[Techtember] 044 Transaction Coordination and Your Tech Stack with Lisa Vo

You can add a ton of speed and efficiency to your real estate business with technology solutions, obviously, but you need to make them work together. The good news is there are low code and no code ways to do this. You don't need to be a programmer, you don't need to be a software developer. You can do this on your own and to lower that barrier to welcome you into this conversation to get specific tool recommendations, I have a great Tech Timber episode right now for you with Lisa Vo. Lisa does transaction coordination in multiple states for clients of Hoozy AI. She does follow up boss consulting and she does operations coaching for a handful of teams. In this conversation, of course, she takes us deep into transaction coordination, sharing how to make the function better and what tools and technology we need at various stages of team development. She also shares some really fun stuff around how to know if you have too much tech or too little tech and what to do in each of those cases. Specifically, specifically how to undo untangle that Franken stack of technology that you may have if you have too many tech tools. This is a great conversation, a helpful conversation, a tech timber conversation. Check this one out. Featuring Lisa Vo no matter where your.

Business is today or where you want to take it, you'll get there faster and more profitably with an operating system. Welcome to Team os, your guide to starting, growing and optimizing real estate team. Here's your host, Ethan Bute.

Lisa, thank you so much for joining me. I'm super excited to have you in particular as part of this Tech Timber series because you have such a depth of passion and expertise in this zone. So I'm just really excited to have you on the show.

I'm so excited to be here. I always watch Team OS on my drive or whenever I have free time. So super excited to be here to help share and just partake in it.

I always love having a viewer or listener on the show as a guest, so I appreciate you investing your time and I'm glad it's useful to you. So you probably know this question is coming then, which is what is a must have characteristic of a high performing team?

I think definitely flexibility. In our industry, things changes all the time. So there's not one set standard way of doing things. It never goes how you expect it to. So being flexible, not getting your emotions involved and just knowing that hey, it's going to work out at the end of the day.

Talk a little bit about that tension. I mean obviously one of the things that's required to build an efficient and successful business and Certainly one that has the ability to be scaled is some of that standardization and standard operating procedures. Standards are what allow us to be efficient and scale, but they also, you know, in certain instances we may need to violate them or it's okay to deviate. Like that seems like attention to me.

It is just a person who writes a lot of operations, SOPs, things like that. There are things that, by the book, that we should be doing in an ideal unicorn, perfect transaction. Then we have this other really long SOP of when things go south.

When.

We deviate from that path. What are the scenarios? If you ever do conditional logic, if you ever build things and make that has a route and a workflow, hey, it could go one of two ways. If this, then that. If this, then that. So building that into our SOPs has been like the hardest because you've got to think of every fire, every wall, and then train somebody what to do to respond to that. Right. Like, you don't really know what to do in a fire until you're in a fire. Right. I don't have a fire extinguisher. I didn't know that there was an expiration date on it. Right. So those are just things I think people don't really know. But every single time we have a use case, an instant something happens. We document it. Having team meetings and talking about this happened to us at one time or this happened to us yesterday, how do we prevent that from happening in the future? And then work your way backwards from there.

Really well done. I also like that you introduce this idea that there's sometimes a gap between the theoretical and the real or the experienced. And, you know, we can teach people in theory, but it's not until they actually face the thing that they really understand. Oh, yeah, I'm really gl. I have some preparation for this. And hopefully it's not the kitchen or the house on fire. Okay, so you've been on a mega team, like one of the top teams in Texas. You've been a solo agent, you've been an operations leader. You've helped agents and teams of all kinds with their tech stacks. I would love for you to do two things. A stitch these together into a timeline and story. Give us a little bit of your background, you know, over the past, I think, dozen plus years in real estate and then kind of as a subtopic there. How many of those things are you actually doing today? Because you strike me as a very dynamic person who's involved in a number of things.

