[Inside The Team] Building Your Tech Stack for Scale with Julia O’Buckley

You're about to enjoy episode six of our eight episode series on real estate. Team Os taking you inside the Lawton team. They're a top ten team in the United States both by sales volume and by transaction sides. And in this conversation you'll meet operations manager Julia O. Buckley.

So all things systems, processes. I just try to elevate the experience for the agents and for our tech stack and what we can do.

We talk about transaction coordination. We definitely talk tech stack including specific tools that they use in order to be more efficient and more effective both out at the front lines with the agents and internally in terms of data analytics and reporting. We also talk about agent adoption and some of the key elements to get all the folks on your team using the tools that you're providing. Enjoy this conversation with Julia O. Buckley. Julia, thank you so much for sitting down with me. I love that we're doing these in person. I appreciate you making time for this conversation.

Yeah, thank you. I'm so excited to be here and talk to you today too.

Cool. I asked this question to everyone so I'm going to ask it to you too. What is a must have characteristic of a high performing team?

Yeah, I think collaboration is a must and it's something like I feel like we do really well with Allottin team from George and Billy all the way down. It's just true collaboration with the agents and our outside vendors with follow up boss and we use borrow agency and I just think everybody coming together is just a game changer for us.

Really good. And that's based on probably trust, some accountability to each other like shared goals, like anything else that's like kind of makes it work I guess. Maybe I'm also asking for like your, your perception of the, the culture that's that's been so engaging for you within the Lawton team.

Yes. Yeah, I think the Lawton team stands out from a lot of other real estate companies just truly to that nature. George is such like a good visionary and he puts the right people in the right spots and then trust to do their jobs. And so it just gives us so much freedom and autonomy to be able to work with our flex team or our sales leaders and then with our operations. We're just truly want to succeed all together and want each other to win. And so I think that having the trust and being able to lean on each other, it's just been a game changer.

Cool. Well, we're going to get into kind of your arc, but I want to start with the present and because I know, you were an agent, you were a tc. Now you're. Now you're doing a lot of different stuff. And your value and investment and growth in the company has been really awesome. But I would love to get a snapshot from you. Like, how do you describe your role today? And you know, like, where are you in the organization and like, what are some of your key relationships? Some of those people you talk to? Like, I got to talk to these people every day or these people every week, or, you know, just set the scene for us. Like, what's your role today?

Yes. So I'm an ops manager, so all things systems, processes, really. When I had come into the team, Billy, we were just kind of getting our foundation operationally with our tech stack, and so I'm in all of the systems and then really helping our sales team level up, like, the experience. What I love is I feel like we. I put the sprinkles kind of on the sales team, so I just try to elevate the experience for the agents and for our tech stack and what we can do. But I help run our ISA team and our. Our transaction management team, as well as our database management.

Awesome. And so as I mentioned, you started out as an agent. Were you an agent? I think for maybe a decade.

Yeah. So. Well, no, but I. Yeah, so I got into real estate. It was my first real job out of high school. I just started in as an assistant. And then I kind of like floated in that REO world doing kind of just transaction management type stuff. And then, yeah, I was able to transition into an agent and sold for a couple years and loved it. But it just. It's so emotionally heavy to walk buyers and sellers through the transaction that I like to be on the back end, I realized. And so that's why I had found Latin team was hiring when they were part of Zillow doing Zillow offers, and so came back into the ops world from there. So cool.

So you came in. I recently chatted with Billy about that. That window. He said, like, we were hiring essentially ahead of plan. I mean, very often you want to make conservative financial decisions, but they knew that they were going to need a lot of. So you came in as part of that flow of a lot of new folks.

Oh, so many. Yeah. I feel like when I had come in, we probably had 30 employees and we got all the way up to 75. And I came in. Yeah. As on the CO list side listing, Zillow owned properties for sale. And so I helped all the CO list agents doing TC work essentially. So that's where I kind of got my foot in the door. And then one of our TCs had quit and I had kind of jumped in and they offered me more of a full time position there. And I was going back and forth with Billy and he had had this assistant ops role that he was rolling out and I was like, I just like the different things. I can't do the same thing all day every day. And we just kind of had started having these conversations and it was just like me moving into become his assistant essentially was just a perfect spot for me. And that's kind of where I have thrived and spent most of my time here with the Lawton team.

