Kathleen Black on Minimum Standards to Reach Summits [FUBCON Session]

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Thank you so much for joining me. Kathleen and I want to start with you. Where we always start, which is a must have characteristic of a high performing team. When I offer that like what comes.

To mind, it's hard to narrow it down. But I'm going to say standards and vision. Right. Because people really do rise to the standards around them. I believe in ecosystems. I mean, last year I talked about it in my keynote. We rise to our environments, we fall to our environments. Everything is community driven. So I think we need to have the foundation and we need to have really high vision and standards to rise to. It's a very simplistic answer for that question, but I'm going to say no, that's good.

And it gives us a lot to kind of peel into, which is where I want to go next is like standards, standards. I hear a variety of things. You know, I kind of hear culture, like this is just how we do it around here, right? Like this is our standard, but that, you know, and then I also hear kind of a modeling. But then I also think it's probably best when it's like explicit and stated and where it's. People can read it and hear it and see it being behaved and all these other things. Maybe it's communicated on our website, certainly part of our recruiting process and these kinds of things. What does standards mean to you? All those things? Some of those things or one of those things more than other things?

Yeah, I mean, I think we want to have people so rooted down in the standards that they're not even thinking about them. They're reaching up for much higher. Because if we're looking at our minimums all the time, we're not aspiring for what we could do. So like I spend a lot of time in the team world. I mean, that's what I've done. And what we find is sometimes we miss that middle step. Right. You go from solopreneur. The middle step is where you build the foundation, the systems, the processes, the tech. Like all the things you need to power up other people. And often a high majority of teams will miss that step and then get into this team space and it's like chaos because we don't have an aligned, you know, guiding principles. Like maybe we have a mission statement and we have a Vision. But we don't know, like when you're in a pinch, how do you make decisions? Right. And what are our core go to communication techniques. And we, we hear so much about data right now, which I'm a huge believer in. But once you have the data, we need standards on what are the tools that help us help our consumer and are they the same across the whole client journey? Usually not. Standards to me are that minimum functioning that we have at the start. So like if a new team member is coming into the team, I always say if you don't do great onboarding, it's like your team's up here, you bring somebody in here, the team is super frustrated because, like, why are we like, we know all this stuff you're putting down? Onboarding can take them like up here before they come in. So to me, that's like the base standard. So we can reach for the summit versus, like constantly be trying to like, do we have the equipment, do we know our path? Right.

Yeah, yeah, I've heard that story from a variety of people, both observed and lived of like, you know, all of a sudden we were eight people and we didn't have a lot of the basic foundation laid. I mean, obviously all of it is the best answer. But, you know, for people that are recovering from that type of situation, how would you advise in terms of prioritizing or maybe some of the questions you would ask to kind of guide the discovery and diagnosis process for people that have found themselves in that chaotic world? Because I think it's very common.

Yeah, usually we go back to the base, like for. It's always a domino effect building. So I know certain systems are always going to lead to the next, to the next. So I try to find the most pressing, not symptom, source. So is the source compensation? That's always a tricky one. Are we overcompensating? Are we undercompensating because we're not providing enough value, we're not investing enough back in. And if that's the case, we look at how are we structuring, what are our finances, you know, what are our team agreements, how are we recruiting? Like for us, those are a domino system. For other people it's, hey, we have a ton of leads, we think we need more, but it's like, well, we're not converting. So we need and onboarding so that we have basics and then we need constant support because it's an ecosystem. So I'm always looking at what are we investing in, what's working, what's the conversion. But also how are we attracting people? What type of people? How are we setting them up for success? Because I mean, typically I'm. I work a lot in Canada, US as well. But I mean, the Toronto Real Estate board, I mean, 80% of people could do two deals, three deals. Like it could take them 15 years to have the data that we actually need. So onboarding gives us the equivalent in like six months, really, to if somebody's set for success or to help them be set for success.

Yeah, really good. So obviously it's not obvious, I'm observing that you were in real estate production yourself as, as you coach and guide people in teams. You know, you're running a team summit.

Yeah, we're rebranding this year, actually. So I ran eight Canadian team summits and then I ran seven ultimate team summits and now we're running Kathleen Black Summit, because everyone calls it that. Anyway, so we. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we, we have a team of 20 coaches. So I did sell and then I into coaching and now I run our coaching and largely speaking.

Yeah, yeah. So when just talk about the team orientation, like from your perspective, kind of past, present, future of the team model in real estate, when did it really come onto your radar? What do you think is promising about it and maybe where is it going?

