Onboarding and Training As Your Team Differentiators with Nick McLean | Ep 025

For insights into starting, growing and optimizing your real estate team, we're talking with Nick McLean.

Like, I didn't need to be the guy with all the credit and all the awards. I wanted to be the guy that brought the people up.

He's the owner and CEO of Nick McLean Real Estate Group, a coach to many top teams and leaders, and a co founder of Reside Platform. He was a wildland firefighter with the U.S. forest Service, a competitive mountain bike racer, and one of the youngest pilots to fly 747s. And he's the author of Million Dollar Agent, a book I'd recommend to anyone who appreciates a show like this one. Thanks so much for talking timo us today, Nick.

I'm so excited to be here.

I could honestly do an episode with you on pretty much every chapter of Million Dollar Agent. They're all relevant topics. It's just like it's called Agent in the title, but it's so much about your team journey. So I'm going to try not to be too redundant to the book in this conversation and just tell folks to go pick it up and read it because it's insanely useful and will probably focus Most on chapter 15, I think high performers and operations, in particular training and development. But we're going to start where we always do, Nick, which is a must have characteristic of a high performing team. When I ask for that, what comes to mind?

I think the characteristic of a high performing team is one in which the leader and the people within the team are in sync with each other and have a rhythm. So you know, there's, there's the concept of velocity, there's direction and there's velocity. It's like, okay, well you could be going or speed, you go really, really fast. You could be making lots of progress. Well, you could be covering a lot of ground. But are you making progress? Because you know if you're going in the wrong direction but you're going really, really fast, you're actually going away from the goal. So I think a team with the leadership gives that direction and when they get into sync and that's with training, that's with the leads, that's with the, their communication style, that's within the structure. They know where they fit in and how to, how to kind of go up and down the hierarchy if there is one. And I like this, you know that people are like, oh no, we don't have a hierarchy. We're not top down at all. Well, there's top down and bottom up for sure. So I think a high performance team, they take that seriously. You know, they take that really, really seriously. And that's really the focal point.

Yeah, totally fair. And like layered up on top of some of those specifics. I feel like you'd have a lot to say on vision values, by the way, for, for folks who do commit to Million Dollar Age. And I'm talking about chapters three and four here. Beliefs, like the belief system, I thought was a really interesting layer on top of, you know, a lot of people will have a vision or a mission statement. A lot of folks will state, you know, three to seven core values. But this set of belief statements I thought was having that clarity in what we believe as a group, and then essentially recruiting, training, and executing and holding people accountable, consistent with that layer of shared beliefs probably adds that, like tightening to all these processes.

