Ryan Rodenbeck and John McCarthy on Leadership Structure | Ep. 010

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.

For insights into starting, growing and optimizing your real estate team, we're talking with Ryan Rodenbeck and John McCarthy. A little background and a fun fact before we get started. Ryan's the broker, owner and CEO of Spyglass Realty, which he started in 2008 as a solo agent. Johnny joined as a realtor in 2015 and a few years ago became sales manager. And one of these two guys was on a house flipping show called property ladder about 15 years ago. Ryan and John, thank you both for talking Team OS today.

Yeah, glad to be here.

Yeah, thanks, Ethan.

Yeah, appreciate you guys. And Ryan, that wasn't you when you first saw that Property Ladder episode. What do you think?

You know, Johnny, Johnny looks young now and he looks like, I think he was like 12 years old when he was in that age. But it was very interesting. We watched it several times as a group and it's all. It's a fun show.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Jadi, how'd that come together for you and where were you in your real estate career at that point?

Gosh. So in my real estate career at that point. That was right after my first year in real estate, after I was a rookie in California. And that came together because I was asked to help out and list the property for another agent from another city and turned up that it was a perfect house to fix and flip for a TV show and came together with a lot of hard work and commitment.

Cool. Well, I'll link that up in the notes so people can follow the drama of a bathroom, I think falling off the side of the house at one point. But let's get in where we always start on this show. And I'll start with you, Ryan, on this. In your experience, what is a must have characteristic of a high performing team?

Yeah, I think is a leadership structure. And you know, Johnny and I covered this at febcon where we're using eos. I've got, I think when you grow to a certain point, you know, your figurehead cannot do everything and you need to have very strong leadership as. As evidenced by John McCarthy and Sonny Tracy and Caleb Nelson. You know, you need to have an organizational chart, needs to know who does what, and you need to have systems and processes in place so that, you know, so that you and your entire Organization knows what happens in any particular situation.

Awesome. We're going to get into some of those details there, including when this occurred to you, when you decided to implement eos. But before we get into some of those details, Johnny, what is a must have characteristic of high performing team in your experience?

You know, I was thinking about that and there's a lot of things that teams need, like Ryan mentioned. And for me, what I came to realize that's helped me grow personally and run a team personally and now as a team with the leadership is leverage and learning where those leverage points are. For example, Ryan learned a leverage point in me where he could take me out of production and bring me on full time. And I learned a leverage point for me coming out of production. I can run the company. So. And even in my personal business, just people and processes and systems. So I leveraged Ryan in Spyglass with all the tech and all the money he spent on building the company so that I could be successful without having any overhead. So I think leverage and identifying where those leverage points are and how to, how to utilize those, that's great.

We are definitely going to get into the point at which a sales manager made sense for the team. But Ryan, I'd love for you to kind of walk up to 2008, the start of Spyglass. What was going on for you in your career at that point? It's from my, from what I've read, it doesn't sound like you intended to build a massive team necessarily. So just kind of walk us through that journey a little bit.

Yeah. So before I started Spyglass Realty, for some point, I had a brokerage of my own where I had a partner in California and a property management company. And that was a whole nother episode. We could go into that, but it ended up in a complete disaster. And then, so for about a year, I started with another broker. And this was right when the market crashed in 2007 and deals started getting, you know, very dwindling. And at the time I wanted to be the master of my own domain. I didn't want to be dependent on anyone else. And so the thought was I was going to start Spyglass Realty as a solo agent that. That is also a broker. And it morphed into I had a few agents with me for reasons that I do not know, because we did not provide anything. And then in 2015, we had a group of probably, I think we had only seven agents at the time. And I was bringing in leads at a very high level. I was using Tiger leads. And I wanted to take what I had learned to become a top producing agent. And I wanted to take what I had learned and try to filter that down to other agents that work for me really good.

Johnny, you joined around that time. What was going on in the company from your expect from your perspective and what made Spyglass the right choice for you at that time?

Yeah, so at that time. By time I moved here. I have several years experience in real estate in California and construction sales. So when I was moving to Texas with my wife and daughter who was four months old, I knew that I had to quickly build a real estate business and I was prepared to create it myself. I even went to Ryan and showed him everything that I had in place. The technology, the every. All the processes, everything. I need a CRM and Ryan. So I was referred to Ryan from a friend of mine. And when I was interviewing around town, it was either going to a brokerage where I was going to be an independent agent. I had to just do it all myself anyway or find a team who was going to bring me on and, you know, I have to prove my worth to them, or Ryan just basically said, if you have what it takes, I've invested in my company with all this technology and leads and here it is. And he showed me his computer and everything he had set up. And at that point it was like an aha moment. I said, wow, this is exactly what I need because I can just plug right into everything that he's already invested in. The infrastructure is there and I just need. I just had to sit down and get to work with everything that he provided at that time and build from there. So when I joined, I met everybody in the company and there was a bunch of independent agents, people kind of doing their own thing. And I was able to really kind of harness. I was one of the only ones really working within the brokerage resources successfully at that time. Quickly, everybody else was kind of doing their own thing as well. Ryan was going to do it himself. He was like a. The platinum top 50 himself, you know, as he's growing this. This small brokerage at that time.

Yeah.

Cool. Quick question for you, Ryan, before I have you characterize your team however you prefer. I'd love to know about the name Spyglass. It's such a cool name. And very obviously the consonants of Ryan Rodenbeck Realty or something works like, where did the name come from for you? Does it mean anything in particular to you?

