[Techtember] 043 Operations and Your Tech Stack with Chelly Herren

How to increase operational efficiency and agent productivity while reducing redundancy by simplifying your tech stack. A thoughtful and disciplined approach to measuring the true cost and the true benefit of a piece of technology before you commit to it. Specific tactics to increase agent understanding, adoption and buy in of new tech. That's just some of what you'll get in this Tech Timber episode. With a proven operations leader with a passion for real estate technology. I know you'll learn a lot from Shea Herron right now 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 a real estate team. Here's your host, Ethan Butte.

Shea, thank you so much for being here and thank you so much for everything you do within the follow up boss community.

Thanks so much for having me, Ethan. So, so happy to be here.

Cool. I'm going to start with you where I start with literally everybody who appears on the show, which is what is a must have characteristic of a high performing.

That's a good question. I would say a high performing leader is probably the number one characteristic of a high performing team that I have come across. It's just a characteristic that I feel like the team kind of always wants to be aspiring to be some version of that leader, whether it's like production wise, whether it's how efficient they run their business, whether it's, they're just attracted to that person because they're a charismatic leader. I feel like strong leadership is probably that one characteristic.

Really good. I like that you roped in there some characteristics of a high performing leader and I feel like part of what I hear and what you shared there is leading by example. And then also, you know, when we're recruiting, I don't know if we want to turn this, this Tech Timber episode into a recruiting conversation, but you know, there are a lot of things we need to deliver. We need to, we need to have the right kind of financial arrangements, splits, fees, services to make sense for someone who's joining our team. But I think a lot of it is this intangible. I'm joining this person which is part of the high performance piece. So talk a little bit about like leading by example.

I agree with you that I think that you know, if you had laid out a bunch of different team options, if you were an agent who was had a few different options, you could compare dollars and cents obviously with splits and things like you just mention. But also I think that you would be very, at least I would be very closely looking at who is the person who leads that team. How do they lead by example, what do they do on a daily basis or how have they been successful in real estate in a way that makes me want to follow them or learn from them or be coached by them. And I know there's examples of team leads who maybe don't even have a huge real estate background. They're more running a team because they're very good at aspects of running a team that are super, super important. In my particular case, I'm super lucky to have someone who runs our team who is an incredible role model and he is a very high producing agent who's worked very hard to get to the role that he's in. And I know for our team members it's really a neat opportunity for us to get to watch him, how he runs his business, how what a well oiled machine he is as far as how he carries out his prospecting activities and you know, everything down to the paperwork that he process, he uses on a listing appointment. So I find that even if agents aren't aspiring to be him, they might be aspiring to be operating at a level that may be a little higher than where they have been previously in their career. And they can take bits and pieces from him and apply them to his business. We're always saying, or to their business, excuse me, we're always saying to agents, we're not asking you to be a miniature version of Jeff, who is our team lead and has been in the business for 20 years. We're just asking you to, you know, take bits and pieces of his coaching and his leadership and apply that to your business because that will help you level up.

That's great. I would love to arrive at when you join Jeff and the role that you serve in that organization, but I'd love for you to do that. Backing up. One of the things I love about your background in real estate is that you've led both operations and you've led sales and marketing in different contexts. So I'd love to have you kind of just walk us into where you are today from where you started in the business.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, I'll give you a brief, a brief history, but I got licensed back in 2005 as kind of something that I knew I wanted to have a real estate license because I have some family members who have been in real estate. But I wasn't quite sure where I wanted to Take it. I had a business degree. I actually was interested in supply chain management when I was in college. So real estate wasn't really on my radar. But I knew I wanted to get that license. So my early days I worked for a land developer that was very interesting experience. Got to see a lot of different things there. And then he started a real estate brokerage that I helped found and began the early stages of operations was my main focus in my role. So that was like very quick growing 0 to 100 agents in just a few years. Two different locations, two different cities. So that was really fast moving. And I would say that that is what started all of my real estate operational and sales curiosity. I hadn't really sold prior to that. I've mostly focused on management roles for my career, although I have had some time in sales as you mentioned. So I asked a friend if I could hang my license with him when I was kind of in transition, when I was getting ready start my family. I have a 10 year old daughter and a 6 year old daughter. And he said sure, yeah, sounds great. That was Jeff Hyland who I currently work for. And he called me up one day and said, I have a great opportunity to take on a build a relationship, but I would really need some help from someone like you who could help keep track of things for me. And I said, well, why would you help me? I'm not really sure if that's the best fit for me because I really don't have a big background in that part of the business. But he said, well, let's just give it a shot. So we went on to grow new home sales or builder division of his team over the course of a few years and that became quite successful. We had hundreds of sales for a few different builders here in the Prescott, Arizona area. And then in 2020 he came to me and said, you know, we have a few agents on the team now. I have a few buyer's agents. I'm. I'm busy enough that I have a need for more agents to help me and I want to grow the team, but I would really need the help of someone like you to help me grow the team and help me oversee everything that goes into that. And would you be interested in kind of transitioning to that type of role? And with age of my children especially, I was very interested because operations had been my background. I liked sales, but I was very interested in kind of helping him grow that part of the business. So that was in 2020 and we were I think around maybe four agents or so on our buy side team at the time. Maybe six, four to six, I would say. So that was kind of the beginning of the journey that I'm currently in now, which is team management for the Highland Group.