It really does. And I, for the people, kind of listening, you know, it kind of goes back to my airline career where I was in Miami, Florida. So I went to Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, right out of training, got hired on this Boeing 747 startup airline. Like, I had no business at 25 years old working at a 747 international cargo operator. But I was willing to do what they had an apprenticeship because they were a startup, so they wanted, they wanted cheap labor, right. So they, they went to these schools and got the highest aptitude and test score people to join them. Well, I would happen to be in the top five in my class. So I had an interview here and had this apprenticeship. And I love the idea of an apprenticeship, by the way. And the apprenticeship was this. It was, you're going to work, you're going to work in the office in flight dispatch for a year, then you're going to be a flight engineer for a year, then you're going to go to a pilot seat, right? Seat of the 747. And I'm thinking, okay, man, by the time I'm 27, I'll be right. Seat of 747. Holy cow, I'm willing to do it. So I show up, day one, they don't even have their certificate. They don't have their FAA certificate. They can't even fly. I was like, I thought you were an airline. They're like, no, you're gonna help us write the manuals. So for the next year, literally, I sat with the director of maintenance, the director of operations, the director of training, Dave McLean, who was the director, he was actually on Air Force One for eight years. He was my mentor. In the director of training realm. Right. And this is where my passion for training comment came in. Right. So over the year we built these manuals. Now why do I say all this? Well, we start recruiting. I like in. I like in real estate. We call it recruiting. We start hiring agents. Like, can we call recruiting hiring? You know, can we call it hiring? Yeah, it's headhunting. It's talent acquisition. You know, give it any fuzzy name you want. But it's like telling your agents to prospect. They don't want to call it. Don't call it prospecting, Call it reaching out to potential clients. You know, like, call it having quality conversations with the people you want to help and change their life and to improve the quality of their life. Right. Call it something else or call it prospecting. I mean, don't hide from the fact. But right, so we start hiring agents. I mean, sorry, pilots. Well, these pilots are coming from American Airlines, United, United Airlines, you know, US Airways, Atlas, Atlas Air. So they're coming from all of these different cultures, all these different airlines with mission statements, vision statements, core values. Okay, so you think you can put your mission vision on the wall and they're just going to automatically adopt the new one during onboarding? Right. So what they had was something underneath all of it and that, and that was a belief system. This is like, how are we, how do we fly airplanes? How do we conduct ourselves? What is our level of standards and excellence? How do we view the client? Right, Because Boeing already tells you how to fly the 747, but how do we communicate with each other? So I think a belief system, something, it's deeper than the core value. And for instance, one of our belief systems at our team is pilot in command. Okay. The concept is the, that everyone is the pilot in command. So they are 100 accountable and responsible for the outcome. And everyone within the organization has the same belief system. So you actually have this overlapping effect of like, oh, during the transaction or during the process, more than one person is taking on that responsibility as the pilot in command, the ultimate fiduciary or the ultimate decision maker person responsible for it. So that's kind of where it came in, where it's like, okay, we got to indoctrinate these people, these new airline pilots into our company and our culture with a belief. Right? And that just happens. And a good way to do it. I learned this from Heath, Heath Evans, friend of John Sheplax. Done, done some coaching with him. He's a Super bowl champion with the New Orleans Saints. Played for Bill Belichick, they called it mantras. Bill Belichick would call it a mantra. Like, they had these little patriot way mantras. And those mantras are basically like these belief systems. The things that you say consistently, like, how often are you at a real estate team or company and people are constant repeating the core values down the. You know, they're not. People aren't going down the office just repeating core values, but they repeat mantras. Right. Client for, like, they're repeating this. So I think. I think the core value thing is really important, for sure. And it should guide your hiring and your firing and the way you conduct your business. But on the agent level or the staff level, I think there's a belief system, and those are. Those are comprised of lots of little mantras.

Yeah.

And if you don't have the belief systems, they're going to emerge and maybe you grab onto them. Right. Then you put them on the wall and you repeat them.

Yeah. And it's like at some level, it's the vacuum is there to be filled. And if you don't fill it with beliefs that are important to the core group that we built this thing with, it will be filled with something, and you might as well have something to say about that. I also love this idea of mantras you now have me thinking about. Like, whether it's belief statements or belief systems or mantras, this is the more tangible, teachable aspect of the core values. They're connected. It's another way to express it, but it's the kind of thing you would say every day. Like, when I hear mantras like, oh, yeah, this is the kind of thing we say. This is the verbal expression and kind of the way that we communicate. This is a moment that reflects this core value as opposed to, as you described, walking around talking about core values. Okay. Normally I would go to, like, your path into your team, but I kind of want to do it in reverse because I want to land on the fact that you joined the MLS the same day that you opened your own doors in a market where you knew literally no one. So I'm going to do it a little bit in reverse. How would you characterize your real estate team today?