Yeah, sort of. So I never want. I've never been a big Fan of, you know, just like love my last name. So Rodenbeck Realty was never going to happen. And then I'm also not a big fan of naming your company after yourself. I think that's more of an ego play. And I wanted something that was just, that would eventually be more than the Ryan Rudenbeck show. And so, you know, at the time we were going to focus on investment property and we looked up everything from, you know, invest, tax, you know, to any kind of type of thing. And then we would check the secretary of state's websites and then GoDaddy. Okay. And then we kept going through all kinds of stuff and we're watching a movie and then Spyglass Entertainment came up also there's a very popular road that almost everyone in town knows called Spyglass Drive. So we checked secretary's website, we checked GoDaddy. It was good. And we started giving out. I remember tell the story all the time. The first week I started giving out my card, someone says, oh, I've heard of you guys. Which was literally impossible. But that's how I think. That's the power of name recognition. So if you're starting a brokerage anywhere, like maybe check some popular streets.

I love it. And that cross reference between what's legally available in real life and what's legally available digitally, really good. I'm glad I asked quickly. Just characterize your team here toward the conclusion of 2023. You know, size, market, culture, however you prefer. Just kind of characterize your team for folks who aren't familiar.

Yeah. So right now we have about 130 agents. We have about 60 of these agents that we call indie, independent. And all that means for us is that they're at this current time not taking leads. And then we have about 70 agents that are taking leads. Our main focus is to try to get agents to be self sufficient. So of those 70 agents, we'll have 20 at any given time that are phasing into not taking leads. And then sometimes we'll have of the 60 agents, we'll have 10 that say, you know what, I need to fill up my pipeline. And then so we have our leadership. Johnny's in charge of sales director. Sales. We've got a marketing director, we have Sunny Tracy who is operations. And we, our company culture is very robust. Just last Wednesday we went to the Austin American Statesman, the local newspaper had the top workplaces and we won the number one spot there. So obviously what we're doing is working in terms of a cultural basis.

Awesome.

Congratulations. I want to transition into this director of sales situation. And I'll stay with you on this. Ryan. What was going. Like, at what point in the business, like, what was going on for you and where the way I really would like you to kind of offer this is of course, true to your own experience, but then also for that person who's leading a small team, they're a little bit overburdened. Whether or not they've left sales production, they're feeling overburdened, and they're thinking about implementing some of these roles. How were you thinking about the sales manager or director of sales role and what was going on in the business at that time?

Yeah, so sunny has been with me for 12 years coming up, and it's been. Sunny and I have been probably the heartbeat of the company for that entire time. Johnny was working as a, you know, kind of a team lead, the highest converter of leads in our company. And he had a quasi role as a sales manager, but not nearly full time. So it got to be. So I think we had about 60, 70 agents. We were bringing in a massive amount of leads, and it was a lot to take on. So I knew that we needed a sales director, you know, through the coaching programs I wanted, like, when you get to that. Or the coaching programs I'm in, when you get to that level, you need someone that's going to own that space. And, you know, since Johnny has already kind of been working on it, I went to him. And I got to tell you, it was a big. It was. It was. It was a risk in a lot of ways. Not hiring the sales director, but hiring Johnny specifically as a sales director, because here's why. He was the highest converter of leads. Okay. Like, you're going to take him out of that role. And we knew through coaching you needed someone dedicated that is not going to be doing sales. The other role that the thing that was a fear, not much of a fear, but it was somewhat of a fear. Is like, is he going to be able to do this at the level that we need him to? Okay. I can tell you without one doubt, like, I mean, I would never expect the level of satisfaction that. That we have gotten from him. Not only. It's not like one of these things like, here, like, I think what is one of these things? Here's what I need you to do. Right. But then he went from there to, like, there, you know, owning that role, implementing processes that just, you know, not never even thought of before. So it's like you give your task list, and he's like, scratch that, I got that. That's the easy set. Here's what I'm really going to do now. That didn't happen overnight, but it's just like. It was such a filling progression.

Yeah, that's fantastic. Johnny, I love this story from your perspective. I'm sure that you saw some threats of your own. The one that comes to mind immediately. And I've heard this in a number of sales dynamics like that. The top producing salesperson. I'm not even talking real estate here, specifically, the top producing salesperson becomes a sales manager. There are compensation challenges. The role is completely different. It sounds like you made that transition really well. But I'd love to hear when this idea was introduced to you and you already. It sounds like quasi doing it.

What.

What excited you about it, what concerned you about it, and what were some of the boxes you need to. You needed to check for yourself personally to say, check, check, check. All right, let's do this.

Yeah. Yeah. That was. That was definitely a pivotal moment. I know because I. I was just coming off of a year and a half of extraordinary sales for me. So, like, income, like we were set. They're like, this is great. So now. And this is where leverage comes in too. Because I now knew, and this is what I was working so hard within the company as a realtor, was to learn all the systems and processes that Ryan had in place that work and basically just copy everything that he's been doing. And that's what I. That was my quasi sales manager role was now that I've learned it, it works now. Teach it and train it to the other agents to however capacity they can, you know, take it and run with it and execute it as well. So I was looking at, wow, I had a lot of money coming in. This was great. I'm about to do zero sales. I think we had like maybe 40 something agents at the time, 45 agents or so. And here's the thing. So Ryan's always invested in me to have coaching and consulting individually. So when this came up, I had. I had a professional consultant to talk to as well, to help me talk through some of my concerns and issues and growth. Because, like, if I'm either going to run my own real estate team and. And Ryan was. Was great about it. He said, look, whatever you want to.