That's great. Characterize for us the Highland Group, like high level. However you like. Like you already mentioned you're in Prescott, Arizona. I can imagine there's been a ton of new construction, you know, over the past decade or two there. Size of the team today, kind of culture structure. Just give us a snapshot of what the group looks like today.

So we are 18 agents, not including Jeff. Jeff is still in production team lead. He's listing at over 100 transactions a year. So he's very, very busy still. We have agents on our team who focus on mostly buyers, but also do focus on listings. There's a small specialized group of them that focus on listings. And then we have six staff members and three ISAs. So we're around the 25, 26 members at any given time. As far as our team, I would characterize us as a high producing real estate team. We have a minimum standard on our team and then the per person productivity for our team. If you take Jeff out, because that's kind of cheating, if you keep him in there, but you take Jeff out is still. We like to keep that number up, over 20 per person productivity. So as far as the team itself and kind of our culture, we like to have a lot of fun but work really hard. So you know, we're just all very focused on client experience, making sure that, you know, each of those clients that we work with leave feeling like they really got their real estate needs met and that we stayed a step ahead them all along the way was sort of like an anticipatory way of serving them so that we can keep them informed as to what the next step is. And we do that in a lot of different ways. But I would say that that's, you know, having a five star client experience is something that has been part of our culture for a long time. And so I feel like we attract agents for that reason. We attract clients for that reason. And then when I say work really hard, it just means everybody's working really hard to keep those clients happy. But then we also have to remind ourselves not to be too serious too all the time and be, you know, have a lot of fun while we're doing it because ultimately it's pretty neat to be able to help people find a home. And truly that's, that's kind of it's exciting to be able to participate in people's lives in one of the biggest transactions that they ever will do. So that's kind of an overview.

Absolutely. I agree with you completely and I really like this idea of I've come to the understanding over the past year or so of talking with hundreds of people, primarily team leaders and operators such as yourself, that the team affords more opportunity to do that than some other formats, particularly for solo agents, just because there's so much support and leverage. And what I'm doing here is kind of teeing up where I want to go, which is, you know, we can have the per agent productivity conversation a lot of different ways and we do here on real estate Team os, certainly there's the kind of the coaching training side of it. A precursor to that is how we recruit and onboard people. But what I really want to do in this Tech Timber episode with you in particular, Shay, is get into how operations in general and technology in particular also helps keep agents in their most dollar productive activities and on track in order to be highly productive, because that's the key to a successful organization. So I guess we'll start with technology in general. Like talk about your philosophy of the tech stack overall, how do you think about it, what role does it play? And then we'll kind of get into a little bit of detail there. But when did you become passionate about technology and what role does it play in. In your thought about how you're designing the operations of the team?

