubled is when they narrowed it from five or six lead sources down to one and two if necessary. If I don't have enough volume on that one that, that that team or that individual agent is on, then we'll put them on two, but two maximum. So in your scenario, is it that the. Are the ISAs the one kind of doing that filtering? And so by the time it gets to an agent, a lot of these, you know, of the several dozen lead sources you have, it. It doesn't matter to the agent because they're just getting a set appointment and they already have the notes. And it almost, in a way doesn't matter where it came from, as long as you and the organization knows where it came from.

You nailed it. And my ISA conversations are completely different than what I talk about with my agent. My ISA ones can be very confrontational in a good way. And they'll be like, jonathan, this is crap like this one. This is what we're hearing from this lead source is what we're hearing from this lead source. This one's really working. And then the crazy thing is like ones that are working sometimes again, shift models in that and they're like, you know what? Something's happened. So two things. One is just direct feedback from the ISAs that I'm like asking about. And then the second thing is actually actual reporting. Like numbers don't lie. At the end of the day, you'll see shifts in numbers. As long as you are actually keeping track, you'll see shifts in numbers. And also as long as your ISAs are, are actually working the leads. Because I just had that conversation last week. Right now we have about eight different lead sources. And believe me, I've had hundreds, I've been through hundreds of them. But right now there's about eight different ones. And I asked my ISAs, I said, hey, I noticed the activity like calls and text going to this one lead source is not as high as these other ones. What's up with that? And they're like, well, we haven't gotten to that one yet. So it's like, all right. Well, I can't give good feedback based on lack of activity on that. So it's like, alright, is this lead source actually working? Is it not? Why are they avoiding it? Are they avoiding it because they've had a couple conversations, like bad conversations with the people? So, like, what is it? So it's like things like that that I'm constantly engaging them with.

How often do you rotate out those lead sources? Like do you review them? Do you review the monthly or quarterly?

Quarterly, definitely. If I bring on a new lead source, I do give it 90 days. I say, hey, we're gonna work on this for 90 days again. You have to give it the proper actual, like, activity to it. And I'm also not looking at closings because you're not gonna get closings in 90 days, typically. I mean, you'll get a couple, but it's nothing crazy. I'm really looking at appointments. And then what are the results of those appointments? That's what I'm really looking for in that lead switch.

Cool. Going back to per agent productivity, is there a special type of agent that thrives in this system? I think, you know, I think there are a lot of solo agents right now that say, this sounds great. You know, I'd probably, you know, my eyes might bug out when I look at the split, but when I look at the bottom line at the end of the year, I know that I'm going to be happy with it if I'm willing and able to entertain basic math, you know, and like, take those steps. But I can also imagine a scenario where this isn't for every agent. So as you're kind of like recruiting and onboarding and training agents into this, what are some characteristics of agents that thrive in an environment like this? And some characteristics where, you know, yes, we actively recruited them, they went through onboarding, but, you know, as we tried to kind of coach and train them, this just isn't the place for them. Like, talk about who this model is for from an agent perspective.

Yeah. The wild thing about our model is 90% of our agents are actually from outside the industry. So they are. They were not real estate agents that came over. So one thing I've learned is that you're looking for the righteous characteristics with people. That they're driven, that they're enthusiastic, that they're just happy people. Like, there's nothing worse than, like, interviewing somebody and we call the chug test. Like, if you can drink a beer with them, they're typically a good person. But like, if you have, like, you're meeting with somebody and they're just like, like, like, they're just like Debbie Downers. Like, I don't want that person sitting in front of my. My client. I don't want them sitting with my team of enthusiastic people. So that, that's one thing. Second thing is coachability. So we do an interview process, and I think I did this with you at the last call, but yeah, yeah.

So if veteran Wants a deep dive into this. We spent like, I think eight, eight minutes or so on this in episode 50 that released just before the new year. Awesome.

They need to be coachable. They need to be coachable because if they're not coachable, you're going to run into a problem. So those are really the two main things that I look for, like enthusiasm and coachability. From there, we can based on our systems and processes. Not everybody can. You need true systems and processes and accountability. But then we do walk them through all of that as well.

Cool. Are you running on a system? Are you running on EOS or scaling up or similar? Or are you just going based on, you know, your experience over the years and good guidance from other people? Do you have like a formal system that you're running? Because you have a lot more moving parts than many other teams your size because of the amount of leverage you're putting behind agents. Yeah. How formal is that structure?