Awesome for folks that like they've maybe worked with a transaction coordinator. But it's only like I feel like TC is one of those things where everything is going really well. You can go under, noticed or even unnoticed because like your goal is to knock out problems before they happen and just like really dial it in. Describe for someone who isn't familiar with like kind of the, you know, the day to day, week to week, month to month of a successful transaction coordination function or a transaction coordinator, like what's going on there that is behind the scenes. So much so that people can underappreciate. Basically I'm looking for you to celebrate.

The tc for people that celebrate. Oh, I love to celebrate them. It is such an undervalued position, I feel, just because they are behind the scenes. Right. But truly our transaction coordinators are amazing and they really just try to partner with the agent where you're just that right hand person that the agent can rely on and they're thinking ahead, trying to make the life easy for the agent. Right. So they're always one or two steps ahead of them, preemptively trying to schedule inspections or you know, walkthroughs making sure that all the paperwork is good. But truly I think like the magic there is like when you can get in flow with your agents and you guys are just working side by side and it's so effortless. It's. Yeah, when you get into those rhythms, like it just feels so good. And yeah, I feel like our TCs kill it.

That's also. So I imagine one of the big challenges is probably especially in a larger organization where a TC is working with multiple different agents. Yes, you want to get into a flow with each agent, but each agent is very different from one another. So I think there's a special skill there for a really, really adept tc. To get that flow going with different personality types and different work styles. I can imagine you personally, you don't need to name names, but I imagine you probably worked with some agen that are completely disorganized and you needed to just keep it on the rails and you're probably much more level with a more organized person. Talk about that dynamic of working with so many different personalities all for the same kind of even outcome.

Yeah, I think this is where some of our systems come into play, where we have a good groundwork of the guide rails like you said, of where we fit into and where the agents fit in within the transaction. And so it allows us to be able to work with multiple personalities because everybody's within the side the right guide rails. But the TC is truly like it does take a little bit and I have just recently started doing the pairings between our TCs and agents and it's definitely a science and some of them do just personality wise fit differently and there are some times where we have to make some of those changes. But for the most part I think having a strong system where we're training the agents of how to to communicate and how to loop us in, it really empowers the TCs to jump in regardless of personality.

Really good. This is all a zone that I haven't spent a lot of time talking with folks about. Is there a ratio of TC to agents or is it more? How many listings and buyers are we working with? See what your contacts are doing on Zillow Monday, December 8 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 at any given time. Like how do you. Because what turned that for me was like the matching of like yeah, I know this TC really well and I know this agent pretty well and so this is going to be a good match? Like just a matter, like is it, is there, like, what ratio is there around that? Like how does someone know that they're properly staffed for where they are or where they're going? From a transaction coordination perspective, yes.

Yeah. So again, this is definitely magic. And I think that what we found is more file count. If we can keep the file count very consistent across all the TCs. Like some of our, we have 250 agents and we have four TCs. And so, you know, everybody has 60 to 70 different agents. And so but if I can keep them around that 70 to 80 file range, it's. They can really thrive within that with the systems that we've built.

Cool. So let's talk about those systems. Let's talk about tech stack. Like what, what was going on 5ish years ago when you, when you got involved and then, and then where are you today? Like what is the essence of the tech stack powering this 250 agent organization?

Yeah, so I was super lucky because when Billy started he had G sheets for all of our tracking agen to Z. So by the time I had come in, we had gotten into like brokermint and some of those other systems that really had like really good APIs that allowed us to scale and plug into different things as we grew. And so it did take a couple years for us to like dial in those type of systems to know what kind of reporting we needed. With a team our size, we always want reporting at a certain point. So if we don't start it at the very beginning, we just don't have any. We can't scale it right and we can't make the decisions. And so I think that was the biggest thing. We use grow.com for our analytics and our reporting, which has I think been a huge game changer. Brokerman has been super integral into our growth as well. And truly it's because they have like open APIs where I can pull the data into anywhere I need to. I can put them into G sheets, I can do reporting and manipulate it however I want. I think our CRM shift, we just moved into Follow boss a year ago and so I think that has really been a game changer for us and has allowed us to be able to scale so much bigger, so much faster and quicker. Because of how you guys allow us to plug in things and pull things out of your system.