So when I in 2020, when I was asked to get involved with managing the team, I took kind of a survey of everything that we had going on. The awesome staff that was in place prior to me joining their management team had already found Follow up boss. So that was a great win. And we actually onboarded with Follow up Boss in the early spring of 2020. So we had a lot of time in that initial month or so to sit around and customize our CRM before we realized that the real estate market was about to explode. So that was, that was great timing on our part as I looked through everything that was in place in the team and again there was a great staff. Jeff's had a transaction coordinator that's been with the team for, I think she's going on like 15 years is what she'll celebrate as far as her anniversary this year. She's really grown with the team. We had a great operations manager who had put a lot of structure and great stuff in place place. So I wasn't walking into like starting from scratch. But I definitely wanted to survey everything that was happening inside the team and then figure out if there was any ways that we could become more efficient, that we could streamline things, that we could just make agents more efficient. I think in my brokerage experience that's really what I determined is that, you know, an efficient agent has a lot of time for those income producing activities. The inefficient agent who may not yet understand all the tools that are available to them or struggle to get the right tools in place, may work really, really hard on a lot of activities that aren't necessarily income producing and aren't going to help them to, to get further in their business and help more clients. And so putting the right tools in place became something I just was basically obsessed with. So Follow Up Boss was like the foundation of that. And we were pretty simple back then. We had, you know, Follow Up Boss and then we had a website, an IDX website that basically helped us to attract clients and to keep our, you know, existing clients in a really easy environment to search and then the agents to have a lot of transparency. But quickly we, I determined that we had a lot of different systems that we were updating constantly. Like we were, you know, whether it be a spreadsheet or some tracking documents or it might be, you know, a separate software that we had. We were constantly moving in and out of different platforms. And so we all sat together in a room early on when I started this role and we really mapped out, and when I say we, our staff mapped out our client experience. And so we kind of just went step by step through the client's experience to make sure that the communication that the client was receiving from us was always really consistent. And that kept their experience feeling very high touch, but also made sure that we were very concise and clear in the communication that we had and making sure that each of our steps in the process, I guess of like managing a transaction and getting a client from a interest level all the way to a closed transaction and post close was just very clearly defined and we were all on the same page about that. So that was step one to that process. And then once we identified all that, I remember I had attended a webinar that week where automations had been released by Follow Up Boss. And I thought, you know, there's so much of this that we just identified that we could be putting into Follow Up Boss in say an action plan and that would give so much more transparency to our team without having to go in and out of Two or three different softwares, I'm going to see about putting this all together in one place basically. And so I took transaction checklists that we had been using for years and basically leveraged those into follow up boss through action plans and some automations and then also added some custom fields because one of the things that I was trying to solve for is redundancy. We just had a lot of data going into a lot of different places and so those custom fields then populated email templates and the end result was basically that we're able to manage transactions and follow up loss. So from going back to your previous question, we have so much transparency between the TCs that we have on the team and our agents and everybody is working from one place. And so from an early technology standpoint that was a huge win for us because it allowed everybody to stay as productive as possible without having to exchange a bunch of extra text messages on the side and reminders and emails. And it just allowed us to consolidate a lot and just become more efficient and collaborative. So that was probably one of our big early tech wins when I got into this role.

Okay, I want to summarize that really quickly for my own purpose to get your feedback on it and for the purpose of folks watching and listening. So you come into this operations role. Fortunately you had switched CRMs prior to like a massive ramp up in transactions. I'm sure agent growth in that scenario as well. You sat down in a room with the primary stakeholders in this, talked about what you wanted that communication and experience to look like from we first connected, however that is to close and post close experience. You identified redundancies, you identified duplicate data input which then creates potentially multiple sources of truth. Well, this is the number over here, this is the number over there. Which one is it? Of course, that's really challenging as well. You turned what was a manual checklist and I assume some of it done even on paper we've heard that story many, many times before, turned it into automations and action plans so that reminders are delivered to people instead of them having to go to the checklist and check a thing off. Some of that stuff is pushed to them and that anyone, the agent, the TC or anyone else, you as a, you know, a leader or a manager can go in and see the state of things without having to. And this is the key thing too, reducing the number of calls, urgent calls or urgent texts or urgent emails to say, what about this, what about that, what about the other thing? It's like I can just go in and look at it. And so what this does from an efficiency standpoint, from a team operating system perspective, is add a. You use the word transparency. And I think that's the key here, is that that's what unlocks the efficiency, the time saving, the confidence, the camaraderie, the teamwork that's allowed because everyone can see where everything is whenever they want from their phone or from their laptop.

So true. And it's really kind of become the foundation of how we make sure that our client experience is at the level that we expect and that we strive for every day. And you summarized it very well, and I think you're right. I think the transparency was really the key piece to that because as you probably know, or people who are listening know, there's so many different pieces and points to a transaction. And so, you know, an agent has all of their duties, and even if they have a full service tc, they're probably still negotiating and speaking with the client on a really frequent basis. And so for them to be able to, you know, see the notes of anyone else who's been in the system or been texting, we, you know, our team is 100% involved. So all staff is using numbers and texting and emailing out of the system so we can all see the full contact record of the client who we are all working with. And it just, it helps us to not have any missteps. There's hardly ever a time where someone says, oh, I think so, and so did such and such. And I'll circle back with you. It's very clear what has occurred and. Or not occurred. So, yeah, it's been great. And then you touched on something that I just wanted to share because it's become kind of like an unintended asset to this system is that on the Apple os, I can pull up any client in our team, excuse me, in our company, and I can go in and see all the custom fields, which means in our team, all of the data points that I might need to know. So if I'm laying in bed thinking about when was that inspection report due? I'm not sure because it's 2am and it's woken me up because I can't sleep, I can go into that client's record and I can check that date very quickly from my phone. It happens more often to people who don't have insomnia sometimes, like I do when they're out and about in the field, they might think to themselves, one of the new additions that we just put in, that's very exciting is help with the new NAR settlement and some of the nuances to that with concessions and seller concessions and contract concessions and buy a broker agreement. And all of that can be seen with full, you know, transparency to the whole team, but also from your mobile device. So if you're taking out a buyer that you think you signed a buyer broker with four months ago, but you want to check that date and see if maybe you need to have a conversation with them about extending that time frame because it's coming up on the time that it ends, but they haven't found a house yet. All that can be checked from your mobile device as you walk into the appointment.