My real estate team today is, you know, we've been doing for 11 years. I think we're a veteran, established, preeminent real estate team in our marketplace. You know, kind of going back to 2000, November 2011, when I decided to build a real estate team as a brokerage. I decided to go brokerage firm, independent brokerage, and then do it under the team model. It was new. You know, there was teams around the nation, but they were very few and far between, and they were exclusive to major markets. I can tell you that There were not teams being built in towns of 50, 000 people in 2011. That just wasn't a thing. Okay. But because of my background as a wildland firefighter and as a traditional sports athlete, competitor, and an airline pilot, I'm like, I'm not doing this alone. I'm doing this collectively. And I think collectively, we're going to win. And I was always there. I already had a. Always had a burning desire to be a leader. I always wanted to be a leader, you know, and it's just always been in my heart. So I wanted to lead. I didn't want a lot of independent agents just being independent solo practitioners, you know, like independent. I wanted interdependency. I want people collectively working together. So, you know what's funny is, you know, in 2011, 12, nobody knew who we were. And I joined the MLS, like you said, I joined the MLS the day of my. My sign went up, put my shingle up, I joined the mls. Nobody knew who I was. It was like, you know, it's like that Keller, who used to hear these stories about Keller Williams. There was a time where no one knew who Gary Keller was. Well, there's definitely. There was a time no one knew who Nick McLean was. In fact, I would put signs in people's yards, for sale signs, and they would take them down because they told me no one recognizes my sign. Literally. I had a client. I told you the story. I had a client go to Home Depot and buy a for sale by owner sign and replace my sign with that. And I drove by and said, what the hell's going on? They wrote my number on the sign. They're like, it has your number on it. I was like, okay, right. So I got some work to do. The local newspaper came to me, and he reported that I was the. Of the 17 brokerages in town, I was last in name recognition. Last. It was something like.07% of the people in the community know who you are. 0.07. Not even, like, not even a tip. Okay, so you know who. How do I characterize our team now? We are the preeminent. You pull anybody? We're number one in the consumer's mind. Are we number one on the MLS all the time? No, not all the time. There was a time we did 20 market share. One out of every five homes. Right. But you Know, we are that preeminent thing and that it comes from longevity. So anyone listening here, it's like, you need to be playing this long game. That is when you win and you win really, really big. It's like, don't fail, you know, don't go under, survive. There's going to be times in the marketplace where the winner is going to be the one that. That survives it, right? And just that consistency stringing in those consistencies. And so, yeah, like, I've been on the radio for 11 years straight. I haven't taken one month off of radio. There's been times where did I want to pay 7,000, 10,000 for Radio Go. You know, maybe I made adjustments, maybe I go down to three. I make deals, you know, but, you know, I gotta stay consistent with that, that brand. And then everything be, be that goes. Be that goes beyond behind the scenes with teamwork, you know, 10, 11 years, we haven't taken one week off from training. There was a time that I did training five days a week for seven years straight. No days off, right? And there's this, like, team. I want to build a team, but I want to, you know, I don't want to be a leader. I want to build a team and be a team leader, but I don't want the leader on my title. I was like, whoa. I thought that was the goal. See, that was the goal for me now, money was the goal. I wanted to make money. But really the meaningfulness of it was the leader part of the title. It wasn't the team part of the title. See, people that want to build a team because that's the ego talking. I want a team because that's an ascension. I want to say I own something like, don't get into team because you want that. Go into team because you want the leader side of the title, not the team side of the title. And when you go for the leader side of the title, guess what happens? You get a team. Right. It doesn't work the other way around.

Yeah. It's because people want to be led. They don't want to be underneath someone. They want to be led.

Yeah, they do. They want. And. And they want direction. I mean, you think about this. I'm about to interview on our podcast, Morgan Housel. He wrote the book Psychology of Money. I've known him for years. He sold 4 million copies of Psychology Money. His new book, Same As Ever, came out. I don't know if you've grabbed this one. Same as ever. And I'll have to introduce you too. It'd be awesome for you guys to get on. Do you guys connect? You'd love him. And you know the book, same as ever. It's like, what's not going to change? What's not going to change? What's always going to be the same? Well, yeah, people are going to need direction. There's always going to be new agents entering the marketplace. Right. Even experienced agents are going to be making mistakes and are going to want guidance. They're going to want leads, they're going to want systems, they're going to want support. Right. So you, you focus on those things. Then your team's gonna, your team's gonna have that longevity.

