Setting Up Your Team for Scale with Jeff Brown | Ep 024

For insights into optimizing your real estate team, we're talking with Jeff Brown.

I think first and foremost, as an HR professional, my biggest ally and most.

Important ally is leading transformational real estate projects in banking led him to join the Heaps Estrin team, the number one team in Canada under Royal LePage as director of People and Operations. He's building on his years of experience in human resources and workplace transformation. And he's certified in change management by ProSci and is a certified executive coach with the International Coaching Federation. Thanks so much for talking team OS today, Jeff.

Oh, thanks for having me, Ethan. I've been looking forward to it.

Yeah, me too. Of course, the OS is operating system. We're going to be talking operations. I love the background that you bring to the industry in general and now to this conversation with and for all of us. But we're going to start, Jeff, where we always do, which is a must have characteristic of a high performing team. What comes to mind for that?

Yeah, I thought about this for a while because I'm really passionate about the subject matter. What I landed on was a bit of a hybrid, so I hope, I think I'm going to be cheating a bit. But emotional, intelligent leadership is where I felt break those.

I mean, I hear two things, they're blended together. We have emotional intelligence and we have leadership. Speak to emotional intelligence a little bit.

Yeah, for sure. In my line of work, again, HR is my background. The one of the major leadership skills that we really honed within BMO Financial Group, where I had most of my career prior to real estate, was this idea of leaders really being able to tune into the unique needs of their team members, understanding how they need to communicate in order to get the most out of their team members and also how to think about the whole person.

When coaching them in general. Why do we need to be consciously aware of this?

It actually starts with yourself. So if you know the way that you respond to inner and outer expectations and understand that the people that you work with might not share the exact same lens on the world, you can save yourself so much frustration and so much headache and heartache around hiring the wrong people or coaching people in a way that doesn't resonate with them so that you're, you know, you're at risk of wasting your time and theirs. The flip side is if you really get through, really interested and are fascinated by people and let that curiosity take over, you can invest a little bit of time up front, but then run and, and be able to get more out of Your team and at such a faster pace.

Love it. So I'm hearing like adaptability to the moment and the situation as well as to the individual. And some of the adaptability to an individual stays because that person is approximately, I mean, they grow and evolve, but you know, you know, day to day, week to week, they're approximately the same person. You know what their strengths, interests, weaknesses, passions, hot buttons are. So, so that stuff sticks a little bit. And then this, the idea of curiosity, I think is really strong. And I feel like one of the things not to hit too many buzzwords around emotional intelligence and all this is being present. I feel like the curiosity, it requires presence and attunement to the moment, attunement to the person, and attunement to that person in that moment. Because we all go through kind of, you know, highs and lows throughout a day or multiple experiences. Anything I offer there trigger anything for you?

Yeah, it did. So, you know, for me, I had a quick stint in hospitality and live events between banking and real estate and I picked a really good time because I started 90 days before the pandemic hit. And here in Toronto, the response in Toronto and Ontario in particular was, was quite, quite dramatic. So restaurants and bars and concerts didn't happen, didn't really happen at full capacity for, for almost two years. So in my role, I was in constant crisis management. And the company, I'm happy to say is, is now, is now thriving again, which is great. But in that, in that sort of crisis, crazy time, what I saw was people not being present to your point, Ethan, and we would have leaders and managers go complete command and control like, Ethan, just tell me what you want me to do. And them not thinking for themselves. Well then what's the point of even having a team? And you know, you feel for them because it's a scary time. People's jobs are on the line. We weren't even allowed to make revenue in some cases. So, you know, high stress, stress, pressure cooker environment, but taking that, that leadership lens, that communication lens, to take a little bit of time to not just give away answers or just to solve problems for people by bringing that practice in, it's a bit counterintuitive, but by being more present, you get your team back and you get the best out of your team and then get to go faster, further together.

I love it. One of the. This reminds me of a couple things we've talked about at different spots over the multiple episodes on the show. One of them is just, hey, why don't we trust the people to do the jobs that we hired them and that we're paying them to do. That's one. And then the other one is like, especially in a young team where like, the team leader is trying to figure out which hat to take off next. And so you're like listing out the things that are, you know, dollar productive or strengths or passions or whatever. And then you eventually wind up with enough things that you set down that it could function as a reasonable job description or a starting point. And you can either hire that person in the language of subtraction, where like, now I don't have to do these things, I'm just taking them off my plate, or you can bring that person alongside you in a multiplicative way where, you know, by coaching them, guiding them, believing in them, supporting them, trusting them, they can multiply the results of the organization. Rather than simply take things off your plate in kind of the language you use, command and control, like, here, do this, do this in this way, you know, instead of, instead of giving them some autonomy to participate in the growth of the business. Yeah.