So good. That's the that's one aspect of this concept of calm amid all of the chaos. There are so many moving pieces all of the time. And even just bringing that piece to yourself in the moment of where were we on that?

What's the date on that?

And the ability just to access it. I love that. I appreciate that ad pulling back just a little bit like so many folks in this industry. And it's one of the things I love so much about it. You know, you connect and collaborate and converse with your peers all over the country when you're talking with other people. What are some common issues or concerns from a technology perspective? Like when you're maybe giving advice or helping someone, what are the kinds of things? What are some of the questions or concerns that you observe, you know, over the past year or two that people like? What are people struggling with out there or wondering about?

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That's a good question. I definitely tend I'm a Follow Boss Mod squad member And I tend to get roped in a lot on the conversations pertaining to transaction management and those types of things because of this system that we use. But I would say that, I would say actually it's funny to stay on the same thread, but really what I see a lot of is transparency and then efficiency. Like I have everyone from a solo agent all the way up to, you know, someone who might be running, starting a team or have been running a small team, usually a small to medium sized team, I would say, who say, you know, I just feel like our team or me or me and my staff member are spending so much time, you know, just going back and forth each other on the details or we have so many places that we're trying to update information. And I feel like one common thread that I just am seeing often is the desire, I think, that most people have to consolidate and simplify. And that is one thing that I think is difficult with tech and prop tech and all of the things that we are all constantly trying to innovate with is that there is a lot of time that can be spent or projects that can be created with being innovative in technology. And you have to be careful as a leader. I believe in today's world to not overcomplicate things with technology. And so I think a lot of what I see as far as talking to people around the country who are operating in real estate is just a desire to simplify, a desire for more transparency and a desire for, I guess, increased efficiency, which many people perceive, oh, you know, technology can solve all my problems and this is great. But very quickly you can end up with four or five pieces of technology that kind of aren't really talking to each other and all of a sudden you have a lot of work on your hands. Instead of becoming more efficient, you're actually going backwards.

Yeah, and taking ourselves away from our fundamental responsibilities and opportunities no matter what seat we're in inside the organization. I would love for you to share your. Because I assume that you have probably added some tech despite this theme of simplifying. I think there are two main drivers of adding tech to your organization. One is we've identified a problem and we want to solve it. And we know that there's some tech solutions. So we're going to go out and vet them, talk to some friends, maybe do some demos, try some things out, whatever. The other side of it is discovery driven. You're talking with a friend about kind of what's going on in their business. You ask a couple follow up questions underneath and it turns out that this tool is solving a problem in a way that you didn't know was possible. So one is like, I've got this problem, let me figure out the best way to solve it. And that may or may not be a tech solution. The other side is someone reveals to you that they have this piece of tech and you're like, oh, that would actually help me too. I never identified it separately. One, are those the two main categories for you? And two, what is your process for vetting? Should I pursue a tech solution in general? To I've implemented it and I'm starting to train agents or TCs or whoever's going to touch it on this new piece of technology. Like, what's your process for vetting? Do I need something? And is that something a piece of tech all the way through implementation?

Well, I'm lucky enough to be a part of the mod squad and then involved in, you know, some smaller masterminds and things like that with agents across the country and then people who are as interested in sort of like a tech based team that has a high level of operations or a high level of efficiency. So a lot of, like you said, a lot of what I decide to look into is brought to us by other people who might be using it or, you know, suggestion from someone on a podcast or in a mastermind that I'm in or even in the follow up boss community. And then for me it's really evaluation of, okay, is this a need that we have in the organization? There's so many amazing tools out there, but then there's some things that we just don't really have that need. So I really like to evaluate, is this a need that we have within our team? And then secondarily going back to my last conversation, part of the conversation, does that integrate into what we're already doing? And if it does create a little bit more work, is the output going to be worth what the input time frame will end up being? And in some cases there's examples of that. Maybe there's something that, you know, there's a missing link in our business and it makes a lot of sense for us to do a little bit more work on the front end to have a better result on the back end. However, for the most part, making sure that that tech would integrate into what we're already doing would be a really key piece. And I would say that those, those two pieces of the evaluation are pretty much key for me. And I'll do, like you said, a demo or, you know, Meet up with someone who's using the software or the the solution already. But then my decision time frame can tend to extend out just a bit because I really have to evaluate if that's going to help or hurt our situation. I guess is the easiest way to help to say that because you know, we can in a lot. There's so many amazing tech partners out there. I mean my head is always spinning with how many incredible solutions there are, but we just have to be careful that we keep things as simplistic as we can while also not leaving any of those super helpful tools on the table and not utilizing them.

