Live Q&A Session with Brian Buffini

Hey, thank you for watching this subscriber only episode of real estate team OS. It's about 20 minutes of a Q and A session that Brian Buffini and I did with a live studio audience after we recorded episode 96. If you've not yet seen episode 96 of Real Estate Team OS, I highly encourage you to check it out. Brian is a team pioneer. He's been in the space for decades. He's positively impacted the lives and businesses of tens of thousands of real estate professionals all over the world. But here we take live questions from an audience. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you find it helpful and entertaining. 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 a real estate team.

Here's your host, Ethan Butte.

Nobody talks to more teams in real estate than Ethan, and so if you have a team, whatever else, it's a great show. I recommend you check it out. And I thought it'd be a nice thing to bring to you guys in the audience today. And here's something. How many of you, it's your first time here in a thing. Can I see your hands? There it is. Hey. 250 new people. There we go.

It's great. Thank you for having me.

All right, raise your hands. We'll do lickety split. Yeah.

Hi, Brian. Stephanie from Caldwell, Idaho.

Never too busy for anyone.

Referrals.

He asked a great question, and I'm

sure a lot of us are curious

what the answer is. What is your most frivolous purchase?

Oh, good one.

Because I teach budgeting to these buggers. I mean, the one that comes off to my mind is the one that was absolutely not defensible was buying a jet. You know, for a business our size, to own a jet was insane. And I had it for 17 years. I had three of them, except I bought time. And that's why, as a public speaker, I'm still married to my bride, who I love for 35 years, and I have six kind of amazing children. And my CFO who's here today, Jim. Paul Zane, who's a very thrifty guy, knew if I didn't have the jet, I would have stopped this business a long time ago. So that's frivolous. Let me see. I'm not that frivolous. The golf simulator. No, let me tell you what was frivolous. The fricking permit fees were frivolous. I just told the Whole world that I built an unpermitted building today. All good. Yeah. Permits, permit fees. Most frivolous thing I've done.

Where are we?

Hey, Joe. Hey, Brian.

Hey, Ethan. Carl Miller, Lynchburg, Virginia.

My man.

Thank you so much for this question for you, Brian. You said several times the line about what I gross is what I net. I'd like to elaborate on that. Was that your production personally? And then I have a question for you, Ethan. After interviewing hundreds of team leaders or dozens of. What are some of the key takeaways, Things you've learned as a host of that show? Okay.

Okay. So, yeah, I was basically. If I was going to get a million dollars in commissions, I wanted to keep a million dollars in commissions. So the way I would do that is the margin that I would make from the team was basically to cover all the expenses of the team, the assistant, the office. And by the way, I owned every building, including the Feeny company. I own every building that I've ever done business in. So I lease back the building to myself. And the goal was to make the team work in such a way. By the way, my philosophy is this as opposed to. Because that can sound like I'm squeezing the olive oil out of the olives. My philosophy was Lee Trevino. Lee Trevino said, because caddies make 10% of the winnings. And Lee Trevino said, I'm going to win so much money this year, my caddy's going to be number two on tour. That's how I feel. And the characteristic that people would know me for is generosity. So I wanted to have. I don't. I did not. People made money with me, I was generous with them. And we had great business, we had great leads. And most of the time, within a five year period of time, most of those years I was able to right about net what I grossed. And it's good eating.

Cool. That's a great question. So there are a lot of directions I could go with it. Again, the question was top takeaways from hundreds of conversations with team leaders and operations leaders. I guess where I'll go is culture matters as much or more than you think. It's really hard to get your hands around. But culture is the essence of everything. I guess it goes back to what Brian was sharing about purpose a bit. I would also add principles and values, being very clear on those. It doesn't mean that they're static and you can't ever revisit them or alter them. But being very clear about who you are, what you're about. What you're trying to achieve is going to be naturally attractive to other people. And again, that's all really hard. It's easy to line things up in columns that are quantifiable. Culture is not one of those things. But it matters more than you think. The other thing I'll share is being really clear about your operating model and your financial model. If those are out of alignment together as your business model, then stacking things on in a way that isn't intentional enough to create the forward momentum that you need to create a successful business. Another specific way to say that is you're going to be potentially recruiting wrong fit agents into the business or you're recruiting a good one. But the splits that you've set up don't align with the systems that you've built. What kind of leads are you generating, what kind of support are you providing? These things all need to align and it's really difficult to do because you can't just like lay out all, stop everything, lay out all the pieces, organize them, bring together lineup and like now we're back running our business. I mean it's all happening while you're doing it. But the alignment of your own clarity about what you're trying to do and how you're doing it and what you'll stand for and what you won't, the financial model that you're running on and the way that the rest of the folks fit into that, like getting that aligned is just the key to success. And that applies whether you're doing an eight person business or 80 person business or an 800 person business.