Yeah. Okay. The 11 year journey again. For folks watching or listening, I want to point you to somewhere early on, I forget exactly where it is, but you broke down and I so appreciate you doing this. You broke down agent count, staff count, and staff positions, transaction sides and company revenue year by year, by year from 2012 to 2021. So 6 agents, 1 staff to 40 agents and 7 staff 100 transactions to about 500 transactions. 10x revenue from less than half a million to more than 5 million in revenues on that. What I'd like to turn that into again, I want to detail it and break it all down because people can go get that. But for you, as you're thinking about, I saw some of those jumps, right? You had an isa and then a certain point you added another isa. At some point you added a photographer and videographer. At some point you. I think there was a year where you literally doubled buyer's agents. You know, sometimes you're hiring ahead of plan. I'm thinking about staff positions here. Sometimes you're hiring ahead of plan, sometimes you're not. There's kind of like a agent to staff ratio. I don't know if that ever mattered to you. Like how did you make decisions about when to add fixed costs and positions to the company and how much of that was you deciding? As a leader, I need to stop doing some of these things or I need to firm up this area of the business because it's not really a strength or interest or passion of mine. My leadership is over here. Talk a little bit about adding some of the fixed costs in building the team.

Yeah, well, it's, that's a really interesting question and I'll tell you why. Because the way I look at the real estate business is like a manufacturing company. I, I think of more of a fact. It's like a factory, you know, you got, you know, you Know the sales process, the sales funnel, you got leads, Legion marketing, advertising, lead generation, they come into the funnel and then you got to work the funnel, right? From, from calls, contacts, appoint appointments, set appointments, capped appointments signed and ratified. Then execution of that, a conversion to a closing, whether it's a listing or a buyer side. Then you got the listing coordination and the transaction coordination and then you have the closing process and then you have the after sale client experience and retention and referral business. Right? That's the whole spectrum of it, right? And so you, what you have to think about is where are the bottlenecks and where are the future bottlenecks based on the inputs that I'm doing, the initiative, initiatives I'm doing. So think about this. There's a book called the Goal by Iliad Goldrat. And in that book, it's a great story. What's great about this one, it's like the five dysfunctions of a team, right? Where it's a story, it's great. We can just read this fable, right? And you get this concept of bottlenecks. And bottlenecks are where they really tell you where you need to hire. So increasing the capacity of the process that is not already constrained, that is not the bottleneck is wasting your money. If you have a bottleneck, you need to attack that bottleneck. Well, how do you attack a bottleneck? Right? You can eliminate the bottleneck from happening. So putting something in front of it to make sure that you don't have any defects or mistakes entering there, right? You can exploit it. You can, you can reassign people that do have capacity into that bottleneck and help out AKA IE or AKA cross train people. Like how many, whoa. How many people have agents with extra time on their hands like you do? Do you? The question is, what's the goal? Is that really? The goal is, you know, know, like who else can do this at who, who on my staff can, can already do this, right? And so cross training people. So we expl, we exploit this bottleneck, then we can, we can reassign people to that bottleneck, we can improve the system. Maybe the system or automations or technology or written procedures going to help eliminate that bottleneck or increase the capacity of that. And then because I want flow, I want flow and sometimes Ethan, it is hire somebody. But guess what? I'll tell you this being profitable because you look at my numbers, I can tell you the be, the P and L was good. It was good the whole time. I'm going to add people last. I'm going to Throw people at the problem last in terms of new hires, fixed cost, salaries, expenditures. Right. But at the same time, you know, there's always this dichotomy here. I'm always looking for great talent, you know, and on the op staff side, there is amazing people out there that can change your world. I mean, absolutely rock it. Right. But you have to be that leader and show them the direction of it. They're not going to create. I haven't really been able to find someone that comes in there that's going to create the system for me. Right. So this belief that you can just hire somebody, they're going to magically know the real estate industry and solve the bottleneck problem? I don't think so. Right. But they can certainly execute really, really well. So that's what I would study. I studied, you know, when I got into the goal in Ilia Gold Rat, it got me into the Toyo TPS Toyota production systems. Right. And this stuff will absolutely blow your guys's minds. And there's a lot of similarities in that. So. So, Ethan, I. I didn't. I don't know if I answered your question as much as I had an awareness of where the constraint was. So bottleneck can also be called a constraint. Where are the constraints? And then I had this, like, toolkit of how do I attack constraint? And that was quality control, quality assurance in front of IT systems and processes and technology reassigning people that have capacity to that bottleneck. Last resort hire.