When I think about kind of the cost benefit on adding something new, a few of the kind of a few of the key pieces there. One is like keeping overhead low so that we're flexible and nimble through markets up and down. So the less we add, the less expensive our tech stack is. Two, the less tech is involved, the less room there is for some of these errors of redundancy or having to manually input data or having to train our agents or our operations team, our staff on new things and complicating their lives. And then there's the, you know, just all in bucket of what it takes to keep this thing going, which is to say nothing of the startup costs of getting it built in correctly and integrated correctly. Are there any other kind of. If someone is evaluating the same way that you just suggested. I guess I'll summarize myself here. You know, the impact on agents and or staff, the setup cost and the ongoing cost of running it. Just from a time attention perspective, it looks like something broke because the reporting looks messed up. Let me go track that down. And you know, just those kinds of like ongoing operational costs and then just the straight up hard cost of the subscription. Any other categories that you're considering when you're thinking about the cost benefit of Should I solve this problem in this way with a piece of tech that looks like this?

Yeah, great question. Two points there. One, I would say does it integrate with Fallout Boss? Because Fallout Boss has become like our team os. I mean it really is like how we power everything in our business. And so if there's a direct integration, that's always a bonus. But then if there's a way to integrate with a third party zapier, some other tool to get the benefits that we need to, then that is a high high on the evaluation list. And then I would say the other thing that you touched on that becomes really, it becomes hard to evaluate and I think easily Forgotten is how much, how much time is it truly going to take to update the system and maintain the system and like you said, troubleshoot a broken report. Because I think that it's very, I think that as operations professionals we can sometimes really think that something's a great idea because it's going to give us a higher level reporting or a higher level of transparency about our business or give our agents more tools. But it can easily become something that makes overall the organization less efficient and kind of heavy in a certain area. And so making sure that you really clearly understand what the whole, I guess, SOP would look like if you did implement that tool and that you have the resources, A to carry out all of that sop and B, again, that the result is going to be worth it. Because just to put in a system to create a report or to have a little bit more transparency usually in my experience results in over time that that system being either creating a lot of inefficiency in an organization or being sort of abandoned or forgotten over time because the time it takes to continue to maintenance it becomes sort of like a drag on the over staff and systems. So that's really a key piece for me and I've made mistakes in the past. I mean, it's not a perfect science where I can always evaluate that perfectly. And sometimes I'm trying to solve for a need that we have that, you know, I make the wrong choice. But I really try to evaluate that piece of things at a high level because that's where I've probably had the most missteps is underestimating how much time and energy it's going to take to keep a system running when the end result doesn't necessarily keep our agents being the most productive versions of themselves, if that makes sense.

Such a good caution in there. There's also another caution in there or reminder or recommendation, depending on where someone is with this idea of what is the system or process like. You know, we're going to, we're designing an SOP for this part of this thing. How do we do this around here, who's involved, et cetera. And so if you have a problem or an opportunity, it's related to some stage of the client experience at some level. And if you don't have that SOP without this new piece of tech, then you're not in a position to evaluate whether or not that new piece of tech is going to help in the the reminder or the caution you added is rewrite the SOP in advance based on what knowledge you have of that technology and is it actually better or not? And then that extended my thought to another question I wanted to ask you is I feel like you're taking a cautious and thoughtful approach and I don't know that how common that is, but I really appreciate your cautious approach to adding new stuff. And I think through that approach you're solving this question area I wanted to go into which is agent buy in and agent or staff buy in depending on what the tech is designed to do and like where it fits in the process, who's going to be accessing it, who's going to be reliant on it, who's going to be interfacing with it, who needs to be trained on it specifically. So whether it's agent or staff, you know, you need to create some amount of excitement. Hey, you remember how this used to happen this way? Well, good news, we're doing this thing and it's going to be so much better and now we're going to do the training on what it is like. Like I think your cautious approach and thoughtful approach has baked in. Why should a staff member or an agent be excited about this change which makes them, you know, brings them halfway down the road to being trained more effectively? A, is that true in your experience? And B, any other tips on creating buy in and adoption of tech? Because I know that's another key issue is we got this thing for our agents and only 30, 30% of them use it. There are a number of things that break down there. I'd love to know. I would assume yours is higher for a variety of reasons, but you know, share anything that that comes to mind with regard to getting buy in and adoption on the agent or staff side, depending on what the tech is.