Yeah, that's essence from the very beginning. Let's go pure CRM and let's work with everyone else that does their Specialty. Yes, let's have a specialty and make part of our specialty, allowing everything to plug into it. I would love to, to dive into that, that a little bit just to give people a picture. It's not necessarily about follow up boss per se, but like this idea of we're going to move because you were not a small organization a year ago.

Yeah, right.

So like what was. I would love for you to kind of walk through the process from, you know, considering, okay, we should probably be looking at changing CRMs to, you know, what options are on the table. Let's go with this one. To successfully implemented agents adopting, some agents not adopting. Let's follow up with them and make sure they start adopting. Like I'd love to kind of like for folks that are undertaking, whether it's CRM or something else, I love your unique perspective on vetting tech or a situation. Decide we should switch tech or add tech to agent adoption. Like, like let's do that. With this follow up boss implementation about a year ago, like what was going on for the company where you're like or collectively you all decided let's look at another CRM. Let's you identify follow up boss. Like take us back to that time a little bit and kind of we'll walk through it.

So we always joke because every year we have a planning session right. Going into the next year. Every single year for the last five years the CRM has been on the docket. Right. Is it time? Do we need to make the move? George had been in Boomtown since 07. Like he knew it like the back of his hand. It was so comfortable. All of our agents knew it, everything was set up. And then it just came to a point where like I said, they didn't have an open API, we couldn't get the data we needed. And to be able to have transparency in that front end of a lead coming in before it went under contract just became so important for us to make decisions and how we wanted to structure 2023. And so yep, in our planning session we decided that this was the year. So yeah, I honestly had vetted every single CRM out there. I looked at everything, all the recommendations, had demos on everything. A team, our size, our needs are constantly changing. And so if I don't have the flexibility to go and find systems to plug in and I have to work with an all in one system, it just makes it, it's not scalable for us long term. And so we had stumbled and follow Boss had always been on the the list. But once we were able to see the true open API and then some of the widgets, the two Async with Zillow, it was just pretty much a no brainer. Once we were able to start vetting out all the CRMs and then yeah, it took about four months of planning and just getting everything set up before we made the transition to the agents. And honestly our leadership team is so good and our agents believe in George and so much that it was an easy sell. Right. Like typically so many people are like no, no, no, don't change my CRM. I know it. It's their bloodlines, right? Like this is how they make their money. Lifelines. And so like we were so worried about getting the agent, you know, push back and. But truly once George was a wow or was able to share the why behind it and how much more we were going to be able to do and how much more visibility we were going to be able to help get them more business with less work. It just, yeah, everybody kind of just believed in the system. So we did a two day training event to do the rollout and then we did weekly trainings and then live weekly or monthly trainings with each of our regional teams and our agent adoption. It actually happens so quickly, I have no idea because I'm getting agents to do anything, especially like CRM, sometimes it's not right. They want to be out with clients and so being able to change everything, everybody just 100% diving into it, even the follow up boss number, it was something that we weren't sure how much we were going to be able to get adoption for. But like I said, once we were able to share the why and share that Zillow two way sync and how much less work it was going to bring on to the agent, they just totally adopted the system.

Really good. By the way, you covered everything in like one pass there. I will ask some follow ups on. That was really well done. So this I want to go back to, you know, you, I assume knew what all the CRMs were that were available. You checked all the websites, sounds like you took demos on all of them. What I observed that there really is no such thing as a perfect solution for any one situation. Is that about right for any tech?

Oh, all tech, yeah, 100%. There's never going to be one that fits us, you know, in one way that's unique. Right.

Once you get agents on the idea of that, no matter what you plug or unplug and no matter what your lead sources are, no matter what other overlays you're adding in, whether it's something like you all use, like sisu.