Oh, that's so sweet. Thank you so much so, yeah. My real estate journey has been about 13 years. I transitioned from hospitality hotel management that kind of naturally guided me into real estate. But a really good friend of mine, Alex Resende in Houston, he brought me into the real estate world, said, hey, I'm drowning, I need an admin. And he knew my spiritual gift was administration. And so he has solicited me for many years. I had turned him down when I had an opportunity. I said, I'm ready to get into real estate. Knew nothing about it. Became a real estate office assistant and just kind of had him guide me through the whole process and was building operations along the way because I was learning the process. And so I was their right hand person for many, many years. Became an office manager, got my license a year afterwards just because I read, write, speak Vietnamese and they needed a Vietnamese person to do real estate transactions for the team. And so kind of was doing transactions just on my own with some, you know, of my sphere. I never did Legion. I still don't do Legion. T today are all of mine are word of mouth referral. So that's how I got in production as well as like managing an office and a team. And so I found Follow Boss along the way. Very early on, I think it was 2015, one of my agents had brought it to us and said, hey, I really like the CRM. It's really helped me keep organized and we think we can use it for the team. So we did use it for a while. We felt like agents weren't using it as the best of their ability. So then we took it away for about six months and. And then we had agents screaming and crying saying we want Follow Up Boss back. So that was the only time in my life I left Follow Up Boss for a short six month period, came back and never looked back since then. But going along the journey, I went from the mega team after 10 years being with them to working with smaller teams throughout the Texas market. Migrated to Denver after I got married about three years ago. Had a couple of babies in between. And so I was just in between real estate and trying to figure out what to do. One day Elena just messaged me on Facebook and said, hey, we think you know some things about deals. Would you like to do Bosses in Action webinar? So I did about three years ago and kind of launched me into this real estate tech space where I became like a approved consultant. And so that's kind of, kind of what I do now. I consult agents about their tech stack, what to use Specifically for Follow Boss, specifically about foreign transaction management. Because that's more. My heartbeat is. And then. So yeah, so I, as of today, I am a transaction coordinator for four to five different states with Hoozy. They are a prop tech company coming up and they use, you know, a lot of different tools. Follow Up Boss is one of them. As, as well as like open and close, a couple of tools that we use. And I do that on a daily. I do my consulting with Follow Up Boss still on, you know, a side project kind of thing. And I'm also coaching operations for a couple of teams as well.

Awesome. And you're a mom.

Yes, I am a mom.

That's a lot. That's fantastic. I mean, obviously you had a bias toward or a default toward or an appreciation or leaning toward operations, transaction coordination, deals. When and how did that bleed and blend into tech? What I want to kind of like start moving the conversation into a little bit is what role did tech play in this shift for you and in general for, you know, the agent and team community?

Yeah, it was almost from day one just being in administration and that was kind of like office management was my thing. I needed to always stay organized, even my personal life. So from early on, adopting Google sheets and moving that from like paper files in real estate to just, you know, digital online, Google Drive, we've always used that, you know, from the beginning. And so just transitioning a lot of agents over to that. Like, hey, what if there is a fire, right? And you lose all your files, right? Or you're halfway across, you know, the, the city and you got to get to one of your files and it's sitting on your desk, right? So having that collaboration real time, I update something, my agents see it, my broker, my rainmaker sees it. Having that collaboration tool, Google Drive and Dropbox has really brought like collaboration to that. And it kind of just keeps building from there. Right. That's how I knew Follow Up Boss was really like the best for us. Because anytime I could update anything in there, emails would be real time coming over. I don't have to say, hey, Ethan, can you pull on the side of the road and forward me that email? Because I don't have access to it or I'm locked out. Right. Having that real time collaboration was just really, really crucial. So that turned operations into, hey, I need at any time, at any point, at 2 in the morning, my agent needs something. How do I get them the quickest? And using tech into real estate just makes the whole process faster.

So when you're Talking with an agent or a team about their tech stack. What kind of questions are you asking? What are you looking for? We'll kind of make maybe move into common problems that you see here too. But like you know, when you're sizing up what's going on, like someone engages you, they have a question. I assume that you probably look at the thing as a whole, not just like you know, you get a question about this one thing but you obviously have been involved enough to know that it's probably not just this one thing, it's involved bigger for. For someone who's like is my tech in a good place right now? How do you kind of size that up scope it kind of. What questions are you asking? What level do I assume you start? High. But like what are you looking for when you're looking to say do these people have the right stuff set up about the right way to do what they want to do? Yeah.