You know, it sparks for me this, this those kind of icebreaker exercises that I think we've all done at conferences where you're given like a pile of popsicle sticks and some tape and rubber band and they say, like, build a house. And then you see different teams complete build completely different structures in completely different ways. Same thing applies here. If you're going to let go of certain, you know, let of certain parts of your business and trust them to someone else. You have to take the time to really impart your values and your expectations of how you want it done and also listen to the feedback that they're giving you because they might have insights or perspectives from other industries, from other teams, from their own lived experience that can make a huge impact and make a better product. But if you just say, okay, go build me that house and come back 20 minutes later, those popsicle sticks might be arranged in a completely different way than the way you would have wanted to. And that carries on to how your brand hits the client, how the quality of product, the speed all those expectations have to be coached to.

I think we're going to get deeper into some of these themes and topics, but I want to back up and talk about your path into the Heaps Estrin team. How did you find them? How did they find you? Sounds like you were in transition in your career. How did this come together?

Yeah, for sure. So Kayleigh Heaps, our founder, was looking for a Director of People to Operations, which is my current title. She posted it more junior than what it turned out to be. And I was just so drawn to the brand. I was really drawn to the diversity of the team. So it was something that I was looking through the website and really say thought to myself, hey, I could see myself there. And so when I reached out to Honestly just over LinkedIn, I said, I'd love to hear what's going on, I'd love to hear where you need support in this area and see if there could be a match. We worked it out and Kaylee sort of took a leap of faith on me and now I had my two year anniversary about a week ago.

Awesome. Congratulations. How long was that period of time from like this seems interesting to me to okay, let's kind of button this thing up and get you on board.

Okay. So Heaps estrogen works very fast. So I think I talked to Kelly on a Thursday. I think I had an interview with her on a Tuesday. I was at her house for wine on a Wednesday and I think I had an offer by the following Thursday. And for anyone who knows Kelly Heaps, that's probably a protracted timeline. She probably would have wanted to work faster because she did her due diligence. She knew more about me before I even opened my mouth. And once we had a really good conversation, I put my thoughts in a deck actually to walk through and say, are we aligned on this? And once she saw the alignment, she was ready to take that, that sort of calculated risk and we were off to the races.

Cool. I, first of all, I love that idea of, of not just organizing your own thoughts so that you can have a constructive conversation and present yourself well and be clear on why we're both in this room and in this conversation together right now. But the idea of buttoning it up into a deck also involves things like sequencing and, you know, the efficiency of how to get the like big ideas and sometimes abstract ideas kind of organized into one presentable slides. I love that approach and that exercise. What align did you see that? That got you really excited.

I saw a team that was ready to scale. So Heaps Estrin had and still has an amazing track record of being number one in central Toronto, being number one for World of Page in Canada. And Kayleigh had some bold visions on how she wanted the company to grow, but she didn't want to grow for the sake of it. She wanted to keep that team atmosphere. She wanted to keep an exceptionally high level of service for her clients and she wanted to bring on team members with a winning mindset and wanted to sort of have like, you know, high, high expectations, people for people, both on the. On the selling side as well as the operation side. And to have sort of high expectations and high rewards and that kind of perfect mix as well. As with the profile described earlier, it was. It was a home run for me.

So we've established some alignment. We put together a very fast timeline. You're excited about it, she's excited about it. Talk about. And it was posted a little bit junior to your experience and what you wanted to do and what you wanted to bring. What was the initial set of responsibilities in concept versus kind of what you ended up taking on and arriving at mutually. Give me a brief definition of what it meant two years ago to be coming on board as Director of People and Operations. What was your scope of responsibility?

Yeah, my scope. We've done so much in a year because we opened a second location within that year. We branched off into sort of different business verticals. I'm just trying to get my brain back there. But initially, Kayleigh was wanting to make sure that the culture that she worked really hard to build was going to continue to be there as she added more agents and added more staff. So it was proving to her that I could build a recruitment and onboarding cycle that not only imparted the sales skills and the administrative skills the team needed, but that they could really understand that we're in this because we know that we can make a huge impact in people's lives by supporting them through some of their biggest transactions and that the stories behind each of those transactions really matter. So I was able to sort of demonstrate that I was going to be taking that on and taking that very seriously. The next element as well was as a leader and a founder, she was being. Her success was pulling her in a lot of different directions. And so I talked about my Chief of Staff background. I was sort of the different title, but for all intents and purposes, I was the Chief of Staff for the Chro of BMO Financial Group for. For a period. And I explained to her how I worked across internal and external stakeholders to really give my executive that bird's eye view, that kind of lighthouse of everything that he needed at the time to organize his, get the insights he needed from different department leads. And I predicted, and I was right, that as she continued to get busier, she needed to be able to trust those different department leads and have a bit of a dependable rhythm of information where we got to a Place where we had really detailed once a month operating meetings that had the same insights presented so that we had consistent reports, consistent things that we looked into different key performance indicators. Whereas before that was done more ad hoc. It was done when, you know, it was a bit of a slower time, you know, just after the holidays or just after Labor Day. But with that we created that monthly rhythm so that there was no, oh my gosh, how much have we spent on marketing in the last quarter? We just knew how much we'd be spending each month and took a little bit of the, of the chaos out of the admin side of things.