Very formal. So Don actually created a system called ees, Elite Execution System. And a lot of people, they forget the second E. So everybody talks about, like the elite operating system, eos. And I love eos Attraction is an incredible book, the four disciplines of execution. Incredible book. But a lot of people, they forget that execution part of it. And so a lot of things are just ideas and pie in the sky and all that. And it's like, no, you have to get down to actually execution on things. So, yes, we use a very driven system where, yes, all of our meetings are structured the same way. We lead off with successes. Very, very similar to eos. We leave off of successes. We go through our to dos from the last meeting. We go through any challenges, our IDS topics we call them, and then we wrap it all up with like rating this meeting. Like, hey, how is this meeting going with everybody? So no, there's a very key thing, again, because we're trying to provide clarity to everybody so they understand where they are. When I meet with just agents, not even team leaders, like, team leaders are bad with numbers. But imagine agents too. Most agents don't know where their business came from either. They don't know how many calls they made. They don't know how many text messages they sent. They don't know how many social media posts they made. They don't know how many appointments they ran on. They don't know their dollars and cents of everything. So again, we try to keep that in front of them all of the time through scoreboards and through. And our scoreboards are simple Google sheets that we bring up, they make commitments, then they log everything because it has to be a player scoreboard. If they're not involved in it, they're not going to buy into it. And I get it. Like, follow up. Boss has an incredible system for that. SISU has an incredible system for that. Like, different things have incredible systems for that. But I also want my agents to enter it manually so that they are bought in. There's nothing worse than, like, a system telling you exactly what you did and you're like, okay, cool. Like, no, it takes you five minutes. Look up your numbers and enter them. And again, it's as rudimentary as a simple Google sheet. But it's that entering that actually makes the difference. Yes. The system is tracking for you to help you so you don't have to do all that and go through your cell phone and look at all that. But you need to enter it because if you don't, you're just gonna get lost. As an agent.

Yeah. I can't tell you how many times the process of going to fetch numbers from two or three places and putting them together has given me a handle on what's going on. Because you do that for a few months and you start to get a handle on, like, lumpiness and things start standing out. And, like, there's just something about the manual work of it. It's actually something I'm a little anxious about with regard to outsourcing too much stuff to AI or offloading, I guess not necessarily outsourcing, but, like, offloading too much of that stuff. Like, you just lose. I don't know where we lose the touch to a point where our intuition is no longer as useful as it once was. Because your intuition isn't just, you know, random feelings. It's based in a lot of this. Like, you know, this feels wrong. I can't tell you how many times I was in a meeting where someone from another department is presenting something. I just raised my hand and I'm like, that's totally inconsistent with the last two years of filling out this spreadsheet. Like, that number doesn't track at all. Like, we don't have that intuition if we start losing touch with that. So I love that you have the agents in that sheet working it themselves. And I assume because you described as like a leaderboard or a scoreboard, that everyone can see what everyone else has entered, which also means that everyone can see that someone didn't enter something this week or on time or whatever.

Well, the crazy thing is, at the end of it, so what they do is they make a commitment for, for this week. So we do this every Tuesday and we say, all right, what are your numbers from last week? Or what were your results of your commitments from last week? So we run through that and then we. They enter all their numbers in. So they do this ahead of time just so that we can get moving on the meeting. And then they enter all the numbers, but they announce like, hey, these were my commitments. This is my result. These are my commitments for next week. And then they have to announce at the end whether they're a winner or a loser based off of their activities. I mean, nobody wants to ever announce that they're at the end of it. So what they do is they make a commitment for this week. So we do this every Tuesday and we say, all right, what are your numbers from last week? Or what were your results of your commitments from last week? So we run them through that and then they enter all their numbers in. So they do this ahead of time just so that we can get moving on the meeting. And then they enter all the numbers, but they announce like, hey, these were my commitments. This is my loser. It happens, but you never want to. But then from a people management standpoint, if you see somebody unfortunately just saying like, they're a loser week in and week out, you as a manager do need to reach out to them. Yes, they're announcing it publicly, and when I say public, it's just the team itself, but they're announcing it publicly in front of their peers and their people. But you as the manager should reach out to them. Result, these are my commitments for next week. And then they have to announce at the end whether they're a winner or a loser based off of their activities. I mean, nobody wants to ever announce that they're a loser. It happens, but you never want to. But then from a people management standpoint, if you see somebody unfortunately just saying, like, they're a loser week in and week out, you as a manager do need to go on a one on one basis and be like, hey, like, what's up? Like, don't just, don't badger them. Just be like, hey, what's up? How can I help? Like, what's going on in your world? What's going on in your life? Because nine times out of 10, it's something personal that's just holding them back from something in their life. And you just have to help them overcome that and they will absolutely destroy it out there.

Yeah, you don't want to have anyone.