Really good. You did answer the question. I mean, my goal in answer in asking any of these questions isn't to get anything specific. It's to generate ideas for an agent or a team leader or a brokerage owner to think about their own business. And so what you just offered me is something, I'll put it in my own words, something I've identified about myself and other people around me is, you know, so often we buy like, you know, new tools and new tech because it's cool and we're excited about it and we never stop to think about, like, does this actually solve a problem that I have? And so, you know, rather than thinking about the hire, the hire is the last thing, exactly as you said, which is, okay, what's the pain? What's the frustration? What's the bottleneck? What's the constraint? What's slowing us down? What are my agents frustrated by? What's preventing us from getting where we want to go? Let's identify that and then think about solutions. And oh, by the way, it might be hiring Someone, but it doesn't have to be. And so, like, that's the unlock that. That you've given someone who's thinking about, gosh, maybe I need to hire someone. It's like, no, you need to solve a problem. And that may involve hiring someone.

I can give you lots of examples. Right? So let's say my transaction coordinators getting a little overwhelmed or my listing coordinator is getting overwhelmed. Well, if my listing coordinator is getting overwhelmed, it's probably because I have a lot of listings. Right. But are there times where the listing flow goes down and they're gonna have capacity? Probably. So if you hire another listing coordinator, there's going to be a time in the future where that assistant listing coordinator is going to have nothing to do. Okay. So just be aware of that. So what else is that assistant listing assistant listing coordinator going to do? And fill in the gap for when it's slow. And that might be answering the phones, that might be putting up signs that may be taking photos. Right. So cross training is really important. See that how I'm thinking about this now, at the same time, I'm going to dive deep into my transaction coordinator and go, okay, right. Let's look at your calendar. Let's look at your time blocking. Right. Let's look at your computer. Oh, my gosh, your computer. It's four years old. Slammed. Her computer was four years old. It took 20 minutes to load every day. Her printer, her printer was across the office. She would go over to print or scan like four times a day. Right. So what. What did I do? I attacked that I increased the capacity of the person I already have in place. New computer. Thousand bucks. A lot cheaper than 50,000 a year, super fast. Oh, you only have one monitor. Oh, two monitors. Increased productivity. Right. Oh, lunch. Lunch has been going an hour. Hour 10. Right. Oh, so you see what I'm. See what I think you got to think that way as a leader. Right? Well, you really. What? You're not really a leader, are you? You're like a manager. You're like a manager. Yeah. Yeah. And I think for the longest time I was like, man, don't call me a manager. But there's so much power in a. In a high, productive management style.

Yeah. Okay. I want to spend a few minutes in. In onboarding and training. I'm going to read you a couple quotes and then we'll get off and running. I'll turn it into a question, I promise. I'm quoting you from a Facebook post of yours relative to the work that you're doing with the reside team. My core competency is onboarding agents to get agents into production quickly with the right habits and skills that will stand the test of time. Here's one from Million Dollar Agent. As I've worked with the top teams in North America, the teams with the highest held standards are always the most profitable. I feel like standards are partly where we were off the off the top values and beliefs, but it's also part of the how behind the what of a process or a system is how I think about that. So I'd love to dwell in this. I'm going to ask you about some very specific tactics you broke down in again, chapter 15. But talk a little bit about onboarding and training as a fundamentally differentiating factor for agent staff and clients alike. I feel like you can differentiate your business through onboarding and training in a way that affects all the core stakeholders. A, do you see it that way? And B, like why do you think so?

