Recruiting As Your Solution with Suneet Agarwal | Ep 015

Oh man, that's a good question. Ethan. You're going to start with the hard ones, huh?

Good.

Yes.

He's the CEO and owner of Big Block Realty north and of Best SAC home group. The number one team in Sacramento and a top team in California.

Like you can't get to become a great leader and until you've been a shitty leader.

A co founder of the reside platform Sunit actively coaches top teams and brokerages to profitable growth. He loves playing guitar, but he's restricted himself to playing on weekends only and among many other businesses, businesses he was involved in before. Real estate is breeding American bulldogs. Sunit, thank you so much for talking team Os today.

Hey, nice to see you Ethan.

Anything in there inaccurate in any way?

You know what's sexier? Because this is follow up boss. Like you know I used to run like weed clubs, right?

Yeah, totally. Mortgage business. Like you've got all kinds of.

So do we say weed clubs instead of American Bulldogs are like. I always think about the approach, but yeah, sounds good.

We have one standard opener on this show and it is what is a must have characteristic of a high performing.

Team of a team.

Yeah, team or team leader.

I mean a team leader has to have hustle. A team needs to have accountability, I think. Cool.

Is there any difference in your experience between a good team like oh yeah man, they're good, it's rocking and they got it going on versus a great team.

So I think about this a lot because I'm so fortunate that I hang out with so many awesome team leaders. Very successful rags to riches stories. So I always, I guess I'm fortunate. I hang out with lots of great teams and I think the thing that makes the difference. Oh man, that's a good question. Ethan, you're gonna start with the hard ones. Good. Yes. What makes a great team? I mean leadership is important and I think we're in my. And I've been, this has been my thought before I even had a team is I would think to myself right around the same time that we started, I was all just because like this so and so agent in this office is trying to start a team. They're a semi successful agent in our market but they have no leadership skills because all they've, I mean sure they've led themselves, they led their clients, but that's different. It's part of it, but it's different. And I was like, you know, I've owned businesses like I could do this. So leadership, that's, that's, that's the difference. But but it's also hard, right? Like you can't get to become a great leader until you've been a good. Until you've been a come. Until you've been a good realtor. Excuse me, A good leader. And until you've been a shitty leader.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean we all learn through experience. You can only read a book and get so far off that like knowledge. It's the actual experience in the seat. But I think you call out a really important point that comes up a lot on the show actually usually comes up in the context of the shift from high producing agent to being a team leader. And they're completely different jobs. Especially if you, when you shift out of production or if someone chooses to shift out of production and go into leadership full time if it is not the same job at all. I think there's also an illusion that like, because I'm a kick ass realtor, I can just hire new realtors and teach them exactly what I did. And there is a truth in that. But it's never as clean as people want. And that comes down to kind of like leadership coaching and guidance.

Yeah, I mean that's the thing for me. Like I look back often, right? You think back often and like I was never some great realtor in Sacramento. My team started two and a half years after getting licensed. Right. But I think what helped me in the beginning was I had lots of leadership experience and business experience, you know, and marketing.

So yeah, tell us that story a little bit. I mean you don't have to go into all the details but like give us the high points on like what got you turned onto real estate. What was that first two and a half years like and what motivated starting a team?