Referring to reach out to them yes, they're announcing it publicly, and when I say public, it's just the team itself, but they're announcing it publicly in front of their peers and their people. But you, as the manager, should reach out to them on a one. On one basis and be like, hey, don't. Just don't badger them. Just be like, hey, what's up? How can I help? Like, what's going on in your world? What's going on in your life? Because nine times out of 10, it's.

Something personal themselves in that way for too long. And it is. It's not that they don't want to do it. It's just they're distracted or, like, legitimately drawn in another direction for some reason. You've built your entire career in a team model. What do you think the future of the team model is? So you've been doing this since 07. You started on a team. You know, you've seen other models come up. You know, you've. You've partnered.

That's just holding them back from something in their life, and you just have to help them overcome that, and they will absolutely destroy it out there.

Yeah, you don't want to have anyone referring to with. Or you're brokered by real, for example, which I think is an important part of the team movement themselves in that way for too long. And it. And it is. It's not. It's not that they don't want to do it. It's just they're distracted or, like, legitimately drawn in another direction for some reason. You've built your entire. Where is this going? Like, where. Where do you think the team model is? What role does it play in the industry at large, you know, three, five, ten years from now?

Yeah, I'm gonna say something very controversial, but I heard it from somebody else, so I'm gonna repeat it because it actually made complete sense to me. Brokerages get sued, Teams make all the.

Profit career in a team model. What do you think the future of the team model is? So you've been doing this since 07. You started on a team, you know, you've seen other models come up. You know, you've. You've partnered.

And so to me, teams are the absolute outcome to everything. So there's a lot of independent agents out there, and believe me that they make incredible businesses. And believe me, a lot of independent agents shouldn't make teams because of all the complexities of everything. Maybe they just don't drive enough opportunities and they should just be them. But there's also A lot of people that they're like, oh, I'm just gonna make a brokerage. It's like, good luck with that. I've tried scaling that. We actually tried doing that ahead of time. The overhead was just way through the. You think we have overhead just with our team, and we do. The broker was on a whole nother level. So I love that I can be like, run a team. We're very successful and yet we can help other teams just because of the brokerage model that's out there right now.

Yeah. And it's a. It's another point of leverage. We're going to leverage out all the headaches.

Exactly.

Cool. Well, this has been an absolute pleasure. I appreciate you so much. I can't believe I didn't even get to like, what is coming in 2025 for. I guess. Yeah, give me a minute on that. You did your plan months ago.

Yep.

We're not. We're now getting going into 2025. What's ahead for you all? Like, are there any big pieces you're putting into play or is it, you know, refinement in tuning? Like, what. What are you expecting and what are you planning for in 2025?

Right now we're after new construction, so our market right now is very low inventory. So you can only market so much much for new listings and things like that. So we call it a 10x opportunity. So we're always looking for, like, what is that next 10x opportunity? So for us, it's going after more new construction development. We actually just nailed one last week and brought 118 listings over. So we're in that transition period right now with them. So it's an incredible thing to drive productivity through that. And again, it's just. It's where the market's at right now. This is what we're focused on. Going into 2025 is driving new construction opportunities. And then we're also doubling down on cash offers. Right now, we buy homes as a brokerage, or I should say as a team, not as a brokerage, but as a team. And we buy homes. And a lot of times people just need that help. They just want that instant cash offer. They want that opportunity. We've been running that for the last 10 years, but we've just seen an uptick in that as well. So obviously we're going to help service buyers and sellers, but getting into more developments and more new construction opportunities as well as doubling down on the cash offer program is what we're really driving towards in 2025. Cool.

New construction. It's a separate episode. Cash offers. It's come up a few times, as has new construction. We just talked about it with Treasure Davis on an episode a few episodes back. She had a really cool story, by the way, that she followed up with someone for two years who she heard was coming to market, and they ended up turning it into, like, a city unto itself. And it'll eventually have, like 2,500 residents. So that story is just a couple episodes before this one. But I look forward to my next conversation with you. Jonathan, I appreciate you sharing all this information, sharing it so sincerely and clearly, and also your focus on clarity. Thank you.

And I just want to give you a shout out. I mean, just what you're doing for this, the podcasts and YouTube and wherever else people are watching or listening to, is next level. And I just appreciate the granularity you get in with people. There's nothing worse than just seeing a lot of surface level things. So I appreciate the team leaders that are actually sharing it. But it's because of the questioning and the ease of talking to you that really helps us give you everything that you need to, to help other people that are out there. Because I never went to college, my biggest thing is getting into rooms and listening to stuff like this to help me actually do that. So I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart because it means a lot to me for all the future aspirational team leaders and people out there.

Man, that's really kind. I really appreciate that. And that in the room reference that you made at the end is kind of how I think about it, is like, we all know the value of that, but we also know that that means traveling, taking time, you know, away from our families and away from our businesses and away from our agents and stuff. Like, how can we have that, you know, when we're running down the street or mowing the lawn or doing the laundry or whatever else.