For a team leader or an ops leader who is watching or listening, who doesn't necessarily have this type of cadence or even this clarity on which numbers matter most in their business, which ones mattered most for you all enough so that you would bring them into this monthly meeting and keep an eye on trending.

So my answers are probably not going to be very sexy. So for a whole, for all of the sales leaders who are about to check out, like, try and stay with me for the next two minutes, I'll try and keep it lean. I think first and foremost, as an HR professional, my biggest ally and most important ally is my lead of finance. So I worked with our lead of finance to really take a sort of a cash look at our business. So the first and foremost thing that I would say that you have to look at is not only when your deals are closing, but when that cash is hitting your bank account, especially as you're growing your business, if you have more overhead, you need to know, okay, if February was lean and we expect that cash to hit, you know, two, three months later and it's not there, you could have a real big problem. Luckily, even in the tough markets we've seen in the last few years here in Toronto, there was the right planning, the right investment from Cayleigh, our founder, that we weren't in that scenario. But I had some tough experiences in previous roles where if we don't pay attention to that, then you have a five alarm fire. So for me, cash is king. Make sure that all is looking correct from not only the revenue perspective, but at the end of the day, what your, what your EBITDA is going to be each month, then from there some of the KPIs that we were looking at were amount of pipeline of listings that were coming and amount of buyer sign, which is where follow up costs makes a big difference in helping be able to track that as your team gets bigger and then the other element that I would say is a must do is just that expense readout to simplify your life. So especially as your team gets bigger. What one person defines as advertising and what one person defines as, you know, corporate social responsibility or like a donation, there might be multiple different definitions of that. And so the easiest way that, you know, it's a bit of a headache of a cost, but just get your credit cards to line up that way. If you have five credit cards, you can use one for office expenses and those kind of, you know, general and administrative expenses, one only for advertising. And again, organizing yourself that way, paying a small fee to the bank just means you can pull those credit card reports and know for sure that the money's going into the right bucket. So you can get really good insights on. On where your expenses are going and where they're trending.

Really good and. And super practical. I also like the precursor to the credit card situation, which is, let's create some definitions and boundaries and figure out which categories these things go in, and then let's start acting against those definitions. I think that's the kind of thing that, you know, you mentioned earlier, you know, some of, some of this was done ad hoc in slow times. And I think that's how this goes. Either curiosity driven, like, oh, I wonder what this, oh, I guess I'll go do this on an ad hoc project basis versus the thought and care that goes into creating some of those definitions, lining it all up and beginning to execute and act in a particular way.

And that was born all out of flowers, if you can believe it. Because for some listings, we would put flowers in as part of the staging process. As other parts of our sort of workflow, we'd be sending flowers as a thank you for agents who were referring business to us. And of course, we sent condolences. But all I had was a budget line for flowers. So I had no idea if, you know, one of our agents was giving flowers, they weren't to all their best friends. So we had to split those flower spends across the different cards so we'd know exactly where they were. Otherwise, I would spend the end of each month going through too many flower invoices, which I'm not. I'm not in the mood for. So that's great.

Great example, too. What was the state of operations and HR when you came on board? Were you the first, like, lead operations hire? Was this something that they had had various iterations of before? Like, when you came onto the team, what kind of situation did you inherit in Terms of this scope of, of just broadly speaking, HR and operations.

Yeah, for sure. So definitely this has been the most senior title in this combination. So I, I had some fantastic predecessors who had sort of marketing and sales under them. With some operations, we had more junior members of the team just taking on the, you know, the bookkeeping element or the HR component. So all the, all the right stuff was there. It just wasn't organized in a place to scale. So it was still organized in a way where Kailey could have a point person that she could reach out to and ask questions. But like I said before, there wasn't that meeting rhythm or that consistency of data presentation. So I'll give you an example. So if Kayleigh wanted to ask how much were we spending on marketing this year, she could probably ask two people in the organization and get two different answers. One person would give based on the awards year. Royal LePages Awards year for our sort of stats ends in November. And someone else, understandably, could give her calendar or fiscal year. That's going to drive you up the wall if you're a leader. Right. Because if you ask for the marketing, spend one week and then the next week, and it varies by a few thousand dollars, that's material. You're going to think, what are these people doing? So that's where in my role, I was able to be very consistent on. Here's where we're going to get our data. Here's which of our. Which part of our data is religion? Like, if it comes from this, if it comes from our banking, that's religion, not what this report from another system says. And this is also the time of the month you can go in and know the data is accurate. Because I've gone around and made sure that each of the stakeholders has hit a deadline and entered the information. Because the other thing that we had an issue of too, was where you snapshot the information when you pull the reports. Sometimes stuff hasn't hit the bank account, sometimes things haven't come from the cooperating brokerage, and then panic can ensue if that's not under control. Is this interesting or have I lost your entire audience? Because I'm talking about invoices and accounting.

