Kris Lindahl on Your Enterprise-Level Organization [FUBCON Session]

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 man.

Thank you for sitting down with me. Always love it. To get us started, why don't you share a must have characteristic of a high performing team?

The number one thing that comes to mind is high eq, the ability to sense that something is off or different or needs a change. I think in a market where you've got uncertainty, you need to have leaders that can sense that. Otherwise, if you don't have high EQ and you're running straight towards something and you can't feel that the market's changing, that maybe it's, you know, it became a buyer's market, a seller's market, rates are on the rise or days on markets, whatever the indicator is, if you can't feel that something is just different, you're going to have a very hard time pivoting.

Yeah, two directions. I want to go there. I guess I'll just pick one to do it. And this one is toward. There's also this. When you said EQ right off the top, where I thought you were going to go was toward the variability in the nature of the people and the moment of the people that you're interacting with all the time, whether it's with other agents, whether it's with people in the ecosystem, lenders, title folks, etc. Or whether it's the client who's probably the most emotional of all about all of it because they're less attuned to all of it. Talk about EQ in that context and just like different personalities, different moments, different conditions, like how do you, can you train for that? Or is that just something that you develop over time?

No, I mean, I think, I think everything you described there, I would say even, plus probably some more different types of roles and responsibilities are all part of this ecosystem. Right. And so you've got, you know, if, if you're the leader and you're the hub, you've got all these different spokes, right. In all these different companies positions. Like you have to figure out where things are at across the board. And I think that to me is really critical to sense when something's off. It's like working with someone that you've worked with for a long time and they come to work and you're like, you can just feel something's off. Right. It's really important that you know, like, you know, there might be something in their personal life, there might be something that like they're sad about or mad about or upset about. It's really important that you're there for them and that you have that conversation as soon as you can. I always say, like, get to the conflict as soon as you can. Like get to the tough part of the conversation because that's where the growth is. But if you can't sense that something's off and you don't have that eq, you're just going, you know, throughout the, you're going through your motions of, of your current duties and you can't, you just can't see it.

You.

And I think there's been a lot of conversations, a lot of studies around like EQ and you know, can you train it? Do you just have it? And you know, where does that come from? And what I've seen is one of the, the big correlations is if you've been through trauma in your life like that. To me, almost every single person that I've ever met that had a major traumatic event or multiple has always had EQ because they go into that survival mode, right, where it's like, hey, like, I've got to own my future. I've got to take control of where I'm headed. And that correlation to me is like understanding like, what are the things that you've had overcome in your life really tells me a lot about everything that you need to know about what they're going to be able to do in a team environment.

Yeah, I just saw the parallel as you're describing that between the data of what's going on in the market and the emotional data of what's going on on the face, what's going on in the voice, what's going on in what wasn't said, what's going on in how something was said. I see the parallel, absolutely. And so that's why I'm going to use that as a segue to get back to the other part, which is how would you advise people to pay attention? I mean, you know, average days on market, you know, people should know that, of course, but like, how do you next level market awareness so that you're prepared for yourself, so that you can keep your team engaged and aware and all these other things so that you have the information you need to pull out. At times you maybe aren't even aware that I'm going to need to know that, like, should people be time blocking to survey things where should they be looking? How often should they be paying attention? Like, yeah.

Another. When you asked at the beginning, this is really where I was at a crossroads of, you know, what I wanted to say is, like, being one of the top things that you need to have. The other one that goes hand in hand with this is curiosity is exactly what you said. Like, if you don't have a naturally curious state or others around you that actually are curious about what this looks like and why it's this way and what these numbers are telling us or what the responses that we're getting are telling us, you're going to have a difficult time navigating. Right. You have to actually have some sort of passion for wanting to find out. Like, and just curious. Like, I want to know more about that. And I always found, like, the more that the, The. The more complex it got for us as we scaled, the more interested and more curious I got. Like, there's certain reports and dashboards that I don't want to remove from my world or certain even channels in our communication systems, because I want to have a pulse and I want to be able to ask questions. And if I remove that, it's like, you're no longer in the trenches to have to have that. Now all of a sudden you're curious on things you don't know anything about. And that's dangerous.

Right.

Especially for a visionary where you start asking a lot of questions. You're like, wait, you haven't. You have no idea what's even happening here. So I want to keep enough of a pulse to keep that curiosity because that curiosity will keep you going. And a curious person that I have not found that to go away unless the passion. Unless for some reason the passion is gone.

