Phil Gerdes on Work Ethic and Self-Awareness [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.

This episode of Team OS features Phil Gerdes who does a fantastic job walking through ideas around lead efficiency and lead conversion. Work ethic, how to make sure that you've got it in the folks that you're bringing onto your team. Why Phil left sales, production and why he returned. Specific questions, four of them. That an agent thinking about joining a team should ask a team leader. Specific questions that an agent thinking about starting a team should be asking themselves. We recorded this conversation in person at fubcon at the JW Marriott LA live in downtown Los Angeles where. Where there was a very active protest going on right outside the room almost the entire second half of this interview. I just mention that because John Zambrana, a fantastic team member, took down that sound as much as possible. But if you notice it, that's what you're hearing now. FUBCON session with Phil Gerdes.

So, Phil, to get going, I would love for you to share a must have characteristic of a high performing team.

Must have characteristic of a high performing team. I'd say people have heard it. Work ethic. Yeah, like you've got to. And not just from agents. I think that that's part of where people sort of miss it sometimes. It's like I want my agents to work super hard, but I actually want my staff to take ownership value and responsibility for what they're doing and ultimately their department, especially department heads. I want you to treat your department like it's a business in itself. And how do I take absolute value and ownership of it?

Yeah, a couple key words in there, this idea of ownership and accountability. I think when a lot of people hear hard work, they kind of get into like hustle and grind and all these things. And like there's more and more hours, hours, hours. And of course, really the answer is both and exactly it is. So when we start talking about leverage, it's not work less hard, it's just put your time where it's better.

Exactly.

But, but go into work ethic from a. You've built an organization, you have people leading teams of people. How have you probed that before inviting people into this journey and mission and effort to build your business with you? How do you test work ethic?

Well, so I used to hire and I used to fire and we learned that if I Like you, I'll hire you and if I like you, I'll never fire you. And so I'm the worst person to hire and fire. So now our operations manager is fully in control of hiring and firing. But we had a talk recently and it was just to remind her that what you're told in an interview is oftentimes not who the person is, that's who the person they showed you they are is for the purpose of getting hired. So now we do two week meetings, 30, 30 day meetings, 1690 and 1 20. And it's just constant question. It's like, are you the right fit? And then are we the right fit? Because we might not be the right fit for them and that's either way it's okay. But like, I want you to be hard working, but I also want you to be hard working above and beyond the idea of I'm out there talking with clients. It's when you don't have clients to talk to, what are you doing? It's the old saying of like, what are you doing when no one's watching. Right. So the accountability is there. Like you mentioned, who are you accountable to ultimately? Are you accountable first to yourself or do you do what you say you're going to do no matter what, even when you say it just to yourself? And then when it gets really, really hard and if you can find a way to get it to be hard early on for people, I think that's, that's the win. Right. When it gets to be hard, where do you go? Like, are you the one that's going to hide behind the chair? Or you the one that's going to step up when everything's hitting the fan? D do you rush in or run out? So finding ways to create environments like that and it doesn't have to be crazy. I mean, we're in the office, we're in a meeting, we do role playing. Who's the first person that says I want to go first? Right. Who jumps up to go first? That's the one that I want to pull them in and then I want to transfer my skills to that person the most and ultimately continue to do that until I feel like they can then do the same for other people?

Yeah, I love it. It makes me want to. You had me envisioning a team interview where you offer the group setting.

Yeah, yeah.

It's funny. So one thing you just shared there, kind of underneath all of that was some self awareness about what you are good at and what you're not good at. What you enjoy doing and what you don't enjoy doing. Take us back to maybe when you started building a team. How self aware were you around these themes and what was that journey like for you? Because I assume that you've. The level of success you've achieved to date, I assume that you've complemented your strengths and weaknesses and I assume just the way you kind of felt that underneath you did it with some level of intention.

Yes. Yeah. So I would say when we first started, you know, it's. You wear every hat, you just figure it out, right? You're wearing every hat, you're figuring it out. But the drive from the point where we started to where we are has been it's not so much like, what am I good at? It's what do. What am I willing to accept that I'm not good at? And then what do I do about it? And that's hard. At least it was hard for me as a business owner to say, I'm like, I'm not the best person to handle this and I probably should never be handling these situations. So then who do I bring in to handle them for me?

