Providing Agent Leverage Profitably with COO Chris VanderValk [Inside Whissel Realty]

I think the agent's job is illogical. You've got to be a contract writer, you've got to be an inspector, you've got to be a touring guide. You got to be good with people, you got to like all these things you got to be great at to be like the top agent.

Those are the words of today's guest. And what he was getting at is this idea that no one can be good at 100 different things.

Is that realistic?

No.

Like, does that make any sense to anyone in any other industry?

And it sets up the heart of our conversation today, which is about agent leverage surrounding agents with people and tools and resources to help them stay in income producing activities or dollar productive activities more often. This not only attracts better agents to your organization when you can do it well, it also provides operational efficiency and sets you up for economies of scale so that you can provide leverage and leads profitably. Our guest here on episode two inside Whissel Realty is Chief Operating officer Chris Vander Voic, who not only is a super sharp person, he was also very generous in sharing strategies and tactics for providing agent leverage profitably. For example, he breaks down how and why they're developing an agent advisory board internally in great detail. He also shares the development of their ace team or agent concierge experience to provide even more leverage for agents. Chris explains their shift from a CAT model to a no cap model, retaining top agents in the process. He shares how they allow the most productive agents to claw back some of the split. He also breaks down some of their favorite lead sources. That and so much more as we go inside Whissel Realty here in episode two with COO Chris Vanderbach on real estate team os.

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.

Chris, I'm so excited for this conversation. I appreciate you so much. You unwittingly triggered the foundational ideas that achieve.

And if you try to get everything achieved, you're gonna exhaust people or spin them too many different directions. You'll lose people, which I always knew, so I kept it a private little issues list. We have a public one that we all agree on. But I had Chris's private world. And so over the last, I'd say year and a half, I've learned to get rid of that and start to. Okay, well, what department should this flow to they can't be protected from this. And if they don't think it's a priority, I need to listen. And we got a dialogue. And either I haven't influenced them enough to see what I'm seeing, or I'm not seeing what they're seeing. And so I think it's been a triculation of that development of owning everything. But before that, when I first took the role, ultimately, you know, I came in with Zillow offers for a role acquisitions manager. And it wasn't a CEO role. I got to that. We became one of the best acquisitions percentage teams for Zillow offers at the time. That didn't end so well overall as a relationship, but we had really good success there. So when we got, you know, the call that Zillow and us were not working together on Zillow offers anymore, I think we had 15, 16, 17 employees. I'm like, I don't remember what it was anymore. And everybody, we just kind of. Kyle came in, you know, tough day for him. You know, you got to tell the whole room of people, hey, this is over. And you know, I don't think in real estate that's ever something anyone expects to do of a team like you. You don't have that much lack of control that you just have to fail swoop dismiss that many people. So I went to Kyle the next day. I was like, so I kind of been secretly building a department inside the company throughout. I've convinced three other people that they have like this third tier of money that we can earn in traditional ISA department, which is where I came from originally in real estate. I was like, I think I can come back tomorrow and make money with these three people. So let me show up tomorrow and I will get a couple of us to show up and the rest will sort itself out. And that's kind of what happened. And he's like, he's gamer, man. He was like, yeah, okay, cool. See you tomorrow. And so we did. We showed up back tomorrow and we're on Boomtown at the time. And we started being traditional ISAs for the company, cleaning up. That led to this. What are we doing here? This is a mess. So that Fast forward into yo. This CRM is not going to work for us. We got to go to something more dynamic. I knew about follow up us shameless plug for that. That was our pivot into that quickly turned around database management for us. And overall lead flow management took it away from agents had a back end kind of control. And I guess it got To a point where it was like, okay, there's other departments besides inside sales that need to be adjusted for inside sales to work maximally, like to from operations to outside sales. We got to have some control shifts and I don't have the decision making power. So I ultimately presented them at a letter of resignation and, and then at the top I was like, mostly kidding, but I do want a formal ask for this position. I want the authority to do what I need to do. So we went out for drinks and dinner and talked about it and what did I want? What does he want? And fast forward. We ended up signing up for eos, which was probably one of the best decisions Kyle made. Cause for me coming into my role, I've never been a coo. I had good insight, good instincts, some good experience. Not a lot being a young guy. So EOS allowed me to basically take Sean McVeigh as an offensive coordinator. And this is the playbook. I don't have to create it. You know, Sean is a good coach. Can we just plug this program in and you'll follow me through it? And that's ultimately what my team did with me. And I didn't have to be the one that set the meeting cadence, the, you know, the accountability structure for projects and a lot of that. It was all kind of packaged in a box and so allowed me to focus on my strengths of leading people versus systematizing all these different nuances of being a great executive. And so it started there and now has ended up at me really, I think being a lot more hands off.