Yeah, you know, I think there it's easy to polarize the team models. Right. Because I think in the US we've seen much more of a kind of mega, more brokerage style team or broke team. Team Rich. You call it Team Rich. Ye. And in Canada originally we really focused on high performance team, like the lean and mean style. And then now in Canada, we have kind of a mix, right. With the different coaching influences. So people taking in like those high production systems and then taking in, hey, we need to recruit more because in this market we're kind of susceptible. So I think it'll be very interesting because we've seen like the larger your team is statistically, the lower average production per agent. Usually there's some exceptions to this, but not too many. Whereas you see kind of the smaller lean and mean who have the systems. I mean, we've coached teams that have 55 transactions per year as an average across their team. So it'll be very interesting because they both have pros and cons. The lean and mean has. They have the same issues of can we adapt our team members into this market? Can we do the walk? Because, I mean, I love to hike. Right. I summit Kilimanjaro last year. It's like you can't summit the big mountains. Like, you can't survive in high altitude with people on your back. Like, you just can't do it. So if. If we're spending too much time trying to get people to walk, get them to pick up their equipment, our entire team suffers. Right. And we're seeing that right now. Like we're seeing team leaders, like, investing time into people that is impacting the team, but we're unfortunately not impacting the people we're investing in positively, which is really hard as a leader. It's heartbreaking as a leader because you want to help people. So I think we're going to see them be a little bit more susceptible. If they don't have enough people, they can have that hit because one producer is covering a lot of volume. But on the other side, the big teams, I mean, if your average production per agent is 8, which is not unusual, maybe it was 6, maybe it was 10, and all of a sudden that's cut by 40% or 50%, that's a big issue because you don't have that ability to survive, to pay your bills. And when there's scarcity, people look for a beacon. Right. Or they leave the industry, which we're seeing as well. So I think it'll sharpen. Teams who lean into it, I think they'll become better and we'll see powerhouses coming out of this time because they'll become much more lean and efficient. Even the big ones, I think, will in some ways.

Yeah, I really appreciate that observation and the. I've heard a lot about kind of the messy middle of this journey, and I'm sure you've worked with people in it. You know, the smaller teams potential to be highly profitable even in kind of tougher, tougher situations. Margin compressed at the high end, but the volume makes up for that and is still a very lucrative business. But in that middle, there are a number of people who don't make it. Right. They want to get out of the small for some. Whatever compels them and they get stuck in the middle. I've even heard described as a black hole. Have you observed similar. And what are some of the cautions for people who are kind of on the edge of like, you know, let's really kind of lean into this right now. We think we have the foundation to build on. Give a couple pieces of advice for that person.

Yeah, I think the black hole is real. I think a lot of teams get stuck in that. And not from lack of good intentions, just to point out, but that's where we go back to those standards and clarity of vision. Because to me, a strong leader, like our number one guiding principle for our team is love, right? And some people are like, oh, really? In business, like, yeah. Because love isn't just like soft and tender and kind. It's also fierce and truthful and advocating, right? So for us, it's when you have a leader who's in those principles, they say the hard things in a nice way. They, they're able to make those tough decisions. They understand that if their ship goes down, everybody goes down, right? But in the messy middle, I find leaders really get stuck. Like sometimes they're highly empathetic people and compassionate people and they're like, well, they don't want to do it. I don't want to make them. It's like, but then they're not going to make the money and what about their mortgage and their kids, right? And then I'm the bad guy. But I'm not. It's just a difference of opinion. So I think in this market, if you're in the messy middle, get really clear on where you're going in the future. Because when we make decisions in fear, like I always say, you could have a hundred pages of vetted reasons why that decision's a good idea, but you take that decision and you put in a trajectory of 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, and all of a sudden all those reasons that fear told you are real are going to fall. I love doing that. Swing people management is the hardest part for most team leaders, right? Even for me with my team, right? Because I lean more on the introverted analytical. So I always ground in. Where are we going? People like, well, is that cutthroat because it's business? It's like, no, because if the business isn't strong, if it doesn't serve the business, that person probably isn't going to thrive in our environment. And that's not fair to them or to me. So I think being very clear on where you're going, why, and being willing to have standards that are actually there to help people thrive, like, that's a beautiful thing in my experience.

Yeah, really good. And you actually really did a nice job of teasing where I wanted to go anyway, which is your own leadership style. How do you describe that? Because like so many folks listening to this show and watching it, you're an entrepreneur, you're a team leader. You're. I would call you probably now. You're not even a real estate adjacent. You're still in. And you're doing a lot of, still doing a lot of work with teams.

Yeah, we still do. Like my books and my keynotes are not real estate specific. I deal with high performance of mindset. Like that's my love in life is to shift people. I just love it. That's my passion.

So your own leadership style because you are an entrepreneur and a team leader yourself.

Yes. And this is interesting because I was preparing for this event actually with that and it was like the number one thing is knowing ourselves and dropping the ego of we know everything. And, and I think when I first got into business I thought I was supposed to know everything. Like I didn't know any different. I didn't want anyone to know I had weaknesses or I was struggling. And now the number thing is, hey, I'm struggling with this. Like how are you doing it?