Yeah, I can't speak for anyone else, but this is like, this is. It's super interesting to me. And it speaks to like a level of maturity. I want to, I want to go go into very specific language that you used near the top of that, of the top of that response, which is it wasn't organized for scale. Yeah, I think a lot of people when they use the word scale, they just mean like, we used to have two, now we have six. Right. Like. Like it. But it's not. It's not just growth. It's not just more there. It's like, it's like growth in the metric. Metrics hold growth with efficiency and benefit to the organization. So, like speak a little bit to what scale means to you. And this is a kind of a big vague kind of thing I'm asking for. But like, what's the difference for someone watching or listening, what's the difference between just like growing, whether you invest in something to make it grow, and actually scaling something? Speak a little bit to the idea of scale.

Yeah, for sure. So I think the way I think about it, first and foremost is time. So could this brokerage function without my role? Yes. Would KayLee and other department leaders spend more of their time talking about those unsexy topics I just talked about? Absolutely, yes. And so it's about thinking it for me that the time investment, I'd much rather have all my agents and my founder spending more time with the client, prospecting, making sure that client experience is exceptional so that we get more clients than looking through the flower invoices because they think we may have had, you know, a corporate card compromise and someone's going nuts on the flower spend and that, you know, it sounds funny, but that's real mind share of a leader. They need to know that they're back, someone has their back and is watching, that type of thing. And so you need to make sure it's crystal clear in your organization who is accountable for that. And are they set up with the definitions and expectations so that they're executing that for you. And then from there, Caylee was able. Once that was sort of nailed down, we opened a second location. We're looking and now into executing some other business verticals that are super exciting and super value add for our clientele. I don't. I think hopefully you have her on the show. I don't think there. That bandwidth would have been there or at least her social life and personal life would really suffer if there wasn't that scaling infrastructure. Infrastructure in place to allow that.

Very good. I mean, that theme is constant not just for the team leader, but also for the agent. We talk about lifestyle and, you know, being in your positions of strength, et cetera. So you've mentioned both of these projects twice. I feel like we need to get a little bit more on each of them. What drove the opening of the second office. And from your seat, what were some of the things that were surprisingly difficult or unexpectedly difficult or surprisingly or unexpectedly positive?

Sure. Yeah. So we opened our second location, which we call the Lobby. It's located in the Rosedale Summerhill neighborhood here in Toronto, which is a beautiful heritage upscale neighborhood right in the, in the core of the city. If you think of a big city like Toronto, it's almost like you escape into a small village that's really serene and beautiful. There's ravines, it's lovely. And so the reason I'm telling you all this is the reason we opened the second location was, was real estate. There was a beautiful corner space that came up for lease. Kaylee found out about it, knew we had to do something with it. We got the keys on July 1st and we went through a massive renovation and we were open by the end of September. So it was incredible breakneck speed. And then as we were getting ready to open, we were being really thoughtful around what does the community need? And for our second location, which is only about 10, 15 minute drive from our first location, another brokerage just didn't feel like the right fit. So though we absolutely have a real estate component in that space, we also have an art gallery and a retail space focused on home goods gifting, things of that nature. And we also host a lot of seminars and events, some directly related to real estate. We have an event coming up in a few weeks that's all about the sort of strategy we're recommending from multiple perspectives for this spring market. We're going to bring in a real estate lawyer, our trusted advisor on the mortgage front and have a really comprehensive strategy. But we've done other sessions in the past like bank of mom and dad. How can parents support their loved ones through a home purpose purchase? And what, what pitfalls do they have to watch out for? So we really did a very different concept for our second location. And so what surprised me, I guess was really the personal nature of real estate. You know, coming from banking and other industries, you, you feel a bit arm's length from the client. Whereas here, you know, every time we ring that bell for a sale, you know, someone has made a huge change in their life and are entering a new chapter. So all that together was, was all in my first nine months of the role. So it was, it was pretty incredible.

Awesome. The verticals speak a little bit to the verticals. We just did an episode with a gentleman you may or may not know. I'm not sure. Mike Heddle and we broke down the specific verticals that he built his team on. So when you use that language, it just gets me excited because the implication is focus, it's growth, but in a very focused way, like, this is either a very great opportunity for us right now, or this is a. This is something that we see emerging kind of organically. Let's commit to it and, and make this really work for us. So when you say, you know, growth in some new verticals, what are you speaking of?