That's good. I, first of all, I love the way that this started, which is I know how we can make some more money tomorrow. Like I have an ear for that. Yeah, I'm willing to have that conversation. Talk about EOs, is that. When did you like formally commit to it? How long was that kind of in the background? What was the motivation? Did you self implement or did you hire a facilitator? Just break that down a little bit for folks who aren't as familiar or maybe dabbled but never committed, which is obviously not going to be successful with a system.

Yeah, yeah. I wish I could recall exactly. It was Kyle's idea ultimately, I'm guessing from his EO forum. I think he's in a kind of entrepreneur forum. I think he heard about it and knew about it and it was, you know, Kyle's really good at aggregate and a lot of ideas. He's got a lot of fingers out there in the different communities. And, and so I Think ultimately he brought the idea up. I looked at a little bit and it was just, it made sense, you know, it made sense. Like I just thought it was like, oh, it's the pressure. I can't even describe the pressure. Relief of like, I know I'll be successful at this. Like I just have a lot of conviction in myself. But to know there's something already proven. So Kyle had heard from other people not self implementing is the way to go. He interviewed three or four different people. He ultimately selected our implementer. We had our first session and Kyle and I had privately at the time discussed me being in the role. But we really didn't tell anybody. And I don't know, I don't think that was super intentional. It just some things just kind of work out. I think we were just both, let's feel this EOS thing out. So our day one we met with the integrator or the implementer and so we had to do the A chart. That was one of the first exercises to get obviously get your masterclass overview. What's traction? What does this look like? What are all the systems? We're gonna go through day one, but it was a full two day breakout of like let's get soft launch of what EOS is. And one of the first exercises in the HR is deciding key roles of the hr, like your head of operations, your head of sales, you have an integrator, a visionary. And then. And so we had to name people. And so it was a democratic process for the integrator, which ultimately was named by I think everyone in the group except maybe one person at the table, like 12 of us at the time. Very wide leadership for the size of the company we had early on is basically Kyle and then a lot of people reporting to Kyle, but everyone named me, which was a really humbling, cool experience. And it aligned with what Kyle and I had talked about privately. And from there it was on. We had an implementer from EOS doing, I would say our first three, two and a half, three years. Don't quote me exactly, but somewhere in there, just in the last year and a half, it came to be okay. I saw some fundamental flaws of project scoping and ultimately we were at a point where we had enough traction without it, but we were, we were moving too quickly through discussing key big problems. And so ultimately, you know, where the implementer was really strong is in the early days keeping us on track to accomplish a lot as we got traction together. It was very, I was of, okay, we need to like go A little bit deeper to solve real problems. And maybe this person is pushing us along too fast. And we all kind of had that sense. We made mentions of it. And so eventually I said kyle. And he agreed, like, let's, let's have you run this. I'm going to run it. And so I ran a little bit differently. And what we saw from that is, yeah, we went deeper on a lot of conversations. We didn't go as wide. And that was scary at first because you've been going deep, deep, or you've been going wide, wide, wide. And going on one or two subjects the whole time was like, are we getting anything done? And then fast forward to where we're at today. You know, we just shipped like our agent advisory board from concept badge design for socials and everything external to infrastructure. How we run it, how do we promote it, how do we incentivize other people to want this? We did all that in like three and a half weeks, which for us, that stuff like that took us three months because the rocks were three months. So I'd say that's the evolvement for us. But we could not have got to this point without an implementer, I'd say, at least with me as the initial integrator. Yeah, really good.

I hear that a lot too, is some people can. Some people take off and fly on their own. Other people just have someone come in for that quarterly meeting and other people keep, you know, close advisement at the top.

I was like, mostly kidding. But I do want a formal ask for this position. I want the authority to do what I need to do. So we went out for drinks and dinner and talked about it and what did I want? What does he want? And fast forward. We ended up signing up for eos and which was probably one of the best decisions Kyle made, because for me, coming into my role, I've never been a CEO. I had good insight, good instincts, some good experience, not a lot being a young guy. So EOS allowed me to basically take Sean McVeigh as an offensive coordinator. And this is the playbook. I don't have to create it. You know, Sean is a good coach. Can we just plug this program in and you'll follow me through it? And that's ultimately what my team did with me. And I didn't have to be the one that set the meeting cadence, the, you know, the accountability structure for projects. And a lot of that, it was all kind of packaged in a box and so allowed me to focus on my strengths of leading people versus systematizing. All these different nuances of being a great executive. And so it started there and now has ended up at me really, I think being a lot more hands off.

Yeah, it's good. I, first of all, I love the way that this started, which is I know how we can make some more money tomorrow. Like I have an ear for that. Yeah, I'm willing to have that conversation. Talk about EOs. Is that when did you like formally commit to it? How long was that kind of in the background? What was the motivation? Did you self implement or did you hire a facilitator? Just break that down a little bit for folks who aren't as familiar or maybe dabbled but never committed, which is obviously not going to be successful with a system.