Yeah. Really fair in terms of curiosity and how it might wane. But I'm with you on that. And it's. And it goes back again to that EQ thing of, you know, the reason you want access to those channels is how it's not just what are the words that are in there or what are the numbers in the spreadsheet, but why is it that way? Why does it feel different and all these other things that you're. That you've been calling some attunement to.

Yeah. What. What I thought of as you were just saying that there is. You think about all these different assessments. One of them happens to be working genius, which is a free tool. Wonder, like having. Now, I don't want. Wonder is not one of my strong suits, but curiosity is. But you need Someone that genuinely asks, that has wonder. Right. That someone's got to ask some of those questions. And this is like when you make sure you have the right seats on the right, you know, the right people, right seats, right bus, all those things. You put everyone together. You need people that specialize in each of these things just to ask those questions that get you thinking in a different way. Like, I like. Oh, you bring up an interesting point. Now half the time to me, wonder is frustrating and annoying. Like, why aren't you just asking every question with a purpose or an objection? Objective? Like, I can't understand that. Yeah. But I know that you need that in a team environment. And so I think that's another thing is making sure that you have the right people with the right strengths inside of your organization so that everything is represented to have that cohesive team structure.

Yeah. Love it. Selfish question. If I told you I was wonder and discernment, what would you say?

I know you are. Yeah, Yeah. I know you are.

You would have told me that.

That's why I was laughing when I said it. Like, I know you are, but. Yeah, but. But your role in a team is so critical. Like, it's. It's so important to have that piece of, like, the things that are. I'm not great at. We have other people in our company where it's their working genius. Right. Where you need that.

And.

And in a team environment to have, you know, everyone have. Focus on their genius, like, that's where the magic is in the whole thing. Yeah. If you've got everyone, you know, everyone's doing the same. It has the same thing. If everyone's discernment, you got a problem, like. Right. A major problem. Everyone's picking everything apart, trying to figure out how to do it. If you got everyone, tenacity, everyone's finish line players, but. But no one's got any innovation or anything else. You got people just trying to cross the finish line with the wrong message or the wrong vision.

Yeah. Or if you have someone with some of those characteristics tasked the wrong way, they're gonna be exhausted by 10am and hate their life.

Yes.

Hate their job, at least.

Hate their job.

For sure.

Yeah. Yeah.

You here at fubcon, you talked about profitability, but you did it. What I would regard as a less common route to. To the message and the conversation. Share a little bit about that.

Yeah. I think when people, especially knowing that most people coming to an event like this traditionally, I would say historically, have been more visionary. CEO, team leaders, top salespeople, that became made that transition from hustler to CEO. That's, I've seen a lot of that transition here. Not naturally the strongest at finance. I would even describe most being very disinterested with finance and usually operations as well. And so when you think about profitability, profitability isn't how much can you go spend on leads and the next shiny object, it's how do you optimize the business. And so thinking about the entire ecosystem and the entire essentially like that, that streamlined approach, like how does every single single area the best that it can be and really defining like what does great look like for every single box in this organization? Once you get that right, the profitability works itself out. The problem is when things get tough like the current conditions that we're in, the natural place to go is to start just cutting costs, right? But if you're just cutting costs, it's a very reactive thing that doesn't really long term lead you to profitability. You might have, you might go positive for a few months, but I've never seen a company make it long term cost cutting. Right. And so, so what I'd like to do is if you're cutting the cost on something, you have to look at like what is this a result of like, and really taking a deep dive of how did we end up in a spot where we had to cut these things. And a lot of times you go back to the, the really the foundational level and you'll find out that the foundation of whatever it is you were cutting was wrong. Could be bad onboarding, could be not great training, could be you didn't vet the right, the lead source. Could be you didn't have the right leading indicators, the right KPIs. Like there's usually another story from what is said on the P and L, but so often like visionaries are so focused on like not wanting to talk about P Ls and finances and all that, all that stuff that they don't really open up that curiosity to go, gosh, what is really causing us to be here? Right? And the more that you track and the more that you measure, the better outcome you're going to have and the better questions you're going to be able to ask.

And the more that you track and the more attention that you're paying, the more you can baseline things and the more you're going to have these little moments where you're like, huh, huh, yeah, why is that?