So usually I start off with my consultation calls like tell me how long you've been a follow up boss user and tell me what your pain points are. Those are usually the very basic questions I start off with. First of all, how long they've been using it tells me how much they may or may not know about follow up boss. What features are available? If they're a long term user, maybe they haven't fully utilized follow up boss. And that's what I hear a lot is like I've had it but I don't think I'm using it to my fullest capacity. Right. Somebody brand new may not know other features like custom fields, automations, things like that. So having that second question of what is your pain point? What would you like me to solve today? And you're right, it's almost like a band aid kind of peeling back the onion. Like what is it that's really deeply rooted into your operations and that's where we usually end up is like I'm Talking about within 15, 20 minutes what your full operations is, what your setup of your team, what your makeup or your DNA is. Is it you by your solo agent wearing all the hats, Are you bringing on a virtual assistant pret soon or do you have 20 virtual assistants and 100 person team and you're just trying to get better, organized and maybe like look at cost right budget for your tech stack? Do I really need everything? I usually have one or the other. Either somebody doesn't use tech enough or somebody uses tech too much that has way too much and maybe needs some trimming done. So really look at how everything's organized. I usually like to do blueprint for them. So I will take their follow up boss. Usually if they hire my services, they get a Google sheet. I organize what stages they use, what deal stages they use, what email templates. And at any time when you're trying to reorganize and restructure your follow up boss, you'll have that be to be able to get back to you and take a look at that. But yeah, usually those two are the main things that will get me under the hood of somebody's operations.

Cool. I would love for you to give advice to those two people. First of all, describe them so people can say, oh yeah, that is me. I thought that might be me, but it is me. I would love for you to talk to in either order. You prefer the person with too little tech. What are some of the characteristics? What are some of, like what are they suffering? What are they experiencing because they have too little tech? And maybe what steps can they take moving forward? Then on the other side, people have too much tech. How did they get there and what benefit? Like what's their process for kind of pruning and thinning? So take those in either or you prefer. But I'd love for you to kind of give some, you know, diagnose this person or allow them to self diagnose and then maybe give them some advice to start moving in the right direction. Yeah.

So for the person with the low tech, right. Because that's usually most of our friends and family, specifically in my world. But they're just like, I can't remember if I have an appointment on Thursday or oh man, I missed this meeting that was really important and I had written it down. Those are usually the commonalities that I see that they are just losing track of things. It's all in their head and they probably have an incredible brain. But at some point you've got to lose something to gain something to put that input in. So not having to remember where you put that, or not relying on one person to have that one source of truth, you'll need to be able to delegate that to other people. So if you imagine if I were to take Ethan out and you're gone for three months, you went on vacation, right. And I got to take over your business and run the way exactly the way you want it operated, or even that 60% operations. Right. I need to be able to pick your brain and say this is how Ethan would do it. Right. Or hey, these are the notes that Ethan had from the listing appointment or from that conversation he had. So one, the dialer, the recording, everything inside Follow Boss, all the features that are automatically there that come in day one from your account is automatically going to be so much more helpful, right? I no longer have to pull to the side of the road. I don't have to take notes, I just have to remember, hey, I set aside 7 to 8pm I'm going to go through my Follow boss, listen back to all my phone calls and then now with the AI call summaries they'll be able to do so, right? And pull out those summaries and say hey, these are my next tasks based off of this phone call, right? So that alone would just help with just those who are low tech that don't have anything use a feature side follow up boss. It's there for you. I pay for the dialer myself as an add on. So if you're lucky enough to have one of those included plans that have it, utilize it. I cannot stress that enough. So I no longer use my cell phone number. I don't give it to anyone except for my family. Sometimes my family doesn't even get my personal number. They get my follow up boss number. So I would ingrain to people user dial or number use the emails connected all to follow up boss. Flip side, someone who has too much tech. Probably I'm more on that side of things just because I research so much. It may be convoluted, it may be too complex, right? And nothing connects and syncs together. So I've become more like an automations expert where I use zapier or I use use make.com or even like webhooks. Now I really dove deep into the Fallout Boss API documentation. If you don't want to know what it is, find somebody who does and talk to somebody about API documentation. But definitely like just connecting things very easily. Like hey, I have a new email that came in and I want that to go to my Google Sheets because that's where I'm tracking all of my incoming email. Right? You can very easily connect those two together. But sometimes we have Google Sheets, we have Excel, we have a SmartSuite, we have Airtable, we have 10 different places that we're storing things but nothing's connecting together. We don't know why we have that information, we don't know what we're going to do with that information and we don't know who's checking up on that information. Is it valid? Is it invalid? Right? Did somebody put in a test dummy account in my follow up boss and now my data is skewed, right? So having too much is tech is one, a problem because you don't know where all your workflow is and you can't expect somebody else to come in behind you and understand all of that tech stack and how it works. Two, probably the biggest thing is financial. Like if you take a look at your credit card bill or your debit card bill, you can take a look at your bank account and just see, wow, how much am I really paying for these things that I'm actually not using on a day to day? That's usually where my first conversation starts with people who have too much tech. Like I'm spending too much and I don't know if it's really useful or not.