Sure. So went to college, was doing door to door sales. Not when I went to school. Far Chico Stay go Wildcats. Talked to some guys that I knew got into got into mortgage during subprime 2002. And I'm gonna make this super quick either and then, and then in two then, you know, went on become very successful in my first leadership role as a branch manager for my buddy's company. Great experience, great perspective. They lost my ass, literally everything and got out of that, got out of a mortgage, got into cannabis. Right. Like we were one of the first legal dispensaries in California because I paid lobbyists to lobby the city of Sacramento. Right. Like that's what we did. We lobbied cities and we would get a permit process done and then we would apply for the permit. Now that went in a whole different Way a couple years in 2013, 2012. So I was sitting on my couch, and once again, this dispensary experience was incredible leadership and incredible on the job training. It was a very. Like, I had 40 people that worked there, right? It was very unique. It was very unique. Like, you know, it was very unique. That went away, you know, and then we talked about, you know, I wanted to be a dog beater. I'm just going to take it easy. I don't need money, man. Like, I'm good. Not that I was super rich. I just became super simple, right? My. My hippiness really came out back then. I was, I'm just gonna be chill. And then, you know, my mom wasn't really happy with that. She's a really high achiever. All my successful friends are all, dude, it's been a couple years. I'll be chilling, like, go get your real estate license. I said, fine. So. So I did. I just want. I don't need the fancy car. I just want a Honda. I had my dogs. I had chickens and goats. Like, go to my old Facebook post, like, you'll laugh your ass off, right? Had my head, had my animals. But my first year as an agent, I was the rookie of the year for this region for Coldwell Banker. I was like, well, that was cool. And I was learning about leads and learning about sales, learning about marketing, and learning about showing up right then. Then the very next year, I said, well, you know, this is cool. And I'm making good money. I made like 80, 90 grand my first year, which was a great win, right? Like, that's huge. 2014. And also, you know, I really like owning a business more. My girlfriend at the time, who I met because I was a cool realtor now, and my girlfriend at the time, who is now my wife, she was pregnant with our eldest kid. So, you know, I kind of want to be home more like this. Showing houses is hard, you know, maybe I'll go back and open the dispensary. So it was either do that or do this. And the way that it shook out is I wasn't able to do the dispensary or the story would have been very different. I said, well, I'm going to go all fucking in. So I went to Keller. I moved to Keller, and I got exposed to follow boss, right? I got exposed to laugh code agents. I got exposed to the idea of coaching, the idea of personal development. And I'm so grateful for Keller Williams for that. Like, that was. Thank you, thank you, thank you for anyone who had any impact there? Tristan Ahumada was somebody who I immediately started DMing. I was the dorky guy in SAG DMing. Tristan. Right. And he, but he was really helpful to me. Hooked me up with coaches, with technology. Definitely one of my first mentors in real estate. And he knows that I. And I say it every time I see him and every time a name comes up. So super grateful to lab coat agents and then kept on growing. You know, I said I'm going to have to hire some agents. And I put the word out there and I had like seven agents like that. I've only been a realtor now for maybe three years and I better figure this out. Right.

What was your value prop? Like, how did you land?

I got, I got leads. Okay. Right. That's all is I went and bought all on one platform that wasn't follow boss. I went and got it all in one website. Ppc. Leads. Oh, I got leads. I had little Zillow spend and then we started to convert some and then I don't know, like maybe through lab coats I started getting notoriety on a national scene. Right. Which kind of whatever this coaching or any of this is be even being a guest on here. Right. And then I was, okay, well how can I do more? So maybe I should just like go to 100% brokerage so I can control more of my team. Well, now that I'm recruiting to the brokerage, I want those agents too. So I'll just open everything. So then we opened and things started to go really, really well because we had the 100% model through big block and the great team model through the best Stockholms group. Not that there's a big difference. And I doubt like my wife knows the name of the team. It's all Big block. Right. But at least I know the difference, damn it. But it just started growing and growing and then, you know, thanks to great partnerships, you know, linked up with John Sheplak, you know, totally changed my life. Like health, family, all that stuff. Business definitely helped that leadership and it just kind of took off.

Yeah. So what do you think that was? I mean, to be number one in the market. And I, to my understanding, you have been for years. Like what were you doing differently or better or cleanly? Like, what do you think? You know, because to be number one in the market, even if you have someone right on your heels, I don't know if that's the case or not. It doesn't matter. But what were you doing differently or better than the other groups in Your market.

I remember talking to John in my. It was my office at the time. It was during COVID but it was my younger daughter's nursery, so it was pink and there's like a balloons and a crib and like a chair to read. And she was, she was what year? She was a year old. And I'm a dude. I would just like to be number one in Sacramento. I said, but by the way I'm looking at it, I think we could be number one in the state, bro. He's what I was like, yeah, let's. Let's see. And we. Then we were number one in the state. I was a holy. And what did we do is we were getting the most opportunities. We had a ton of agents, and the market was really, really good. The market was really, really good. Absolutely. Then the next year, same kind of thing happened. I was all, dude, this is kind of crazy. And now it's just like osmosis. I didn't, like, I didn't think I would still be number one in Sacramento. I was recruiting last week, so I pulled the agent list of every agent of Sacramento and I looked at the end, and it's my name still. I was. I'm still number one. Yeah.