Yes, sisu.

What are some of the other like front facing tools that you're.

So we use Ylopo. We love Ylopo. They've been such great partners to us. And then sisu, it's same thing. They're so good. We're just getting. We just rolled it out a month ago and we're getting transaction management in it this month. So just learning that and being able to have the visibility for the agents has been super cool.

Awesome. Describe both of those for one more pass for anyone that isn't familiar, like.

Yeah.

How do they come onto your radar and what do they do for you in the context of your CRM instance or your business in general?

Yeah. So YLOPA we've actually been with since 2020, so we use them independently because of their remarketing. Our database is like 300,000, you know, and so to be able to remarket some of those leads, it was just we did a big push in 2020 and they've always kind of been working, working in tandem with us. So when we were vetting out of what we were going to move, it was a no brainer to go with them. I think their innovation of AI is really important to us and something we're super grateful just to be a part of and be able to offer to the team. So that has been super a good relationship. And then sisu, same thing. We've demoed SISU almost every year, trying to find the right time to integrate it. Yeah. And like I said, like once we were able to get that front end data, when a lead came in, how many calls they had, CECE was just like, when can we get it in? You know, we are so excited to finally offer that to the agents and truly like it gives them the step by step on how to succeed for the year. Right. We just put in the goals. It tells them how many calls they need, it tells them how many appointments they need and then you can just track it day by day by source and then to have the transaction management move into there. It's something we've never been able to offer for our agents. So like an all in one system that has full transparency that connects back to the CRM. It's just. I'm super excited for the future.

Yeah, that's awesome. I can tell. I feel your excitement around it. So it sounds like going back to Agent adoption, Agent Value. It sounds like I heard two keys from you. One is that And I'm kind of inferring this. There's a lot of trust and positive relationship within the organization such that agents trust that if you're making this decision, as change resistant as I might be as an individual human being, I trust that you have my personal best interests in mind. And then I also heard you say very explicitly the value to the agent, the benefit to the agent. When I was talking with Billy as part of the series, he mentioned to the delight of the agent as the trail onto the delight to the consumer. Any other keys that you would share from your perspective on tech adoption and maybe be beyond trust and benefit to the agent so that they know very clearly they have, they have a motivation to pursue. You mentioned a little bit of training. I think that the communication and training I guess is what I'm asking for. Any tips for anyone whether their team is, you know, five agents or 50 agents or 250 agents?

Yeah.

Communication and training around this. I mean you did a mention of like some of the ways that there was some follow up boss training that was happening. But I'd love for you to go deeper there because it's a constant challenge for people. How do I get people's attention? How do I get them to really buy into what we're doing? How often should I train? Am I over training to this? You know, like yeah. Share anything that that triggers for you?

Yeah, I think it's something that we're definitely trying to still figure out what the good balance is and how much is too much or what is. No, truly, I think that we do a monthly training that just covers A to Z for new hires, how to use the system and then we have a weekly training that we jump into and do follow up boss like tips in. And so that's been really good. And then we have five regional teams and so we do a meeting in the box. And so we always do FUB tidbits in there that each of our leaders work with in their team. And then we have the call days that they kind of like push into it. So just culturally from sales, every single department like has their hands wrapped around the follow up boss training and engagement with the agents. And so truly, I think I always go back to this. But it's top down, right? Everybody has so much faith in George. He's not a shiny object. We don't just get brand new tech every now and again, you know, because he went to a conference and there was something good. If we are bringing in tech, it's vetted, it's built out, like, it's to benefit the agent. And I think every single demo I've been in with George, he's like, tell me why an agent needs this. Right? Why? What benefit does this have to the agent? And it just has culturally trickled down. And I think we recognize them as a tool. The tech stack is a true tool to help the agents. And so when you put it that way, it's not a chore. Right. It's not. Just go in and check the boxes, do your tasks. Right. Like, there's the why behind it. Um, so that's. Yeah, if that answers your question.