Okay. So I know that there's someone who's like, oh yeah, I did that a couple of months ago. I didn't actually make any decisions on it, but there were a couple 999s. There was a 1799, there were a bunch of 49.9 nines, there was a 79.99, there's a 129.99 for that person. So you know, they're, they obviously are running a business. They're obviously doing well enough or have aspirations to do better such that they're investing in the business. Some of that investment is going into and technologies. We've all agreed now and I'm sure this person who's watching or listening is like, yeah, that is me. Understands that they have a situation that they need to improve. But this is also one of those flying the plane while we're trying to fix it or driving the car while we're trying to fix the engine situations. They're actually running a business that's healthy enough or has strong enough aspirations to be investing in it. How do we get into this? Let's just say to characterize it very negatively, like monstrosity that we've built. How do we start figuring out what to pull out and what to leave in while we're still trying to operate this business that's built on this tech stack? Like, how do we do that? See what your contacts are doing on Zillow. Monday, December 8th join follow up Boss for a sneak peek webinar where you'll be among the first to see how to get Zillow search, searching, browsing and saving insights for the contacts in your database directly inside. Follow Up Boss. So when a past client of yours gets that late night and extra bedroom would be really great right now. Kind of feeling you'll know before anyone else who's showing high intent to buy or sell insights about what's happening right now. So you can deliver a personalized touch at scale. See what your contacts are doing on Zillow. Monday, December 8th at 1pm Eastern, 10am Pacific. Learn more and sign up through the link in the description below. You're in your podcast app. Check out the description of this episode right down below. It's the first line and the first link. Now back to the conversation.

Yeah, I would start by listing out. I usually start just with Google sheets like all the tech stack that they have, right? Regardless of how much they're spending and things like that. And I'm usually asking what are we using this for? And if they can't respond what it's for and what the purpose is, it's probably the first thing to go right? Because I'm very guilty of this. I am on appsumo. My husband probably shouldn't look at my credit card bill and how much I spend on that, but I'm always trying the newest things like I have calendly and I have Tidy Cow. Do I really need both or can I look for a low code, no code free solution? Right? So if a lot of people don't know, you can use Google appointment slots, right to build out one on one appointments and doesn't have full complexity like some of these calendly apps and stuff, but you can totally make that switch. And so having someone that can come in as a consultant or take a look at it. I know me, Alaina, quite a few of my other mastermind friends out there, they do free systems analysis, tech stack analysis and we'll just go through and like hey like do you really need this? Yes or no? And then here's an alternative that you could possibly use that you don't have to pay for. And then when you feel like oh I hit my limit, I need more settings, more advanced features, then go into a paid account. But I usually start with a free seven day trial. If it doesn't entice me enough to like put in my credit card to want to keep it, then I won't move forward with a paid plan. So I'm still on a free slack plan. I'm still using Gmail on my personal things. I've never had to really upgrade. So just learning how to use those tools in a good way. But also like the biggest thing is probably data like management. So for instance, if you have a free Gmail, I'M sure most real estate agents have, because I've seen all the Facebook messages about when we had to switch over to Google Workspace or Outlook. But if you're on a free Gmail account, you only have X amount of storage in your Google Drive or X amount of emails that you're able to put into your Gmail. Once you hit that limit, you stop getting emails and you stop being able to add, you know, more documents. Very similar to like Apple and their storage unit, right? So then you got to upgrade. If you just did a little bit of management and cleanup. Hire a virtual assistant had hire Fiverr, hire your kid for the summer, right? Go through and clean up things that you don't really need. Maybe files are like 10 years old and you're still keeping inspection reports and listing photos from 10 years ago that maybe is just eating up a lot of that space. So looking at cleaning up most of that, even just same thing with Follow up Boss, your CRM, make sure those are cleaned out at least once a month or most at the most, probably every three months.