And most companies in real estate, from what I've seen, don't even have scorecards, right? So really taking a deep dive into what do we need to know about this department to be able to look at a dashboard, a scorecard, and it can tell us, are we on track, are we off track, or what number, what column, what cell is off, where do we got to go dive in? Right? And really looking at that, the entire business. Because so much of leading and running an enterprise level business, or any team business really is identifying where are the numbers that are off, that tells you the story of where you got to go dive in. I mean, it's very easy to see, like, you know, you're looking at the different, you know, the different metrics. Essentially, you just find out, okay, where are we light? And that's where we need to go spend our time on. And a lot of times the word process is where it really comes in. I think where people get super mixed up is when they hear the word process. A lot of times they think corporate America, like, the bureaucracy is very different though. Like, corporate bureaucracy is very different than process. But when you hear the word process, you think like, oh my gosh, like we're going to have tight accountability and like meeting after meeting after meeting. Like, that's what most people think. But I've seen that a lot of these companies have been built on vision also with really favorable macro conditions. And so there was a lot of luck associated with a lot of the growth, including us. Like, we had a. We wrote a perfect wave up and now we're in a different environment where we have to be really sharp with every single thing that we're doing.

Yeah. Speak to me about that leader that you were describing. Before they found themselves running a large organization, the tide goes out a little bit. Now we have to figure it out. Have you seen. I'm sure you've seen it both ways, but kind of speak to either side of this someone who isn't naturally attuned to creating standard operating procedures or really paying a lot of attention to the P and L, or maybe haven't even been paying a lot of attention to the three numbers that lead up to the one number that everyone looks at. They're always like precursors to every outcome. Whether it's a midstream outcome or the final product, total production at the end of the year. They're precursor numbers to all of them. Have you seen anyone adapt to that? Or is it typically kind of going back to the working genius? Like, well, that's just not kind of how I'm tuned. I need to hire that. I need to Find that. Have you seen anyone adapt to it? And where I'm going and we'll kind of do this in maybe in two or three layers of conversation. It passes back is getting to the idea of the level of complexity in it. You used enterprise level organization, right? That's where you are. Not everyone's there, very few people are.

But I think of every team in this environment, especially if you started buying leads, you are an enterprise level company.

Yeah.

Whether or not you have the budget for everything that you need is a different conversation. But you are, you have made the decision to go out and market and now you're going to have a sales seat, a finance in an op seat, like 10 tech seat. I mean those things are coming.

Yeah. So. So the level of complexity is growing in a role like yours and other people.

Everyone's running an enterprise level company. What likely is happening is that there are names in multiple seats in boxes. Right. So when in the early days we had people in positions where they were wearing like four or five hats, we had the, we actually had the boxes. Whether we knew that or not, we were, we were functionally, we had those duties. Now did we do them all right? Including me? I mean I was in way too many boxes right now, stretched super thin, which is kind of the bootstrap way of building a company. Right. You, you have to go through those steps to get there. And I think to that that's the piece that so many people I think don't understand is like wherever you're at, if you have one assistant or one agent, like you have these functions in your business. Right. And I think that's a. I believe like once you start shifting that way, I think it really changes. Now the, the first part of what you mentioned there, which I think is really important and that has to do with like the OPS and the finance and the sops and the things like inside an organization that you may or may not have awareness to because a lot of people that have grown, this is the first time they've actually owned a business and that they've seen this set of problems and they don't know what they don't know. They don't actually know what's going to happen next. Right. In a lot of cases you might have a wrong seat issue. You might have a right person for the organization that shares purpose, core values, mission and all that stuff. But they might not be in the right seat. If they're seeing it for the first time and you're seeing it for the first time, you might not have the right person. And so that's where you might have to open up and start going, okay, where can we go get some wisdom? Where can we bring someone in that has seen this before or is going to ask questions differently because they think they see the world different in a very different view. Like, and, and that's what I found is that often we have a lot of the right people because, because of the way that we hire and the way that we track people. Like, we share the same mission, but our business grows and evolves and there are times where we have people that are in the wrong seat. That's not a negative thing. And most people that are in the wrong seat aren't happy anyways, right? Because they're doing things that either they don't know how to do, they, they're not great at and they're just hoping at some point that, that someone, someone comes in and relieves them of that duty. They're like, I hate this. Like, this sucks. Right? And the sooner that you can get to the, what I mentioned earlier, that conflict of like, hey, like, I can see that you're super unhappy with some of the work that's being done here or you're not able to deliver on it. Like, I think we need to transition your role and I think this is a better spot for you and I and it, and it. But it requires you to start thinking like an enterprise level company that if you're like, I always, this is always the, the best example I can think of. If you have a, the, the box of every enterprise level, like if you look at every box in an enterprise level company and if you look at the core functions, which a lot of them are the same in most companies, right? That, and you go, if you had the best person of all time in that box, like, what would they do? Tom Brady, what, whatever, you know, greatest of all time type analogy you want to use. And you go, okay, what five things would they do? Like, and, and before you put the, the, the mistake that highly emotional visionaries make is they put names there before they do the process work in the duties. And so then all of a sudden you sell yourself on this plan that your best friend is going to be great for the job, right? And you're like, oh, like this person's in that sales role. Like they're going to jump right in instead of doing the work up front of like, what does this box look like? What are their accountabilities going to be? Like, who, who's going to hold them accountable? And how is this going to work long term with scale? And I think the more time that you put into that front end work and breaking down each of those boxes. Now you have what. Which also is one of the most important things for your team, which is a vision. Where are we going? Here's what the boxes look like, here's what we're striving towards. Now you might not have the budget for all the boxes today and you're going to make strategic decisions that people are going to be in multiple boxes sometimes for a long period of time. But when you get the enterprise level company up to scale, like what does it look like in each of these boxes and then where the boxes branch out and then who's accountable to who. And if you don't do that work upfront, you end up waking up one day with total chaos where there's uncertainty everywhere, there's no clarity, no one knows anything about anything.