Yeah, absolutely. So one of the ways that we are identifying sort of the whole needs for our clients is also in this element of recreational properties or international properties. So we launched HE T Global earlier this year. The mission there is to have a network of agents that we can work with so that if a client wants to buy a property in, you know, something beautiful, like a Cabot property in Florida or St. Lucia, that we can connect them with that. But also if they need an advisor, if they're moving to the UK for work, that they can find an agent that we can put our name behind and say, hey, we trust this person, that you'll be in as good hands if you were working with us. And so that is where we're putting our focus because we're seeing that we're working with executives and leaders that either their lifestyles take them to these locations. There's an interest in moving to those locations for recreational purposes, for it's part of their business or their. Or their, their, their. Their. Their business is literally moving to a new country. And it's a really emotional and difficult change, even on a good day. So how can we continue to. When we help them move two blocks over now they're moving two countries over. So that takes a lot of careful consideration on how to execute that really.

Well, both of these. And you can speak to. Maybe you can share stories from one of these projects or the other. But in an organization like yours, I would imagine that some people were really excited as the word of either of these initiatives got out and other people were probably in opposition. And then there was the big fat middle of, like, I'm just gonna wait and see how this affects me or what this means for us and, and. Or varying stages. Like, what was your role in just like, you know, going into. Into language like culture, right? Like this is. It's. It was obviously the right thing for the organization, but from a cultural perspective or a community, just a practical nuts and bolts communication perspective, not everyone needs or should have access to all of the information because, you know, this is staged like part of it's like imagination, like, hey, maybe we could, should would do this to like, you know, and different people need to be brought into the conversation at different stages of the emerging reality of say, for example, this new space that we're not going to use as a traditional brokerage. We're going to use it in a unique way. Talk a little bit about the communication or the cultural components and how to bring the right people on board at the right time.

Yeah, for sure. I think I might pivot a bit away from HTT Global and, and, and to your point, talk about the lobby. I can also talk a little bit about system implementation as well. And some of the went through there.

That's what I'm trying to do anyways, is like, like for a leader watching or listening who has some type of change in the business, and some people are going to be like, oh heck yes. Some people are going to be like, oh heck no. And then there's going to be this big fat middle. How do we move more people toward the. We're excited and we're going to get behind this kind of a thing, like practically.

Yeah, for sure. I think that the first place to start with is to acknowledge that, that what you just said, that not everyone is going to be gung ho about what's coming down the pipe. And that's not necessarily a bad thing because you can use that to get dissenting opinions that you may not have thought of so you could note your blind spots. And you also can, you know, reward and engage all of those types of people. The people who are, you know, a bit apprehensive, the people who are gung ho or the people who are wait and see. The way that we went about with the lobby, for example, is, you know, everyone got wind that we were opening a second location. They were very excited. So what we did was we hosted some open brainstorming sessions. We said, okay, we're doing a renovation here. What would you like to see as part of your workflow? What would be interesting for you in order to service your clients differently? And we, we put a bunch of different images on the wall of different types of workspaces, of different types of community spaces. And we had a bit of a facilitated conversation where people said, you know, listen, if we're going to be in the middle of Rosedale, I'd love a unique space to meet with my clients. And so we actually had an old ice cream shop that was attached to the space that we then converted. It's like almost a little house, and that's one of our meeting rooms. And that's actually our main point of engagement on the real estate side of the second location. And so it gives that opportunity for everyone to put their two cents in. Whether it's from a place of fear or a place of excitement, they at least know that their fingerprints are on this project and they're being heard. And that's huge. And sometimes that's all it takes. So I'll go to a bit more of a challenging example. So I would say that we were using follow up boss, as many people do, which is kind of just at surface level. And we knew there was so much more. And we brought on an assistant director of sales. His name is Mike Legault, and he's incredible. And he was really whipping us into shape. But what that required us to do was behave differently, take some time to train, and also have to communicate where we were confident and where we weren't. And so some people were early adopters and you could see it in their business right away that they were more automated, that they had better insights and they were communicating more effectively with their clients. For those who are resisting, we would ask them why. And in those conversations, it can be very tempting to just go right to command and control and just to say, this is the new team standard. Get on the bus or, you know, get out. That works to a point, but it's also not how I lead and it's also when be culturally appropriate for who we are because people have worked here together for eight, 10 years. And also everyone on our team has an exceptional care about their client base. So no one's coming at this from a bad place or a lazy place that's like a non starter. Those people just wouldn't be part of the team. So I take example of one of one of the agents I work with. I really value her opinion, but she was a big change with this draw this. And I use the technique of the five whys. So you just don't basically don't let things the person off the hook. Okay, so I'll. I'll call her Tanya. Tanya, why aren't you using follow Up Boss? I'm not sure my business really needs it. And I said, okay, well, why does your business not really need it? Well, you know, actually it's. It's mostly that I. I don't have the time. I don't have the time to learn how to use it. And it slows me down. Okay, why? And I kept going down and, and you know, even said to her look, I might sound annoying, but I'm going to really drill down with you because I think there might only be a couple little roadblocks that, that I can maybe help solve. It turned out when we got down to that fifth why the biggest point of resistance was around call recording, it was something she was not comfortable with. She was worried about personal details of her friends and clients being captured and the back end of how that all worked wasn't clear to her. But once we were able to solve it, she was an adopter. But if I just went in with the hammer and said, you must do this, what am I going to get? I'm going to get resistance. But if I give that space for that 15 minute conversation, which maybe more emotional than logical at the end of the day, I got to the root cause of it and we were able to work it through. So those are the types of things on the cultural front, giving people that space to think and ask their questions, really drilling down to their why not coming down on them. Command and control, at least not off the top, has really yielded a good result where we can move the dial for the team without losing great people along the way.