And then.

And then there's the logistical side. Cause it's a business, so who do I bring in? What is it going to cost to have them here? How are we going to pay it? How are we going to ensure that we pay it? What does that take from another department or. Or even us personally, my wife and I as business owners and then just reconciling with the idea that this is a must. Right. So you have to say, here's my. Here's my strengths, here's my weaknesses. Which one do I want to play towards? And if I want to focus on playing towards my strengths, I need to have someone cover my weaknesses. And I have to accept everything that comes with that. Even putting on my humble cap, stepping back and trusting that person. Cause if you're not gonna trust em, why'd you bring them?

Right. Yeah. Really good. You've left sales, production.

No, I'm still in production. I left for some time and I came back.

Okay.

I love it.

Yeah. Talk about that a little bit, like. Cause I know a lot of people struggle with that in the team building journey. Can I afford to leave production? How do I do that? You've seen both sides of it now, and it sounds like it's layered into this strengths and preferences piece too. So break that down a little bit.

So for me, it was a test, like, can I leave production? And ultimately I could, but what I found was I left production for the wrong reasons. I left production because it seemed. It seemed cool. It seemed like what everyone was doing. Right. If you're a team leader, if you're a broker, leave production, count on your team. But again, that wasn't where my strength lied. My strengths lied in, like, I was just speaking on conversion. It's. It was with working with the clients and helping people to achieve their goals and their dreams. So why. Why did I leave production in the first place? Right. And then it was funny because as soon as I got back in production, not only was I back in production, but what I noticed is I got out of production way too early. Not for me, but for my agents. Because once I got back into production, guess what they did? They got back into production. Right. It was like speed of the leader and follow the leader. So I found that me focusing my attention on how do I convince them? Or I say convince, but other people say train them. Right. But ultimately it's how do I. How do I convince them to do the thing? I found that I. If I stopped trying to convince them and I just did it, and I showed them by doing it, they would want to do it. And when they wanted to do it, that's when I circled back around and said, okay, let me support you. Since you want it, Let me support you in doing it and achieving what you're looking for.

Yeah, I really appreciate that. Self awareness and, of course, the power of modeling. You know, we can teach, coach, train as much as we want, but modeling it is a critical part of being successful in any of those efforts.

Agreed.

How about an agent thinking about starting a team? Like, for you, what was a spark where you knew that that was a thing for you and. Or because I assume you're guiding a lot of folks now just as a. Yeah. You know, someone people look to for, like, ideas.

Yeah.

You know how when people ask you that kind of. What kind of questions do you follow up with and. Or what are some of. A couple of your kind of key.

I always knew I wanted to have a team. I came from an industry. There were. I had a team. There's 13,000 people on my team. I understood team building. Right. That was what I did. Where I live in Maryland, you can't have a real estate team unless you're an agent. For three years. I didn't know that. So I literally, my first day in, I was like, all right, let's start the team. And my broker was like, no, let's make this clear how this actually works. And I'm happy it happened because it gave me three years to figure out everything. I didn't want to transfer to someone else. Right. And then in my third year, I started figuring out, well, why do people want to work with me? Why would they want to work with me? And then let's bring them on and start mentoring them because as soon as year three hits, we're going to start this team. And I want them to be confident in this is the right team for them. But, you know, if someone were to come to me and ask like, what, what should I do? I want to start a team. Why? It's my first question, like, what in the back of your mind, what do you see coming from starting this team? Because if you don't see everything, and I mean everything that comes with starting this team, and it's not easy, it is a hard thing to do to deal with people, as we all know, but then deal with people that are counting on you and trusting you and, and believe in you ultimately. And then believe in the vision and the brand that you're building and the culture that you're hoping to create. If you can't, if you can't accept the pressure that comes with it, then it's not right for you. And then also if you can't accept the obligation that comes with it. Because the reality is, you know, if there's 10 people on my team, I'm one person. But ultimately those 10 people see me as their one person individually. So it's important in my opinion as a team leader to say, well, how much am I willing to give to these people? And, and I can't cut it because this person made me upset today or that, you know what I mean, Like, I have to be willing to give to them or why would they stay here in the first place? And then as time goes by, you build SOPs for how you work with your team and then ultimately you bring in other people that can take some of the burden from you and then make it easier and allow you to have more time and energy to do all the other things you want to do while building the team. So the first question is why? What is your, is it just a cute thing you heard of or is there real purpose behind why you want to build this team?