By the way, have you noticed how great he is at signing like you do explanations with your hand. Do you have a little Italian in your background or something?

I don't think I do, but I would describe my background as Western European mutt. So there's some Italian in there.

Maybe you looked at me when you said that. But here's the thing. I'm pure purebred. But you use your hands when you're. It's awesome. Yeah, good. I need to do more of that. I might start doing my desk.

I stand at my desk all day so there's like more opportunity.

That's good. I like that. I'm going to do a little bit of that. Dustin Gassert, Franklin, Tennessee I'm brand new to leadership. I've been in one to one coaching, but brand new to leadership in the very baby stages of building a team. So Ethan, my question directly to you is you've obviously been around Interviewed a lot of great team leaders. What's been the biggest, I guess most common theme that you've seen that has allowed somebody that's building a new team for the very first time? What's the best piece of advice collectively that you've heard or seen that has allowed someone to grow and build a large team?

Patience. Patience with yourself and patience with other people. I think what Brian talked about in terms of getting an assistant who is different from you, like that principle applies. It's like the self awareness of your strengths and weaknesses. Self awareness about the strengths and weaknesses of the business or the team or the unit of people overall so that you're bringing the right people in, aligning them the right way so that everyone has their right place. I would also reference some of what I just shared prior, which is, you know, what are we all doing here? Where are we going in order to attract the kinds of people that will believe in you. The story that you shared about your initial executive assistant becoming your chief of staff, is that correct? I hear that story all the time. But it's very typically. I hired this person that I met part time, tc, you know, was really good in the chair, sat alongside me, learned a lot from me and a couple of the other agents around me. And now he or she is my chief operating officer or my VP of operations. And so that patience to allow people to complement each other is really hard to do, especially as a new leader in particular. Like I struggled, like I've toggled throughout my career between individual contributor and team leader. And I find different aspects of both of those light me up. I think as a real estate agent who's trying to build a team, I know that I would personally struggle with that very much.

A couple more.

Hi, I'm Kitty from the Triangle area of North Carolina and I have a less emotional question and a more sort of nuts and bolts question this morning. Brian, you shared that we're going to experience a 14% increase in 2026 in sales and Dr. Yoon said the same thing.

Yeah, he's very smart

and you have a good crystal ball. Anyway, I'm sorry if I didn't really get the clear answer on the reasons. So I figured out that you said where older sellers are going to and interest rates will come down a little bit. Could you tell us like very succinctly why?

Well, number one, there's just a big old fricking pent up desire to do it. Like people are living in the wrong house and they're going bonkers. Okay. And the interest rate is great, but at the end of your life, I mean, oh, you gotta live it like, here lies Ethan. He had a 3% rate. It's like, ah, right, you know, I own my home. Yeah, boy, Dave Ramsey, be proud. So you know what I mean? So people have a pent up desire to move. You know, there's a pent up desire to move. We're at 4 million transactions with 340 million people. There's just a pent up desire to do it. And this little bit of life on the rates and a little bit of time's gone by and people know the arms and legs aren't gonna fall off, it's just there. And so the real historical thing, Dr. Yoon mentioned it, he was too busy slamming the Irish to really pick up what he was saying. But he said he's looked at the rebound every single time. And every single rebound historically for 100 years has been double digits. There's never been a year that wasn't. So you do forecasting, you do modeling, you look at the dynamics on the ground. I was pushing him. I had, My research was 10% and up until 50 days ago I would have said 10%. But he has convinced me and I asked him some tough questions and, and he literally backed up the Encyclopedia Britannica. I'm like, oh God. But I can't stand here and tell people to have false hope. And I went through it and here's the deal. It could be if we're going to make a mistake, it'll be because we're low. I didn't want to say that to 35,000 people, but if we're going to make a mistake, it could be 20. There are circumstances, there's things going on with the tax bills and whatever else. If it all hits, you could see 20%, there's people that like it's actually going to happen. People are actually going to get some tax relief and there's some cash going to flow and that kind of stuff. And politics being the way it is, they want to juice up elections. So there's a good chance there's going to be some money flowing. My personal concern, so you know, is the current administration would like to make a big deal about lowering the rates. And my biggest fear is that they forced the rates down too fast and they did the opposite of what was happened on the way up. So that would be my big concern, you know, trying to make a splash. But 14 is a good number. Yeah, just say the guy who's never rung told me so, couple more. Yep.

Hi. Brian. Aaron Peace. I'm broker, owner of Peace Realty right here in Las Vegas.