Really good. Especially that sensitivity to not losing great people along the way. And that all sounded very emotionally intelligent. Take me back to the observation that we could should would be getting more out of this and whether it's about this follow up boss situation in particular or whether it's about like you can also, I mean the listener can generalize to any kind of tech adoption or behavior change that's needed across the organization. You know, it's not just this one person is going to start doing this one thing, a new way with a new tool. Like we need to make this work across the team. That's part of why it's so powerful in general. What was the spark within the organization like? Where did the spark come from? What was the conversation then kind of like? What were some of the next steps to say, okay, let's start unlocking more of the power that we have available to us here.

I hate to say it, but it was lost business. It was knowing that we were in contact with a client in the summer and then seeing them transact in the winter. And it wasn't with us. And knowing that we could as a team, knowing that there were handoffs and the ball was dropped somewhere, we knew we could do better. And the temptation is then to make it a witch hunt. Right. And I can understand from a founder or any leader perspective, I feel it all the Time I rather it's easy in the moment and your brain is telling you like who do I have to go and give what for so that they never do it again? That was money we invested, time we invested and it went out the door because they couldn't send an email. What's wrong with them? But that mindset is going to make that leader or me in this example lose all credibility with the agent if I come up and give a really talented agent, you know, talking to because they lost business. I don't know what's going on underneath there. And what we were really attracted to with follow up boss was having that common record of the client so that if there were handoffs we could see exactly where in the process the ball was dropped or there was a misunderstanding and then we could solve for it. Whether it's through reminders, whether it's through our auditing process that we have now so that we take that tension out of it and you know, at the end of the day all the agents that we have here are hardworking and care. The person got distracted. They didn't have the reminders in automation and it fell through. That sucks. But now we have something in place where that is minimized. Just it's so infrequent because we have that rhythm and that expectation of everyone using the system. It just makes such a tremendous difference. And that was the light bulb moment where we went, okay, well if it can solve that problem, what else can the can the OS solve for?

Yeah, really good. And I especially appreciate too the sensitive sensitivity right off the top. Not to look at one incident and make a one off, you know, witch hunt. To use your language, go, let's track down the like this one problem. It's like, why did this happen for this person? Just using your five whys there. Oh, we could probably level up with the tools that are already in place in order to help everyone solve this problem, not just us. Come and kind of lay the hammer down on one person in particular.

And I don't want to give the wrong impression. Like I'm not walking around the brokerage giving everyone cuddles like there are consequences. There is, there is, there is expectations and standards. But what we do is we create that space where if someone. So for example we, we at the end of some of our sales meetings, my assistant director of sales and I, we say okay, 20 minutes, stay behind judgment free zone. So people can stay behind, ask any question about any of our systems. And there's no like what you don't know how to do that or hey, we covered that in training two months ago and now you're coming back. What you don't know your login. We, we like park all of that and it's just judgment free zone. You can come get the help you want from admin or from your fellow agents and get caught up. Up. Not that we would treat anyone that way anyway, but there is that stigma of people are like, oh my gosh, like there's, there's so much change. Right. Like it's, it's insane how much is thrown at us in our personal and professional lives. Sometimes people get behind on systems, but we really make sure that if people are coming to the table and want to learn, they want to be coached, they get it and they don't get it with any shred of stigma or put downs or anything like that. It's constructive because they're coming constructively.

I want to step back a little bit. You mentioned the monthly meetings, which I assume are like leadership meetings and then you also mentioned here weekly sales meetings.

Yes.

When you came on board, what were a few things that were in place already that you were like, this is great, I'm so glad this is in place. Let's, let's maybe just tweak these things and keep it going. And what were a few maybe big pieces just again operationally or HR systems, processes. What were a couple big things that you, you came into the organization, you're like, you know what, we probably should start working on these things. Maybe some of them were like, you know, not as highly prioritized. So they maybe started emerging in year two for you. But like what were some, like this is great, let's keep doing this. And what were a couple like we should probably start the early stages of, you know, getting this implemented.