Yeah, and I feel like the best follow up question once you've answered that for yourself is another question you answer, you offer to that response, which is why would someone else join you in that? You know, like if you don't have that value prop, like I don't mean it from a marketing perspective, like legit. Why would someone join you and why would they stay? And you had. I love that you had a ramp into it.

Yeah, there you go. Yeah, I read your mind. Yeah. You know, one thing that I do, and it was a. It was a broker that drop this seed in my mind is I. I look to treat our agents as our clients because I, I think that a lot of times broker owners or team leaders just look at the person buying or selling a house and say, that's my client. When the reality is that agent is also your client. And it, it's one thing to serve the buyer, seller, but it's a whole other thing to understand that you're also in service to the agents that trust you. And, and you've got to ask yourself, well, how am I going to be in service to those people?

Yeah. I think of agent experience and client experience as two sides of the same coin. As the experience is for the agents, it comes out in the manifestation in the relationship and what it feels like to talk to this person, work with this person, et cetera, et cetera. So you mentioned standard operating procedures, sop, and you came from running a very, very large team, so I'm sure that was a default for you. I don't know that that's the default for a lot of other folks. As you're out and about engaging with people, talking with people, sometimes giving guidance and suggestions to people. How common would you say it is for people to be vastly immature in regard to what has been standardized and documented?

Insanely common. Too common. Yeah, very common. In fact, on stage, I touched on three reasons why I think that people don't make it. And one of them is just the. It's. It's not an inability. It's not that the knowledge isn't out there. It's an unwillingness to accept what this really takes. And. And that leans on immaturity. And it's. It's not to say a person is immature. It's. Their mindset towards the industry is immature. And it's. It's that they. They've watched too much Bravo or HGTV or Million Dollar Listing or selling Sunset, which kudos to all those guys. Or TikTok or everything on TikTok. Exactly. And they think that, you know, the goal is to get views or. No, the goal is to serve clients. The goal is to be of value. The goal is to be a gift to people, and so much so that they want to transfer that gift to someone else. And that doesn't mean you have to have a thousand views on a video. It means you need one. Ultimately, you need one from the right one and you're willing to dive in and support that person.

Yeah, yeah. So you spoke here at fubcon about lead conversion. Yes, generally. And certainly in a market like this, running a profitable business requires a very keen eye toward lead efficiency. Yeah, right. Getting as many dollars out of every dollar you invest in this and taking advantage of every opportunity. Share a couple high level tips for a team leader working on improving lead efficiency across, say, a team of five, six, ten agents.

Sure. The first tip would be everyone doesn't need to get everyone. Every agent on your team hasn't earned the right to receive every lead and be okay with that. And that can be tough, especially when you actually care about the people on your team because you want them to win and you want them to have opportunity. But the fact is, some people are not ready to receive a listing lead. Some people are not even ready to receive a buyer lead. So putting yourself in a state of understanding that it's better for the company and ultimately better for that agent to dive more into training and supporting that person so that they are prepared and capable when the lead comes in than just giving them a lead, getting them blowing out. Because when you blow out a lead that can do something to that agent's confidence level, and for some people, they never come back from that, you know, and if they do it enough, they think that, well, I'm just not good at leads. No, it's not that you're not good at leads. You just never had a real opportunity to learn how to do leads.

Right.

So the next thing I would say is probably to stop training on everything. And this is something I had to come to terms with. I don't have to train on every single topic in real estate. If you want people to get great at listing leads, why are you doing.