Right.

So I think knowing ourselves and for me I'm a quick work pace which has been good and bad. So now I have buffer people because I have full reverence and respect for the slower work pace and the details and the analysis. I need those people so much. Right. I have such love for those people. But my, I drive them crazy because like I talk fast and I have a big vision. Like we get where you're trying to go, but it's confusing. So now I've learned that I need more of a management relationship based archetype which is a little more rare out outgoing but management in buffering between. So my leadership style is very strategic, big vision, like we want to change the world, we have a big mission for contribution and it's very much I love working with other entrepreneurs who want to show up and want to do the work. I'm not as great sometimes as a leader with people who I can't shift out of a lot of excuses. Like I find it really tough because you know, we, we believe in people. Right. We want to help them. And I can't help people argue for their own limitations. I can't do that. And that can seem harsh sometimes.

Yeah, it's interesting. You're right at the edge of kind of shared accountability as well as personal responsibility. You can't, I mean you can lay out clear expectations, you can communicate them, you can collaborately, collaboratively set goals and things. But there's no way that you personally as a leader can cover the personal responsibility gap.

You can. And I mean I think we all have unique. Like I'm a DC personality in dis, but I'm an INTJ in Myers Briggs. Right. So this is a war Zone. Right. You want it done perfectly and immediately. And the INTJ and women is like 0.08% of the population. So I mean, feeling misunderstood is normal. Like you have to just be like, I have these gifts because I think differently and I just have to understand that. Right. And I think leaders, like a lot of leaders. Oh yeah, that's true. Like we're not always going to be understood because we all have unique gifts.

Yeah. Awesome. I want to draw what I imagine is a fair parallel between your own journey in coaching and leading and guiding people and you know, generally a high producing real estate agent who says, you know what, I have so much opportunity, I need to either leverage my time with some administrative support, I want to bring, you know, a buying agent alongside me in this thing. And we're just, we just get going. And at a certain point, you know, when, when a productive team leader decides to leave production, that's like a big leap. And you wonder is the level of service and all the things that I did to build this business, the reputation I built and all these things. Now I'm drawing the parallel to you. I assume that when you started coaching, you didn't have a team of coaches. You maybe had a couple alongside you. You set a standard, you built a reputation. You're winning through probably a lot of word of mouth. And now you have a team. I think you said 20 coaches.

Yeah, well, and some expert coaches that come in and some full time.

So how do you manage your own initial vision and reputation that's delivered in a very human to human way through a diversity of people who have different profiles from yourself? How important is consistency across that experience from your perspective? Or do you just kind of let it go and accept that we kind of. She's going to do it a little bit that way, he's going to be doing it a little bit that way. And we're all doing it about the same. And now Kathleen Black means something a little bit different, richer and we can reach more people. Like, like there's. I just observe attention in that there's no question formed, I don't think. But, but is that idea fair? And how do you think about that dimension of what you're doing as you scale your own business?

Yeah, I mean, we purposely model what we coach so we walk the as much as possible. Nobody's perfect. But we model it on purpose because I think moving from I win because I'm on the field and I scored the goal or the point or whatever the heck it is to oh my gosh, I only win when they win. That sounds obvious, right? Leaders build leaders. That sounds obvious. It is such a difficult transition. I cost my business money because the business was ready to grow, the business was ready to scale. I wasn't. I had to expand. My. That's the honest truth. And now I have compassion for that because that happens with so many of our leaders. And in a challenging market, they're like, I'm going to dive back in and again put you all on my back. And it's like, whoa. Like, we have to have a strong bench. So, yeah, I practice what I preach and that our coaches all go through through pretty strenuous onboarding. Like, they need to know all of our systems and team systems. It's massive, right? But I learned something very important for myself, ironically. This is not an egotistical way of saying it, but I was on stage at our ultimate team summit and I was talking about, you know, when you bring in a sales agent, like, our goal is to get them 98% or onboarding 80% coming out the door compared to all other agents in the area. And people like, that's not a realistic, like, yes, it is. Because if you take the core things that they do and you take away all the other like noise that we want to throw in there because we don't know what to onboard people on. So it's like, let's just use 300 things and instead we're like, we're gonna make them like laser focused on the core skill sets and test them and encourage them and then support them as they go out there in those core things. We are gonna have people like again, 80% coming into the team and then they just go up and up and half the people won't even survive that training. They won't pass it. They can't show up. But I had the AHA on stage of like, oh my gosh. You're trying to take like at this point, it's 15 years of like full time team coaching and transfer this to every coach. Like, what are you doing? Because I always talk about the genius of the Ford model. But the problem was we lack the reverence for people, empowering and valuing quality people. And it's just so important, right? So I'm talking about this. And the aha goes off and now we have experts. So I have two experts who do compensation structures for teams. Nobody else touches it because they're analytical and it's so important. You don't want to screw it up, right? So they all have their own expertise and they bring their genius.