Yeah, so kind of going back to what we've talked about before. If the tech solves a problem for us, then that introduction and adoption and training goes a lot smoother. If it's just a bell and whistle that I think is cool, those are the hardest ones for me to get adoption on. And so I would say that in the approach, in introducing that new concept to whether it be staff or agents really working on the presentation to make sure that they understand what the problem is we're trying to solve and how this system will solve it. And then in an ideal world, if I've done my due diligence, I have a pretty good idea of how we're going to implement it into our current system and maybe there's a step or two that we need to add somewhere. Along the way, or, you know, we need to, to modify our intake process, for instance, or something like that. But, but the change is relatively manageable. Anytime that I dig into something, a tech tool, and I start to get down that path and realize that we're going to need five days of training in order to make it work, that's usually when I really have to evaluate if there's going to be a benefit. And I would say that generally speaking, to address the adoption part of the question, you know, when we can solve a problem, that always goes better. But then what I found, and I've learned this from lots of coaches and my team lead and all kinds of people across our industry. You know, we have to remind ourselves that the skills that it takes to use tools to become more efficient are a learned habit. And so making sure that we have the systems and resources in place to introduce these tools to, especially as we've grown into a group of 18 people. For instance, if I'm introducing a new agent tool, I really try to take the approach of some sort of like a verbal presentation, so a webinar or some sort of introduction. Then I followed up with having a process document that a more visual agent can follow. I keep that information in our SOPs, but then also on our agent tools website so that they can go back and reference it. I mention it in our group chat channel often because I'm just wanting to remind people to get back to that. I'm talking to them about it, the tool in our one on ones, and asking them questions about how they're using it and if they've had any trouble implementing it. So, you know, a sports team who wants to win the championship, they're going to continue practicing throughout the entire season, the post season, the preseason. They're going to stay, you know, very dedicated to whatever they want to improve on. And I feel like in managing a group of people, that's often the mentality that we have to adopt is sort of continuous improvement. And when I was early in my career in this role, I guess I felt like I feel so redundant. I keep talking about this, but what I've learned over time is that people assimilate information very differently and at different times and they're available to take on information kind of in different settings, more easier than others. And so as we've grown, I've really had to adopt my technique to be sort of all encompassing and then also talk about it more than I really feel comfortable with. And so I'm a bit of a squeaky wheel But I'm always trying to bring it back to what problem we're aiming to solve and how our goal is to make our agents and staff more productive.

Yeah, I love that. And again, when you're solving a problem for them or with them, or taking something off their plate through this tool, they should be happy to hear about it. And it's a reminder of the value that you're providing and the thoughtfulness that you're putting into the process and the system and everything. I also like this idea of, you know, as you're getting exhausted of saying it again, it's just really starting to take hold and take root. These are habits, these are fundamental to the way we operate inside this organization. So you can't say it enough. I like this idea. You recognized different people have different learning styles, different environments are better, different mediums or media are better for some people than for others. You need to do it in small group, you need to do with the whole team. You need to do it one on one. And if these are well chosen, thoughtful selections, which you're obviously making and how you're designing your systems, then it should be a welcome conversation. The other thing you offered early on in that offering there is worth restating, which is an agent tools website, a place where people can go and get reminded of these things on their own. That's another way to teach. And then also the idea that you know, all the SOPs are in one place and that I assume anyone in the operation can access any of them at any time. Is that true?

Yeah. So we have a couple different places for that. Some of the early coaching and operations gurus that I followed when I was learning how to, to really ramp up this stage of my care as I got into team management were really just big on these, you know, keeping everything organized. And I had like years ago when I had the brokerage management role, I had created sort of foundation of this and I just find that like obviously SOP and procedures based person, I know not everyone is, but I wanted to make sure that those people who were wanting to follow that type of direction had the access to it. And so we have two different ways that we do that on the team. Now today we have sort of like an internal SOP repository that anyone on the team who is a staff member continually updates and RVAs use those SOPs. It's a pretty comprehensive library. But then we also keep just the agent facing tools in a, like a internal, like intranet. And so any agent on the team can go in and find lots of tools available to them. Everything from writing a purchase contract or tools that they need to do research on, you know, CCNRs or you know, information they need to find in order to write the contract all the way through. You know, how you what documentation is required by our broker, all kinds of things like that as well as then the sops on how to use our tools. So it's a very easy way for them to find the information they need if that's the way that they learn and the way that they seek information. But like I said, I try to keep it very you know, I'm constantly taking a position during our sales meeting to train on our most recent tool to give reminders. I would tell you Ethan, that one of the coolest things that's happened with Feb in the last few months, not few months, but I would say last year, is the ability to have a lot more widgets on our right hand side. So the tools that we do use, you know, I'm a big believer on top of mind. Like if you want a tool to be used, how do we keep it top of mind for our agents and staff? And with the ability to have some widgets and follow blasts that are right on your contact screen every time you open their contact profile, it's kind of a game changer because all of a sudden a tool that made it may have been hard to adopt in our first version. We now have a version 2, for instance of our real estate search app. And that real estate search app is front and center every time somebody goes into Fallout Boss now. And guess what? The adoption is higher this time around.