That's crazy. So. So it's. It's leads. Talk about a little bit about, like the early formation. So you have a bunch of leads, but that doesn't. I mean, that doesn't lead to success or to be number one. Right? Like, what was the. I mean, what did you bring maybe from your past experience or what was some. Some hard learning early on to figure out? Like, as you get this volume of leads you mentioned, the market is good. Of course the market's good for everybody. But in general, when the market's good, lead flow is more favorable. You know, as that starts ramping up a little bit. I mean, what were some of the pieces that you put into place early on or some practices that you put into place or people you put into place to, like, to complement your weaknesses or whatever the case may be? Like, as things started ramping up and you. And you had this vision of, I think we can be number one in the state. As you're putting that together, what were some of the key pieces that you either already had in place or knew that you need to implement to get there?

Yeah, well, I learned from modeling others for sure. But, you know, we got channel partners like Zillow, and now I need a ton of managers because they have. Because it was a big workload for that. It was the Zillow offer stuff. Right. So which resulted in most of the top teams last, last few years here according to real trends. And it's accurate. Right. So we had to hire a bunch of people, we had to bring a bunch of agents. So I've been yelling that recruiting is important since I first opened any kind of organization. Most people do. But somebody dedicated to that, right? Somebody dedicated to agent training. And I know that that's easier said than done now because, you know, many teams have, have cut back on staff. Right. And increased the CEOs workload been due to, you know, a 20% national dip in the home sales. It's real. If you sold less last year. I did. It's because that's the way that the math worked out. You got the same market share, but it's about having those people in for me, leveraging yourself, finding your weaknesses. Like, you know, I remember we did a big partnership in the dispensary back in the day with one of the first people from Oakland, one of the big, big, big players. They came in and I did a consulting agreement with them. And I've never told this story, but they had me compartmentalize the whole business. So we had a manual for every department. How many dispensers you think had that? Ethan? Right.

Like back then, like 2008, I mean, you could substitute the word dispensaries with, you know, real estate.

Yeah, yeah. So then we compartmentalized a lot of that stuff and you know, we, we still have. Are we the fancy at us? No, but I mean, I've seen what works. I also like something that I did really early was just a lot of organic marketing. Not that I was good, but like my first week as an agent, it was 2014, like we would go on home tours with the brokerage of the new listings. I would take a little 15 second Instagram video because that's all that you could post back then in front of all the houses. Two weeks later, after doing that for two weeks, two weeks later, some of the agents from my very same office said, hey, you have a lot of listings. So I just realized I was, oh, hey, you know, that works. So those things that like that. And I still, I mean, I still post on Facebook 100 times a day.

And so this is probably part of the osmosis that you referred to earlier. It's the, it's, it's the presence, it's the availability, it's the awareness. And so when I'm in doubt or when I'm in question or when there's an opportunity, you go to the, you go to the people who are top of mind.

Yeah.

And that's true of consumers and of agents. Any positions that you added, like when you mentioned, like, you know, surrounding yourself with managers to kind of get the whole thing on track and probably to, you know, fill out the type of playbook that you had at the dispensary in terms of having operations really dialed in and documented. Any positions that you maybe added later on that you maybe wish you added sooner. I'm just thinking on behalf of like someone who's got a little bit of what you had in those early days and aren't quite sure, like if I'm gonna be adding fixed costs in a market like this, I'm not sure which ones they should be like. And you can also go to your own coaching on this too, like whether it's your own experience or whether it's other folks that you've had the opportunity to kind of get into their business with them. You know, what are some of the early positions when you want to start adding this proper leadership layer or management layer inside the organization? What are, what are a few key functions or roles or tit, whatever that come to mind?

Everybody should have an admin. And that's not management, but everyone should have admin. Maybe they're virtual. I still have like 20 some odd VAs man and the guy who does everything for me, Joe Bonquin, is like a legend, right? Most dependable, hard working, loyal person out there. So your admin should be covered. And for me, the first like in Sacramento person was someone to answer all the agent questions and help the agents and help with training. Right. And that person could also do a bulk of.