Yeah. So just that the weekly sales meeting was already in place and it was a fantastic practice that we've kept up and we're pretty religious about that. It is a time for us to go through the buys and sells of the week and celebrate. It's a time for us to do a bit of training and education. If there's new legislation, if there's new, you know, systems that we're going through. And then often we'll also do a guest speaker. Sometimes we'll swap out that sales meeting for, you know, someone come from another brokerage who we really respect. We've brought in coaches who talk about time management. We've done all of it. So I think having that sort of sacred time for the whole team to Ideally be in one room or in one room and online to stay connected and celebrate is, is, is really, is really wonderful. So we continue to grow and evolve and enhance that. I think probably the biggest piece that was missing was, was from my, what I, what I considered table stakes because of my banking and corporate background, which was true performance management management, especially of the administrative and support staff. So like I said before, which makes sense, it was more based like kind of point and shoot. Trying to find the right analogy here. Basically an agent would ask someone for something and then that administrator would give it to them. But what we're, what we're continuing to sort of move the arc towards is the administrator, the support staff anticipates what the agent needs, provides it to them proactively and has very strong closed loop communication so that the agent doesn't really even have to think about it. So the performance management element was taking the time to set goals with each of the admin team, talk about the soft skills like closed loop communication, like being accountable for their tasks and checking in on that routinely and giving that reward and recognition when they were doing a great job. That was happening more organically in ad hoc before I came, which left too much room for human error and also too much room for admin staff to not know where they stood performance wise or career wise.

I expect that there were probably as you started to go down this road because I feel like that's probably. What is this role? What is this role at its best? What are some, you know, setting some standards, having some probably what are hard conversations? Not hard because you're coming in with criticism of an individual. But like we're now putting some boundaries and goals and definitions around things that were very loose before and a lot of people are probably very comfortable with it because they can make of the situation what they want. Like I'm killing it here. I'm, I'm great, I'm doing a great job now it's like, oh, there's an objective standard and we're moving toward that. Like that's uncomfortable as well. I would imagine that a lot of people who are at this point in the conversation with us are like, oh yeah, I should probably, probably put an eye to that, give a couple tips or points of caution for people that are looking to implement some definition and some performance standards and really shape up the administrative side of the business.

So the biggest tip I have is put the coaching conversation in the calendar, like in the Google Calendar, in the Outlook calendar, and call it a coaching conversation. Because what I'VE seen both here and elsewhere is. Let's take an example. Back in banking, a leader would take Ethan out for coffee, have a lovely coffee, come back and talk to me as the hr, our leader, and go, oh, yeah, I had a performance conversation with Ethan and Ethan was like, I. I just went for coffee and I talked about, you know, where I saw myself in two years. So there was like an investment of time, but Ethan didn't know what the heck to expect, how he needed to show up, what the outcomes were. So even just having it as like a performance, coaching, coaching conversation and labeling it, and then also resisting the urge as the leader to not also tackle tasks into that meeting because you'll start talking about things and go, oh, what is going on with 1, 2, 3, Sesame Street? Have we done? The painting is, you know, and you can't do that. You have to focus like 30, 45 minutes just on goal setting, just on constructive feedback and positive feedback for, for the person. That would be my first big tip. The second is before you go into those meetings and we just did this as everyone who's a people leader at the organization is, think of your favorite boss and think of your favorite boss. What did they do that made you admire them that made a difference in your world? Right? And for me, it was Sandra Corelli at BMO Financial Group. She was a clear communicator. She gave me the time of day to coach me, and she was really good at driving business outcomes. When I asked everyone at the brokerage what their definition was, everyone had said basically the same thing with different flavors, right? So we all know what a good boss is in our minds. So it reminds you how to show up and be a good boss. And it also, like, the biggest takeaway for me is that it reminds you that you were a beginner at some point, too, and that it may be super evident for you how you're supposed to close a transaction appropriately or how you're supposed to answer emails, but you didn't always have it. You may have figured it out and you might be smarter than the rest, and you may have had to do a lot on your own, but I guarantee that someone in your life sat down and coached you for a bit, and even when you maybe didn't even earn it, but they were there to help you. And so it puts you in the right emotionally intelligent mindset to again, not go in on a witch hunt sort of strategy, but to go in with a how can I make you better strategy.

We're making changes in our business and we're making a lot of them all of the time. What are a few characteristics or how would you caution a leader, whether it's operations or otherwise, to, to recognize that this is something you should probably stop, slow down and be a little bit more intentional about. I should be a little bit more intentional about removing some of my own blind spots, about maybe some consequences of this, or I should be more intentional about how I communicate it. Because there are things we're doing all the time, they're just like, oh, we're just doing it and it's cool and everyone's going to adapt. But there are some projects, I think that people are probably underestimating the impacts and it's not until three agents choose to leave that they're like, oh, maybe I could have done that differently.