That's great. I'm sure the product team has heard that, but they would love to hear it again. I will share that with them directly. That feedback. And you mentioned, you know, not everyone is an operations person, but what I'll add to that is that everyone who wants to grow a business successfully needs an operations person. You also mentioned that early on as you're kind of getting your legs under you and figuring out how you wanted to do this role in this job. You mentioned some coaching and some resources I'd love for you before we go into our closing pairs of questions where you can answer one or the other where did you turn for? Or I guess two categories that I'd love to hear from you on. And you already mentioned the follow up Boss Success community and some of your fellow moderators among others. So maybe that one you've already answered. But if there are any other places you go that are credible sources for Technology insights and feedback and recommendations and ideas. That's one category. The other category is operations. Where would you point people who have maybe a really promising assistant who's doing operations at some level but is, you know, worth investing in? They think they can level up the whole organization by investing in this person. Places you'd recommend for credible information on tech Places you'd recommend for credible valuable information on operations and operations coaching and training.

Early in my, my, this phase of my career I was lucky enough to be connected with Emily Smith from the Weimart Group and she became kind of like my idol. And I thought wow, she's done so many amazing things. And so I literally kind of like stalked her online and DMed her and asked her if she would just have a couple quick calls with me just to help me kind of guide my, my career journey at that time. And she was kind enough to bring up the ops boss coaching program. And that is, is a really neat organization. There is. It's all operations professionals in real estate. And that was some of my earliest coaching in the role that I'm in. And I would say it was very foundational for just getting our operating systems in really tip top shape. And that was a community. But it was also like a conference that I attended, I think it was in 2021 and then a coaching program I was a part of. So really was a great community. So I would say for anyone who's in that admin role who's interested in operations or who wants to level up, there's a lot to offer there with ops bus coaching. And then I kind of moved on from there to some check black coaching that was operations focused and I've done quite a bit of different avenues there through some of the different amazing operators that he has attracted and pulled together. So I would say that that's another great place to just keep up with what John is up to at all times and then really, you know, tapping into a mentor. Emily, I asked her to coach me at one point and she said that's not really how I'm set up, but I'll answer any of your questions anytime. And so just finding somebody who you know, like to like their style, think that they're doing things in a more advanced way than you're doing is huge. Mastermind groups. I can't say enough about them. I've learned so much from all the mastermind groups that I'm a part of, constantly learning every day from either people's mistakes or people's triumphs. So that's been Just a really great way to learn in my career. And then I have to give a shout out to someone. Justin Benson has been kind of a mentor, but also he is just such a wealth of knowledge and such an interesting person. And from a tech standpoint, I would say that every time I get on the phone with Justin, whether it's for our organization to help us build a tool, we reduced our data entry this year with a huge. By. By a huge amount with an intake form. And his team is so awesome in helping us to get more efficient at all times. And every time I get off the phone with Justin, I have my mind blown by some anecdotal tip that he's given me. So I would say just finding smart people and making sure that you, you know, stay close to them and, and follow what they're up to, because there's a lot of tidbits there to help you grow as you. As you go forward in your recruiter.

There was a lot there. That was fantastic. So quick. Quick.

Yeah.

That was great. Justin Benson, Bara Agency. If you want to check him out online. He was our guest on episode 41, also a Tech Timber episode. Emily Smith, COO at Weimert Group Realty. Amazing human being and a great operator. She was our guest on episode 16 of the show. Christy Belt Grossman, the founder of Ops Boss, was on episode 23 of Real Estate Team OS. And so whether you're a team leader who's wondering who in my organization is my future director of OPS or VP of OPS or coo, she breaks down a whole system and format for that. In episode 23 of Real Estate Team OS, John Cheplak has built an amazing community and brought all kinds of people, not just top team leaders, but also operators, as you said, Shea. And he was our guest very early on one of our first episodes from Fubcon 2023. So that's really early in the. In the podcast feed and it's in a separate YouTube channel, so I love that rundown and it makes sense why we're in this conversation. Like, I knew I needed to meet you, but this, like, oh, yeah, obviously we needed to connect and do this, so this has been great. Three pairs of closing questions for you. You can answer one or the other. Some people like to answer both. That's fine too. These are your questions, but what is your very favorite team to root for besides the Highland Group? Or what is the best team you've ever been a member of besides the Highland Group?