Half the people are on it, very unhappy. Right.

And all that in speaking some from experience because in the early days we didn't have anything figured out. What we, what I found in all of this, really the, the big takeaway I want everyone to have is that so much of our process was in people. Right. Instead of actually documented.

Yeah. And so when you back to the issue of putting a name on that box instead of the actual role, so.

You bring in a person that had previous process related things that they did and they came and rolled those out, but the company didn't actually have documented process and SOPs.

None.

None. The person did. Right. And that person decides that they're no longer passionate about the business or something happens to that person or they get disinterested with the certain industry or whatever, whatever life changing event happens, that person leaves. And now you have all the process that just left and you have nothing documented. And you're trying to scale this enterprise level company and you're stuck. And we had that and now we do all the documenting up front, which is really frustrating and hard for someone like me. Right. It's not. I don't enjoy it. But doing that work up front creates clarity. And when you bring in a highly talented person, when they have clarity, they're not, they feel way better about the position. Most people don't like chaos. I do. Most people don't. Right. Like they don't. They don't like it. Right. And so if you can make that, that transition of bringing someone in that really is great in those boxes, you make it smooth and not chaotic. You're going to get more out of them and they're going to be happier.

Yeah. That clarity piece you, you offered there toward the end of that pass was, is really strong. It reminds me that I think of, I think if it's not present in the culture, it can seem very threatening and you may lose some people in a shift to a culture that is accountability based, but ultimately it's clarity, it's communication, and frankly, it's a gift to everyone. This is what you're going to be held accountable to. How do you feel about that?

Yeah.

Does that seem like, you know, in some of those roles, do you, you know, at the risk of running long here, do you have your agents co create their goals for the year?

We do.

And then kind of like back into every quarter. Yeah.

Yeah. So they make their personal and professional commitments. And the reason why the, the personal is actually more important than the professional, because to have success in sales, and we were talking specifically about the agents, you have to connect what you're doing every day to something of meaning, right. If you're just selling houses to sell houses, at some point you've sold enough houses and you've, you, you've hit the next level and you've become number one. And you're standing there and you're like, I'm number one, but what do I have? Right? And so once you connect something emotionally, when you get dialed in on that personal side, you don't actually burn out. Because then all of a sudden you wake up and you're like, this is what I'm doing this for. This is what matters. This is why I'm doing this work. And then that work becomes bigger than you, and that's what starts to form the legacy. And now you have, for the first time, for most people in their life, now you have salespeople that are building a true legacy, which traditionally in real estate, most realtors have not really thought. Like, especially on teams and broker brokerage environments, have not thought about meaning and legacy or any of that work, right? They're just like, I'm a hustler. Like, how do I become number one on that leaderboard? Give me more leads, I'm gonna go crush them. Right? When you get people to slow down and go, like, why are you here? Like, what's your purpose? Like, what is this all for? Like, I, I personally believe that, like when I, when I watch people come and do this and we make them a present in front of the room, right? When one of the other big things is publicly declaring something, right? When you publicly declare something, you're more likely to do it. And so just watching the breakthroughs of so many of our salespeople get emotional and cry and hit that cord of like, I mean I, I, one that comes to mind is one of our agents was homeless six years ago. Right now he's going to sell 100 homes.