To your point, one way or another, you have to face the leadership and management parts of your job, even if you don't love them. Because you'll either face them when team members start leaving, or you could be proactive and invest time up front and make sure you have the right team, you're coaching them correctly and you're rewarding them correctly. So from that kind of like, where should I invest? Just make sure you're blocking time for yourself to think about this stuff either. Or hire someone who can help coach you or engage someone that can, can give you some assistance on a sort of more of a fractional basis. I think that's just critical and it's something that if you know it's a blind spot or weakness for you, then you need to hire for it. And you know, I'm obviously not the first person to say that. I'm not the first person to say this on the podcast, but it is, it is very, very true. The other element too, which we touched upon earlier and we didn't quite circle back to, is just understand how you see the world. So I'm a disc people use a lot, which is fantastic. Fantastic. There's lots of other leadership assessments, but I take a slightly different track. And that is there's a researcher by the name of, of Gretchen Rubin and she was the, I believe, clerk for Sandra Day o'. Connor. And then she became a researcher. She has like a happiness quiz, she calls it, and she just breaks things down into three different ways people see the world and how they deal with their own expectations for themselves and the expectations other people put on them. And it's incredible, honestly. A five minute quiz, you can get the whole team to do it for free. You can buy her a book if you want. But it's super easy to understand how you expect things to be done and how that is not necessarily you might want the same outcome as the individual, but the way that you're making that ask, setting that deadline, making that request could be in a way that's completely disincentivizing the person versus incentivizing them. So any time you can spend in that sort of management block about building that self awareness and understanding how your team communicates, you'll save yourself so much.

So much time for everyone. No matter where you're watching or listening. If you're watching or listening@realestateteamos.com if you're watching on YouTube, if you're listening in Apple Podcasts or Spotify down below there is a description and in that description I'm going to link up that quiz because I'm going to go look at it, learn more. So good call out on the Gretchen Ruben work and quiz before I let you go. Jeff, first, thank you so much. Second, three fun pairs of questions. The first is what is your very favorite team to root for besides the heaps est team or what is the best team you've ever been a member of?

Okay, well I'll answer both. So my favorite team is my dodgeball team, my recreational dodgeball team. So I cheer for them. We're playing tonight so that, that's easy. And then my favorite team that I've ever been on other than this one was my one workplace transformation team at bmo. So cross functional team, real estate, HR technology, we couldn't all be more different. But it was a true flat team and one that was high performing. And the thing that sticks out in my mind was I had my executive sponsor at the time come up to a junior project manager and he said to her, hey, I want to take my my wife and kids on vacation in two months. Does this date work with the project? And I nearly fell out of my chair because I had this like senior executive asking like a 20 year old permission to take but and she replied yep, that should be fine. Like have a great time. And it's because the trust and communication was there. It was just amazing. So that that's a team that will always go down the books for me as, as one of the best teams I've ever been a part of.

Awesome. And a great example to demonstrate exactly how flat we're talking about here. So good. Jeff, what is one of your most frivolous purchases or what's a cheapskate habit that you hold on to. Even though you probably don't need to.

I. So I spend money on. I love scent, so anything from Esop Aesop, however, it's. It's pronounced. I don't think my hand wash should be $80, but it is. It's just such a nice luxury. That's. That's probably my most frivolous spend.

Okay. And it sounds like it's recurring.

Yeah.

All right. What does it look like for you to spend time resting, relaxing and recovering, recharging, or what does it look like for you to spend time learning, growing and developing? What are you doing in either of those patterns?

Yeah, you know, it's funny. Relaxing is something I'm like, I'm actually actively working on right now, which sounds silly to say, but like, I think in the past I would fill recharge time with social stuff with other people or events, and that's not doing it for me anymore. And so relaxing for me is if I can really plug my phone in to a different room where I'm watching a movie and not check my phone while I'm watching a movie. That's something that is a test if I've had a successful weekend or not. If I can kind of budget two, two and a half hours to not be either on Instagram or work emails while I'm watching. Usually like a superhero or comic book movie.

Very good. Gosh, it's amazing how much two screening has come into our lives. Like, just even you sharing that I'm to referring. Reflecting on myself being in the room with one or two other people. There's something that we're all watching together, but then sometimes we're all also second screening in the same space. It's like just getting it into another room is a step in the right direction.

A good, good one for that is jeopardy. Because like, if you have people in the room who are all competing and trying to read the questions first, people tend to put their. Put their. Put their phones down.

Yeah. Or they're trying to cheat with their phone.

Oh, that's. That's a bigger problem. I can't help you with that. Yeah.

This has been awesome, Jeff. I really appreciate you. If someone has gotten to this point, they may want to learn more about you or about the Heaps Estrin team. Where would you send people to follow up on this conversation?

Yeah, heapsestrin.com is the best place to find me. Find our brokerage. You are also welcome to tap my shoulder on LinkedIn.

Awesome. I will link both of those up right down below. In the description, no matter where you're watching or listening. And I do encourage you to go to the Heaps Estrin homepage and watch their main homepage video. It reminded me of Chef's Table, which is just as a production, like top shelf. It's just so good.

I have not heard that comparison. Thank you so much. That's high. I'm glad.

I feel like you've probably heard it before.

Cool.

Good to hear. Appreciate you, Jeff. Thanks for doing this.

Yeah, thanks so much. Thanks, Ethan. Thanks for checking out this episode of teamos for email. Exclusive, exclusive insights every week. Sign up@realestateteamos.com.