Who I would say that's kind of A tough one. But my situational team that I'm a part of and rooting for at this time is the team Swifty Taylor Swift. I have two daughters, 10 and 6, and she kind of overruns our life most of the time. So I would say that that's definitely a fun and, and exciting thing to be a part of when you have young girls who are very interested in a pop icon like her.

Yeah, really funny answer, and a good one, too.

It's unique.

Like, I, I, I kind of categorize the responses now that I've asked it dozens and dozens of times, and I feel like that's kind of a new category you created with that one. So what is one of your most frivolous purchases? Or what's a cheapskate habit that you continue to hold on to even though you probably don't need to?

And my answer, both of those. I would say a frivolous purchase would be like a nice purse. I tend to, like, commemorate my career achievements to some degree with doing something frivolous, like rewarding myself with a, you know, a nice designer purse or designer wallet or something like that. It feels very fragile, but it's also something that, over time, has helped me remember those milestones in my life and in my career. And then I would say a funny habit that I still have is I just keep all leftovers. Like, I'm just like a leftover hoarder. And it's really funny. Like, I will consider keeping things that are, like, very small amounts of food, but I'm like, oh, well, maybe I'll eat it the next day. And so I put it in a container in the fridge.

One of my favorite things about the frivolous question is that it turns out that while they do seem frivolous on the surface, so many of them make so much sense. And I love the way that you put those two things together. Like, it's frivolous, but it really isn't. But it kind of is. But it isn't, because it has this kind of different meaning. When you, Shay, are investing your time and attention in learning, growing, and developing, what are you doing? Or what does that look like? Or when you're investing time and attention into resting, relaxing, and recharging, what are you doing? What does that look like?

I love to digest information, and so I'm constantly, you know, just trying to keep up with all the amounts of information that are coming all of our directions in this modern world that we live in. But catching a podcast, at least I try to do one or two a week. I like to hop on a webinar or two that is maybe something that I might be new information to me or like a new tech tool that I might think I might be curious about, even just to learn from the founders or people on the webinar who might have anecdotal information to share about the real estate industry as a whole. Sometimes that's all I learned, but then sometimes I'll learn about a great tool. So really just trying to soak up as much information and build that into my schedule in a productive way, I guess, and making sure that I'm not oversaturated with that kind of thing. But like, keeping up, I guess the Fallout Boss community helps me with that a lot as well. And then relaxing, I would say that, you know, I'm a busy mom and a busy career, and so the relaxation piece is something that I struggle with to keep. Keep in balance. But I love to, you know, get a nice walk in or get, you know, some time to do yoga or Pilates or some type of exercise that can kind of help calm my mind and give me a little bit of time for myself. So that's. That's what I try to carve out for on a regular basis.

I love it. I think some people imagine resting, relaxing, or recharging as laying down somewhere by a pool or by a beach or something. But it's nice, too.

I mean, I would.

I would say, yeah, it is, it is. But the idea of, you know, the mind, body, like the physical activity as part of a full relaxation, like, I find activity very relaxing as well.

Yeah, I think it's kind of. It helps me feel well rounded in the relaxation category. Although laying on a beach definitely goes in that category as well.

Good. Totally fair. Especially as an Arizonan. Do we call you Arizonans?

Yes, Arizonans or Zonies.

Okay, good.

Depending on, you know, who you are. In California, there's. In Southern California, where I went to college, there's like a term and they call the influx of Arizonans in the summer at the Zonies. Being. Being here. So that's good.

I'm glad I guessed right. And I appreciate that. Kind of like the insider dynamic, too.

Yeah.

Cool. Well, I'm definitely going to link up down below for everyone watching and listening in YouTube or Apple Podcasts or Spotify or watching or listening on the website realestateteamos.com, we always write these episodes up so you can get, like, reminders and even end points in the YouTube videos of different things. That Shay talked about throughout this conversation. But I also drop links down there. So there's going to be a link specifically to the follow up Boss Success community. But Shay, where else should I send people who want to learn more about you? Some of the things we talked about about the Highland Group or anything else? Like what link should I add?

Yeah, for sure. Well, I'll give you these links to provide, but I have a website, shayharon.com I have some information about the TC system that I built because I do get asked about that often on that website as well as some of the other speaking engagements and lots of free tools that I've given out over the years in some of the different panels I've been on and things like that. And then the Highland Group is Prescottareaproperty.com and yeah, we'll make sure that those get linked below.

Awesome. Thank you so much. I appreciate you and I hope you have a great rest of your day.

Me? Yeah. Thank you too, Ethan. Thanks for having me.

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