Yeah, you know, I had an aha moment in my career. Well one, it was early on too where I really. Because my, my relationship with Dave McLean that I looked up to Air Force One at Focus Air Cargo. You know, what I realized was Dave McLean had the respect of everybody. I mean every, even though he wasn't a pilot on the line, he was the trainer and the teacher and there was something like that level of wisdom and respect. I just wanted that someday, like I didn't need to be the guy with all the credit and all the awards. I wanted to be the guy that brought the people up. Right. And, and had this like, oh, wow, Nick. Oh, you know, like the guy, the guy that actually helped mentor these people. There's a common thread there. So I'll give you an example too. Like in my marketplace right now, there's probably four other brokerages that have spawned off of my team, like brokerages. And that is what I'm most proud of. Right. But I also saw that, you know, a lot of agents or agencies, they really didn't have a systemized onboarding and training protocol for new agents. Like, you know, you know, who has been a new age, who watching this was a new agent at one time, like everybody. Okay, who here had the high performing Trey onboarding and training protocol that you could be proud of that set you, you know, set the tone of your career. Right. It just didn't happen. That wasn't my experience. I got hired at a brokerage and it was like, here's your desk. Watch and learn. It was total tribal. And I was like, oh, this is the opportunity, this is how I'm going to do it. Because if I can take anyone from any industry with an appetite and aptitude to learn and the will to learn and the will to go out and do things with my. If I have a training protocol, oh, that's how I win. Right. And my key metric was like, you know, time to first sale is important, but Covid threw that out the window because you could just like, not know anything and sell something, which caused another problem. Right. So it used to be like, time to first sale, but also time to first sale with procedural discipline if you got lucky. I didn't count that as a time for sale. I counted that as a red flag that we need to go back and fill in the gaps. Because if you skip steps and you close the home, that's going to cost you tons in the future. So just be aware of that. Teams, it's like, oh, I showed one home and they made an offer. Red flag. Oh, right. I didn't do a listing presentation, but they signed, oh, red flag. Right. Because your standards are what you allow them to get away with. So really be cognizant of, like, when they have great results to go back and make sure they didn't skip. Skip steps. And also be cognizant of when the results bad. They may have done everything right, right. And, and so, you know, if you do everything right and it doesn't work, then they're like, why did I go through all that effort? Well, because probabilistically, if you do the right way over time, you're going to win more than you lose, right? Because that's the way real estate is. We, we barely win. It's like 5% conversion. Fantastic. Like, get on the stage, follow boss is like, you are on the panel, you know, or maybe, maybe not. Depends on the lead source. But, you know, 10 plus on Zillow leads, you're going to be on stage consistently if you've done it consistently over time. So I just knew that was the way. I just knew that was the way that, that that's how I'm going to differentiate myself. It wasn't, it wasn't to, you know, have a value proposition for people to join. It was truly to serve, lead and inspire those people and make sure they're in a great position to win. I couldn't, I couldn't be tied to the result. I could just be tied to their, their competency there. And so when I'm looking at their standards and team standards throughout the company, it's what do you allow? Like you can say, you can say make 20 calls a day, but if, if you're allowing them to make 0 or 1, that's your standard, right? And you could say you train every day and, and you're a, a training organization first and foremost. But if you, if you, if you're okay with them not showing up. So Ethan, I'll tell you know, for that seven year period, five days a week, text, call, email every agent before the meeting, you're going to come, right? The subject, I mean like I got to enroll them. The, the calendar invite didn't say training on it. It was like a headline like I'm marketing and advertising to these agents. How to increase your sales 2x without having to work more. Right. Learn how to time block so you, you know, so you can make more sales and pick your kids up from school. Right. Like you, my calendar invite was enrolling them. I'm, I'm writing headlines. So. And that's great because I'm, I'm also increasing my, my, my skills and abilities to market to the consumer because if I can't get my agents to show up to the meeting, then I'm not very good at marketer. I'm not very good at enrolling or, or showing value. So you know, you think about that now. Team meeting happens, okay? There's a difference between team meetings and training, but the training happens. Okay, great. Awesome. Who didn't show up? Right? I got somebody taking notes with a Ross, you know, taking attendance and they give it to me at the end of the meeting on my way home or wherever. Ethan, throughout the day, I'm calling you. Hey, Ethan. Hey. Ah, we had that really great meeting today on time. Blocking man. Ah, I wish you were there. Oh yeah, sorry about that. I had an appointment. Oh, was that a personal appointment or a professional appointment? Oh, it was personal. Oh, okay. Well, we, we do have a core value. We, we, we, we support family health and community and health is always important. Can you do me a favor next time and let me know in advance? Oh, I'm so sorry about that. You're right. Next. What? Can I count on seeing you tomorrow? Yeah, I'll be there tomorrow. Awesome. I'll see you tomorrow. Right. And that's just, that is a stand like that for me, one of our standards is a value. We, we, we pursue growth and learning.