Yeah, it does. That's great. Um, and you made me think about something I didn't double back into, which is like, just the process of vetting. I mean, you mentioned every year this comes up. You mentioned that twice. And so, like, what is the process for? Because you all seem, you know, this, like, not shiny object thing. And I love the reference point because it's happened to agents, like solo agents in particular, over and over. I went to a conference and I saw this thing and my friend told me to look at it, and now I have it. And I don't know why I bought it.

Yes, totally. Yes.

So you all. I mean, like, just the way you make decisions is obviously not. That's not how you do it. But, like, what is a process of vetting? I imagine things surface a lot of different ways. Maybe an agent introduces to their team leader and the team leader introduces to a larger body. Like, and then you go back into the agent population. Like, is this really a thing? Is this really a problem? Is really an opportunity kind of a thing. And once that weighs out, it gets onto some radar. But, like, talk about how you all surface problems or opportunities to solve whether or not it can be solved through tech and then go through the tech, potential tech solutions to that problem. Like, just walk through that process a little bit. Like, how do you surface opportunities and kind of walk through them and vet them and then eventually onboard them.

Yeah. So it's. This is like one of, I think, my favorite things about.

Good. I'm glad I asked already.

Yes. Within our leadership group, like, we. We have such a good culture. And so I love to be able to sit and listen to what the agent's boots on the ground issues are. Right. How the sales team, how they can't get reporting and then be able to sit back and be like, okay, let's go try to get this system. Let's try to go, how can we bridge the gap here? Or how can we connect this? I think partnering with Bara, and they have such a good grasp of tech, and so they have been such good partners in being like, what are our possibilities here? Because there's just so much that we can't know everything. And so it's really just leaning on our partnerships. I have a data analyst that we use, and just the same thing with him with the reporting and telling him the needs, giving them the why and letting them get us to how to solve the issues. And I think within our team, they allow us to do that. And I think Billy, operationally is so good. It just comes so naturally to him. He's always in the forefront of what kind of tech is there, all of these ideas, and has really, really good relationships. So I think he bridges that gap really, really well, and it trickles down to the relationships that we have with our outside partners. Truly awesome.

Do you. Where do you stay up to date on stuff personally? Is there, like, a network of ops people that you plug into? Are there, like, conferences that salespeople don't know about, where operations people are getting? Like, how do you stay sharp yourself? Like, I mean, obviously you're passionate about this. You'. You're deep into it. Of course you have a cool opportunity in front of you with a. With a large, ambitious organization. So you get to, like, flex a lot of muscles maybe you didn't even know you had.

Yeah.

Where. How do. Like, what do you. What do you do to stay sharp? Just broadly speaking, like, in operations.

Yeah. So honestly, I love Facebook groups. I. When I wake up in the middle of the night, I'll just scroll through. The FUB community is amazing. And just how much that they share. And even, like, they will share one tidbit. Right. And I'm like, okay, within our team, we can scale it to here. I think I have an operations coach, Brinley. She's amazing, and she just has a really good pulse on really systematic things. So as we're scaling how to systematize those and make sure that we're set up for the scale of it. And truly, Billy. Billy's my best friend. I love him, but he. He. We just sit and talk through all of the different things, and he has good relationships, but we. Yeah, I lean into Billy so much.

Awesome.

He's my superpower. That's cool.

For folks watching or listening, this is part of a series where we're going inside the Lawton team. Billy is the coo and that episode released a few episodes back. So just go back in the YouTube playlist. Or go back in your podcast app and you will find it. That's Billy Hobbs.

I don't plug him all day long.

I mean, what a joy to be working with people that are inspired, inspiring to you and helpful to you and like, you know, have built into you a little bit for sure. You know, talk about coaching. Like, when did coaching come onto your radar? And. And how has that been? Like, did. Did you have to search and do demos? Demos. I'm air quoting and vet that. Like, how did that come together for you? And like, how often do you coach? And I ask only because, like, tons of agents get coached. Oh, yes, tons of team leaders get coached. But I think this might be for agents and team leaders. Something that like, oh, maybe I should get my Assistant or my TCs or my, you know, this person we just promoted into this different type of role. Some coaching. Like, talk a little bit about that.