I just gotta tell you this real quick story, please, one, take your family with you to these events. That's how. That's what I do. I take my family all the time. Yes, Daddy's gonna go away for a little bit, but you don't need to go to the happy hours, my friend. Like, go take your family out. Like, you're gonna. You're gonna network all those people anyway. Like, go take your family out and explore a new area. Like, that's what I love to do. My family loves it. As long as you have the means to do it, like, do it. And Then the second thing is, one of the best deals we've ever found was from a homeless guy that knew what was going on in the neighborhood. And he was like, hey, this building is going to go up for sale soon. You might want to reach out to. To the owner. And it was just because a homeless guy got into a coffee shop and was like, hey, this is going to, like, go. And I was like, wait, what? And he connected us with that person. And so when you say, like, get in the rooms, also, like, talk to people, like, and don't prejudge them based on that, man.

Really good. Thank you for sharing that, too. Before I let you go, I gotta ask my three pairs of closing questions. What is your very favorite team to root for besides your real estate team? Or what's the best team you've ever been a member of?

I love that question. So I have to root for my U9 soccer team. So I actually coach my. My soccer team. And I just love. I love soccer. I love getting back into that. I don't play anymore, obviously, but I just love, love, love giving back to the youth on that and just helping them out and just watching them grow and consistently just improve year over year over year. So I gotta give a shout out to my forks Falcons that are out there.

Cool. What age?

They'll never see this episode, but I love it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just stay till minute 55. It's gold. You're gonna love it. How old are they?

They're nine, so eight and nine. Year eight.

Cool. That's.

Yeah.

Like, really starting to put it together. Yep.

Yeah.

Cool. What's one of your most frivolous purchases? Or what's a cheapskate habit you hold on to even though you probably don't need to?

Streaming services. I cancel and add streaming services all the time, and it's all based on, like, what I want to see. So an example of that is during football season, I'll buy it. As soon as football season is over, I cancel it. And so it's just one of those things that I'm like, I could just leave that running, But I'm like, no, I'm not paying for that.

It's so funny. I mean, I don't want to run too long, but, like, we saw over the past 20 years the disassembly of essentially cable television into all these separate services. And now, apparently, there's a consumer appetite to start rolling them back up together. So they're offering. You used to buy this, this, and this separately, but now you can Buy them all together, even though they're all owned by different companies, properties.

It's wild, man. Some games aren't. They're only on certain ones. And then I'm like, I feel it's like a victory when I get a free trial. And I'm like, yes, I just got a free trial for this and guess what? As soon as I sign up for, I'm going to cancel it so that my seven days just happens and I watch my game and I'm done. So it's cool.

What does it look like for you when you're investing time in learning, growing and developing? Like, what are you doing? Or what does it look like when you're investing time in resting, relaxing and recharging? What are you doing?

So actually resting, relaxing to me is actually being around good friends, good people, good community. I just like that. I'm not one to just like sit around and like rest by myself. I actually get more energy from being around other people a lot of times and just collaborating and talking to them. What's going on, what's going good in their business, what's not going good, how's the family? And I learned actually a lot from that. Also in high school, I was not a reader. Now I'm an avid, Avid, I should say listener now because I listen to more books than anything through audible or through just YouTube, like letting YouTube play and listening to things. So podcasts, all that. So you have to get involved in that. You have to understand what's going on in the world out there and what's happening in your business and just the world in general. Like people are people. So.

Yeah, I agree that broader context, like going outside the industry for ideas, information, inspiration, orientation, even, like, what way are we going? You're not going to find that. So, like, same thing. I balance a diet of. In the industry and. And well beyond. A, for variety. But then B, because when your mind is putting it all together, you know, like when I'm running or walking or hiking, it's kind of like processing these things and turning it into insights. Diversity is good in that situation. If someone has stuck with us to this point, they probably want to learn more about you or even connect with you. Where would you send folks to follow up on this conversation?

Yeah, just go to jcteam.com my actual website. Just go on there, reach out. My Isaiah will just forward it over to me or look me up on Facebook and Instagram. It's just Jonathan Kim, you'll find me somewhere. I'm sure we have mutual friends. If you're, if you're listening and watching this podcast right now. And don't judge my social media. I don't think I've changed my profile picture since 2015 and I'm the worst at posting things, but people tag me and things all the time, so that's funny.

That's great. So that stuff is all linked down below and he just gave you a reason to go look. So I appreciate you. This was a pleasure. I appreciate the positive feedback on the show, too. I look forward to our next conversation.

Thank you, Ethan. Enjoy the day.

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