Hey.

So I am obviously a very small boutique brokerage. And I think that.

Why is that obvious, by the way?

Nobody knows the name.

Okay.

So I think that's where my challenge is when I'm recruiting agents and building a team. I'm up against a lot of competition here in the Valley, a lot of big names. So what advice would you have, I guess, in trying to recruit in more experienced agents? Because I learned my lesson a little bit with the new agents to bring, you know, to. To have them come into a big boutique brokerage as opposed to a big one.

I mean, I'll go. And then maybe, Ethan, you can have a shot at. I'll just say your entire question is great. Like, you know, I mean, look, it's great when someone stands up and asks a question, and it's a little nervy type thing or whatever else. People, like, reveal themselves. So if you listen back to yourself and you didn't know yourself, here's what you would have heard. I'm a little boutique. Obviously, we have a small business. We're boutique. We're up against these big. Big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big. Tells me you don't believe it yourself. Like, you feel like you're up against it. Here's the thing. Not everybody wants to work for a conglomerate. 54% of real estate brokerages are unaffiliated brokerages. 54%. It's the majority position you have.

Good to know.

There you go. Hive of use is information. Now I know who Ringo Starr's son is. But here's the thing. You gotta believe it yourself. You're looking for people who are looking for what you're looking for. You're looking for people who want to be in this cool place that's, you know, mints on the pillow and a little extra personal touch where everybody knows your name. You want that or do you want a McDonald's and fries?

No. And that's why I did what I did in opening the brokerage.

Then be proud about it. Then, you know, walk around, have a little sass. You know, hip, hip. Just try that. Hip. You know, do that walk. Small boutique. Sassy. Better. Okay. Boom.

Okay, I'm on.

Wear it, girl. Wear it.

Yes, sir.

Were you really quickly. Were you an experienced agent when you started your brokerage?

Six years in real estate.

Yeah. And you felt accomplished at that point, and you had the confidence to move forward and open your own thing? And so whatever that story is, I mean, when I think about recruiting, are you designed to specifically benefit an experienced agent, or are you designed to benefit that, you know, agent who's been in the business for two years, who sold half of what they expected to sell in their first two years and you helped get them? You know, making sure this goes back to what I was sharing in the first response. Making sure that you're designed to deliver for the people that you're trying to recruit into the business. So there is. Obviously, everything that Brian shared is spot on. I would also add that your own story could be part of why an experienced agent would join you. Hey, listen, I was six years in the business. I did this, I did that. Whatever you think your favorite accomplishments are, the ones that would resonate with the types of people you want in the organization, your story is part of that. Like, I was in a shop that was like this. I was at a shop that was like that. I was in a McDonald's. I didn't really like it there. I figured, you know, I looked around, I didn't find it in our area, so I made it myself. And like that. Your own vision and motivation for doing it is part of why someone who fits what you're doing and matches up with what you're designed for would join you.

Great. Thank you.

And by the way, how many of you.

But you love your story and you believe it.

Yeah. How many agents do you have?

I don't have any.

Okay, great. Sounds like you're about to. Yeah, sounds like you're about to. So just wear it proudly, be excited about it and say, hey, I may have exactly what you're looking for. You know, we gotta go because we got a bunch of people ready to miss plane flights. And so let me say this. His name is Ethan Bute. He's a Bute, isn't he?

I'll take it. I'll take it.

This was great. Thanks for. Yeah, thanks for having me. We thought this would be fun to hear a little different side of the story. Was this fun for you guys? Listen. Thanks for coming. Listen to me. Appreciate you guys. Thank you for being with Buffini and Company on this journey. I want you to know that we're working hard every day to just live out our values and work by referral and make you guys feel special and exceed your expectations. And, oh, by the way, we could use view referrals if you're feeling fully amped up about us. Pass it on. Because you guys know the people that we want to know. We're not trying to work with everybody either. We're not trying to work with everybody. And every company we deal business with has knocked off our coaching program and has their own coaching program. And every company we've served has knocked off our training program. They have all our training programs and every company we've served over the years has knocked off our CRM and has our CRM. Every company we do business with knocks off our items of value and does items of value. The same people we kind of kept in business. And it's all good because that's the market. What I'm looking for is good people just like you. That makes sense. So thanks for coming. God bless you. Hope you enjoyed it. Fly safe. It is. It was great.

Give it up for Brian Mae and Ethan Butte, everybody.

Come on.

You guys need to be that Brian Buffini, Ethan Butes, well done. There we go. Thanks for checking out this episode of Team Os. Get quick insights all the time by checking out real estate team os on Instagram and on TikTok.