Yeah, I wish I could recall exactly it was Kyle's idea ultimately, I'm guessing from his EO forum. I think he's in a kind of entrepreneurial forum. I think he heard about it and knew about it and it was, you know, Kyle's really good at aggregating a lot of ideas. He's got a lot of fingers out there into different communities and, and so I think ultimately he brought the idea up. I looked at it a little bit and it was just, it made sense, you know, it made sense. Like I just thought it was like, oh, it's the pressure. I can't even describe the pressure relief of like, I know I'll be successful at this. Like I just have a lot of conviction in myself. But to know there's something already proven. So Kyle had heard from other people not self implementing is the way to go. He interviewed three or four different people. He ultimately selected our implementer. We had our first session and Kyle and I had privately at the time discussed me being in the role. But we really didn't tell anybody and I don't think that was super intentional. It just some things just kind of work out. I think we were just both, let's feel this EOS thing out. So our day one we met with the integrator or the implementer and so we had to do the A chart. That was one of the first exercises to get obviously get your masterclass overview. What's traction? What does this look like? What are all the systems? We're going to go through day one, but it was a full two day breakout of like let's get soft launch of what EOS is. And one of the first exercises in the A chart is deciding key roles of the A chart. Like your head of operations, your head of sales, you have an Integrator, a visionary. And so we had to name people. And so it was a democratic process for the integrator, which ultimately was named by, I think everyone in the group, except maybe one person at the table, like 12 of us at the time, very wide leadership for the size of the company we had. Early on it was basically Kyle, and then a lot of people reporting to Kyle, but everyone named me, which was a really humbling, cool experience. And it aligned with what Kyle and I had talked about privately. And from there it was on. We had, we had an implementer from EOS doing, I would say, our first three, two and a half, three years. Don't quote me exactly, but somewhere in there, just in the last year and a half, it came to be okay. I saw some fundamental flaws of project scoping. And ultimately we were at a point where we had enough traction without it, but we were, we were moving too quickly through discussing key big problems. And so ultimately, you know, where the implementer was really strong is in the early days, keeping us on track to accomplish a lot. As we got traction together. It was very obvious of, okay, we need to like, go a little bit deeper to solve real problems and maybe this person is pushing us along too fast. And we all kind of had that sense. We'd made mentions of it. And so eventually I said Kyle. And he agreed, like, let's, let's have you run this. I'm gonna run it. And so I ran a little bit differently. And what we saw from that is, yeah, we went deeper on a lot of conversations. We didn't go as wide. And that was scary at first because you've been going deep, deep, or you've been going wide, wide, wide, and going on one or two subjects the whole time was like, are we getting anything done? And then fast forward to where we're at today. You know, we just shipped like our agent advisory board from concept badge design for socials and everything external to infrastructure. How we run it, how do we promote it, how do we incentivize other people to want this? We did all that in like three and a half weeks, which for us, that stuff like that took us three months because rocks were three months. So I'd say that's the involvement for us. But we could not have got to this point without an implementer. I'd say, at least with me as the initial integrator.

Yeah, really good. I hear that a lot too, is some people can some people take off and fly on their own, uh, other people just have someone come in for that Quarterly meeting. Uh, and other people keep, you know, close advisement and structure all along. Um, there's a lot in there. I really appreciate that. Talk a little bit about that agent advisory board. Like, what was the spark for the idea? What were you trying to get done with it? Um, what do you. Because it sounds like it's something that's dawning at the moment.

It is. It's very new. We interviewed, you know, I want to say, 14 different agents out of our. I think we're at 115 right now. Don't quote me. We have about a 35% churn any given time. Like, we very standardized. We try to keep people coming in and keep them coming out. And so interviewing those people, it was really eye opening for us. But why did we do it? Ultimately, Kyle's not in production, hasn't been. He'll do a deal here and there, but he's a wealth of knowledge. You know, I sat down with Kyle, you know, end of last year, and kind of talking about the direction of where I'm going here and where the company's going. And just, you know, one thing I take for granted probably, is Kyle and I run very autonomously. We don't meet a ton. We're very in sync. One of our first things we did with our implementer was this alignment test. And it's blind. You both kind of fill it out and he's moderating it. And I think we scored like 9.7 out of 10 on alignment on every single thing. So it was like. It is like, what keeps you up at night? Like, what's. What worries you? And it's like, I think gave him a piece that, oh, Chris gets me as a fiduciary. Like, he knows what I need. Now it's my decision to execute against that, and I do. But I think that gives him a lot of peace. So when we talk about his other aspirations and expanding our overall, our network of what we're trying to do, how do we free up Kyle's time? And right now, Kyle's our strongest deal. Dr. Our director of sales, Rachel, is brilliant.