Wow.

Right? So how do you go from homeless six years ago to selling 100 homes? He's like, I was a loser. Like I was sleeping on a couch. Like I didn't really have any meaning in my life. And, and there was a, there was a trigger moment for him where his parents took his sister on a senior, I think it was a, either spring break or a senior trip down to some fancy islands and it was a big trip and he wasn't invited. And that was like the moment where it all changed for him. Now he's got this chip on his shoulder and when he had shared the personal and professional commitments, he's like, and I just booked my own trip to go to the same spot. Like just that type of stuff is cool. And I've heard and I, I've seen just so many cool things. Like there was an agent that wrote a post dated check for her entire student loan balance to her mom that her mom didn't want to co sign for her. Right. Just post dating that check and going, this thing's going to be cashed by this time this year. Now that agent is never going to stop going towards that, that number that they, and that volume they want to hit because it's bigger than just a real estate sale and helping customers and doing that. Now all of a sudden you made a commitment to your mom. Like I'm paying this off. And so like I'm a real big believer of connecting the personal side, the professional side. And, and sometimes it's also not contributions of money either. A lot of it's, it's time.

Yeah.

Like I want to donate this much time this year to, to these causes and I want to bring my family with, I want to show them what life would look like if they were in a different, they had a different lens just to give them like more of that, like you know, just a different view of the world. Like let's go build a house together. Like let's go overseas and help some less fortunate. Like everyone's got different motivations but you learn a lot about people and once you really get connected, that personal side, you figure out what actually really drives them. Yeah, right. And I always love the person that comes up and says they don't have anything because they're going to be up there for a very long time until they figure it out. Yeah. Like, yeah. And they do figure it out, right? And they do figure it out. And I found that most people in life do have a mask on and they give you the commercial that they've been running their entire life. Like, nope, I'm good. Nope, I'm great. Like, it's totally fine. Like, I can't really think of anything. Oh, so your life's perfect. Like, everything's great. Like, tell me about your kids. Tell me. And pretty soon, like, you start digging in and you start figuring out, like, oh, this is. These are the sort of lies that you've been telling yourself. And it's an opportunity to grow. So it creates a bunch of personal development at the same time through their own words. And I found that motivating people, when it's their words, it's more likely to happen than when it's your words.

Yeah. You can't get someone to want something that you want for them. They have to want it for themselves. For sure. Man, this is awesome. I so appreciate it. Before I let you go, fun question for you. And you only have to pick one of these. What is your most frivolous purchase? Or what is a cheapskate habit that you hold on to, even though you probably don't need to?

Cheapskate habit. That's a good. That's a. That's a good question. I'm trying to think of the best. It's funny because when it, When I think about it, like, if I go and create an experience with friends or family or co workers, like, I don't really care what it cost. Yeah. Right. Like, I. But.

And there's no frivolity in it.

By definition, though, you said it all. No. So I. So I don't care. But on the flip side of that, anything that involves a negotiation, I am going to drive as long as I possibly can to spend as little as possible. And it's not even about the money. Yeah. Like, there's something just ingrained in me as much as I, you know, I mean, there's a lot of times where it's good and there's other times where, like, just back off. Like, you don't need to grind it into the ground.

Yeah.

But just like, I love to negotiate, and so I end up like, this is Walmart, sir.

There is no bartering.

Yes, yes, yes. What I love, I think about some of the leaders in our company, and they're like, why are you still grinding here for $5? Like, when you go and you're. You guys are all going to the Twins game tonight and everyone's getting whatever they want. Yeah. Like, and it's just, you know, you just are. It's just who you are. Like, it's who I am. And I think that really comes from, like, how I grew up coming from nothing and with. With very little. Like, I didn't have an abundance of anything. And so, like, to me, it's. It's really important to, like, fight for everything that I have, and I can't. I can't take that fight away.

Yeah. Well, it shows in the way you approach your work, the energy that you do it with, and I wish you continued success. And thanks again for doing this.

Awesome. Appreciate you having me. Thank you.

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