I love this idea of expertise within the team are called in as needed rather than trying to coach and train everyone to some same standard because then everyone's going to be have their own little pockets and strengths. And I think we all tend to lean into the things that we're confident in and good at. And so like I'm not going to talk about comm structure. I'm not even going to bring up the conversation because I'm not comfortable in it. No, actually we have someone. This idea of this is one of the things that's so wonderful about teams in general is that we build them intentionally and support one another's strengths. I really appreciate that approach. For the person watching or listening who is a solo agent thinking about starting a team, maybe what questions would you ask them or what would you advise them to make sure they're clear on as they're in the decision making process about whether to make that commitment.

Yeah, and I wrote my first book, top 1% life because when I started coaching I was coaching with really busy top producers. A lot of them didn't necessarily have admins and I was able to walk that journey and now I can't go back. So I wrote the book for that and we have a chapter on it in analyzing exactly that. Like what's your production level, levels, how much are you making per hour? And most of the time right now we're in market shift, so I'd be extra. I'm big into educated risk. Risk, but educated risk, yeah. So I'd ask a few more questions but typically what we found in the last 10 years, most of the people were hesitating to hire admins who are actually producing. Well, they actually were demoting themselves by not hiring that admin. They needed that leverage. And I mean when we look at women in the industry, like the statistics are very clear. Like they're doing phenomenally higher percentages of things outside of their career before they come in. But they're hiring help at half the rate. This, this is like so important to know to say, well I'm doing more but I'm getting less help and I'm hesitating to get that help. So it's a different conversation for women in leadership. So we really look at their life, not just their business. Like, hey, if you're doing kid drop off and you're doing laundry and you're doing this, that counts. Like put all the things that you're doing and then what are your hours worth and what's your energy? What's your energy? Because for me, as a leader, being my personality, it took me a long time before I actually heard, are you having fun? Like, I didn't even process this. I was like, what do you mean fun? Like, this has to be done right. And now I'm like, oh, that makes me tired. Why am I doing that? Because it's costing me the things I need to do. And I think there's both. There's the energy conversation, there's the time conversation, there's a money conversation. So we look at, what are you making? What is it worth in the market to have somebody else do the other things? And now today, compared to when I started, there's so many ways to leverage things out with technology and, you know, VAs and so many things that are reasonable. So we assess and run all those numbers, or they can do it on audible use. Use the book to go through exactly our process. Because I don't have an hour or two right now. And to move forward, I think I'm tempted to say, be more careful in this market, but the truth is, you need leverage even more in this market, because if you don't have the time to be face to face and you can't be there with clients, you're going to suffer, and that's going to cost you a lot more. For most people watching this.

Yeah. You mentioned fear a bit earlier, and I think a lot of it is in fear, and I think the full benefit. And also, you did a nice job breaking down. Like, you're not doing a full accounting of. Of all the other pieces that are in play. And so it's. It's the. We're not gonna have fun all the time.

No, we're not.

We're gonna have a little bit more fun than we are.

Awesome.

And I'll link the book up adjacent to wherever folks are watching and listening to this. Kathleen, this has been an absolute pleasure. I appreciate you so much, and I would love for you to share either a very frivolous purchase you've made or a cheapskate habit that you continue to hold onto even though you probably don't need to.

You know what? It's funny. It's two sides of the same coin, because people get into the designer stuff, and again, I work with a lot of powerful women, and I'll walk in and be like, okay, I'm gonna buy the purse. I'm gonna do it. And then inside, I'm like, I'd rather go on a trip. I'd rather go hike another mountain.

Right.

So I'LL do it a little bit. So I bought something like that, which people watch. Are you crazy? But to me, because I built my business as a single mom. Like, I joke for me, I like the Warren Buffett way. Like, I lived across the street from school, right next to the childcare, and I could walk three blocks to my office. That's not an accident. So I've been really, like, not frivolous. I've been really careful with time, energy, and money because honestly, I wouldn't have been able to compete in business the way that I had if I was stressing about money to pay my mortgage or are my kids okay? So I had to level the playing field a little bit. So I'm really frugal with a lot of things still because I value experiences and freedom and I don't care about a lot of the other stuff other than my son convinced me to buy a Porsche. And I don't regret that. So some people might call me on that one. I love it every time I drive it.

That's awesome. Yeah. I'm a big Consumer Reports reader and they were very favorable on the Porsche brand, like, over the past five years or so. So smart purchase, too.

Thank you. I enjoy it.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me.

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