Oh, yeah. I feel so lucky to have been able to have this opportunity. But almost instantaneously from me moving into becoming like Billy's assistants in the op role, ops role, he was coaching with Brinley and so they opened up a spot for me to come in and I coach with her weekly and she is an operations coach. She owns her own fractional operations company and has been very heavy in like the KW world. But and so just to be able to get like their training and they're very systematized on like operations manual and all of that. And then she has such a big grasp on what other teams are doing and scale. And so I think that's been a game changer for me. I think also they have invested in a life coach. So Amanda Walker, she's amazing as well, but which I think is unique for a real estate company. Like, they don't just care about me coming in and working right and making sure that the systems are good, but they want to take care of me as a person. And I think having the life coach comes in and like, is a good mirror of that and pairs us super well. One thing we do not skimp on within our team is coaching.

Yeah, that's awesome.

It's such a cool opportunity for us.

Yeah, that's cool. Appreciate you sharing that. Is there anything that you're super excited about? We're recording this, like, you know, early mid 2024.

Ye.

Are you looking forward to in the. In the rest of the calendar year or maybe even as we look to 2025. What's interesting or exciting or challenging, like, when you're thinking about the future, what Are you thinking about with regard to this organization or this market or these consumers or these agents?

Yeah, I think right now with everything going on with the NAR lawsuit and all of that, like we have such a, it's such a good time to be able to share, share why we are who we are and really empower the agents to be able to speak that to buyers. Right. And so being able to have like a tech stack that makes it effortless for them to be able to show the value that they bring to their buyers and sellers and just keep elevating on that. We have some really cool tech that we're implementing with like Curator and cc. I personally would love to get more into AI and how we integrate that into our follow up boss and really take the burden off of the agents where we can just say here's the checklist of what you need to do here, here's a script. All automatically for them. Truly their superpowers are being out in front of clients and so if I can take on as much as possible operationally to give them them make everything on the back end so easy for them, that's kind of what, just dial in our processes and make them tighter and easier for the agents.

Yeah, I love that, I love the way that you articulated this. A lot of people say, you know, we're here to support the agents, but the way that you're like, this is what they're best at, this is what they're charged with and what their opportunity is. And so everything I can do to support them, including this idea of documenting their quantified value. Right. It's one thing to say something, it's another thing to say something and say, oh, by, by the way, you know, yes, here's how this has trended over the past six months or you know, yeah, these types of things that, I mean, gosh, that a lot of what you're doing today I assume was probably a lot more difficult or maybe not even possible five years ago.

No, it wasn't even possible a year ago. A lot of the stuff. And so yeah, we truly, with a change into follow up boss, it truly has built a strong foundation for us where we can just scale because we, we have, I can pull the data out, the open APIs, the integrations and A to Z, not just the CRM. Right. Like it's changing our transaction management, everything altogether. So yeah.

Awesome. Well, I'm really excited for you. I'm excited for what's ahead. I love your growth story and I, it's just been a Joy to hear you talk about what this organization has invested in you and the way that you're turning that into value for so many other people. It's been a joy. Before I let you go, though, I always close with three pairs of questions. But in, in this series, I'm doing one of those questions so you can answer one or other. For you, Julia, what does it look like to rest, relax and recharge? Or what does it look like for you to learn, grow and develop? What are you doing when you're like, it's time to do one of those things?

Yes. Okay. I'm going to go with the rest to relax because I feel like I'm turned. My head is always going, my mind is always running and so I really have to prioritize while I'm making time to rest. And so I, I do pottery. Just a brand new habit. So I'm super excited about that. But yeah, I make bread, I do all of the gardening. Anything that will make my mind mushy is really, you'll find me at home with a book at. Yeah. Cooking, whatever it is.

That's awesome. I'm sensing the theme of those things you just ripped through really quickly is like hands on tangible, physical. Because you're constantly dealing with data.

Yes. It makes my mind, it forces my mind to quiet down doing some of those things with my hands and. Yeah.

So cool. True. Well, I hope you enjoy those. I appreciate you so much. Thanks for sitting down with us and wish you continued success.

Yeah, no, thank you so much. This has been great. I appreciate you.

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