You mentioned off the top of that response, a term low code, no code. I would love for you to kind of like peel into a few things you've mentioned so far. So for folks watching and listening, what I want to do is kind of at least lower the mental barrier and make this seem more approachable. You may not have the disposition of lisa, you may not have the background of lisa, you may not have the passion, and you probably don't have the expertise of LISA yet. But I think some of this stuff is more approachable than it seems. To be clear, you have no background as a software developer.

True, true.

Okay, so low code, no code solutions, APIs, give that a little bit of definition. Zapier and make are essentially rules engines where you can connect two different things. If it doesn't integrate directly into Follow up Boss or whatever CRM you're using. You can use Zapier as kind of like a middleware between two other pieces of software to create automations. I would love for you to just kind of like lower the barrier in whatever way you've done for other people before. Like, no, you can do this. This is more approachable than you think. You don't need to be a software developer to make the software that we have available more powerful and make it work together and to make it unified in all of that. Now you may wind up hiring someone to help you do this stuff obviously, but make it approachable for people who are like at the cusp like they're basically technically savvy, they're just unfamiliar. They're just like honestly in the purest sense ignorant of what's on the other side of this doorway. They may not even know the door exists.

Start with the follow boss Automations that are already built in that is technically a low code no code, right? If you understand like hey, if the stage changes I can trigger this to happen. So it's what we call in the conditional logic world if then that scenario, right? And so that's a fantastic way. That's how I kind of started building my follow up boss when Automations came out and I'm like this is amazing. What can I do? When I add a tag this happens, right? So very similar to low code no code. There's a lot of tools out there and there's a whole like space, whole world that's called low code no code. For what we call citizen developers, you'll hear that term probably in Google or Apple development. Those are people who are using tech tools, right? And they don't know how to code. They're not the developer. They don't know Python, they don't know JSON, they don't know a lot of these coding. But if I use some kind of tool like a software retool I probably say is also really popular for those who are low code no code and Bar agency actually introduced me to retool but Zapier is probably the most popular. I probably start there. There is an AI bot in there that you can literally just speak out what you want. Like hey, I want to connect my follow boss leads to my Google Sheet. Every time a new lead comes in, I want it to be added as a new row to Google Sheets. You can literally just talk it out with the microphone or type it out and it'll automatically build what that Zapier flow would look like. So it would say new deal added to follow boss, then trigger to add it to Google Sheets as a new row. And then you could also do something extra like when a new Google Sheet row is added, then zap that over to Slack and mention this channel, right? So very simple, simple flows. It doesn't have to be complex. And as you start building that's probably the best way I learn is I just have to sit down, watch a couple YouTube videos on how to use Zapier, how to use make and then that way I go and I'm just building certain things like how can I take this thing that I'm putting in two, three times in different Technology stacks. Right, tech stacks. And how do I put those softwares together? Using Zapier. Does Zapier have something for me? Great. It doesn't. Let me try and make is there something over there? I can build over there. The other popular one is API Nation. So those between those three, one of those solutions should probably work. If it's not there, then I would go and talk to my developer cousin or friends that would just say hey, I'm trying to do this. Do you think you have time to build it for me without charging me an arm and a leg? So yeah, I have gotten to know a little bit of code but I don't like it. That's not what I want to do on a day to day. So usually somebody out smarter than me will help. But the follow up is fantastic for that. We have a lot of really smart people who do low code, no code, or even develop their own code to make it work. And so anytime put it out there. Search the forum. If somebody hasn't responded, put it out there. Somebody will respond to you.

So good. Okay, I've got a couple like housekeeping items that you've created for me. First, you've mentioned Elena. That's Elena Key. She was our guest on episode 34. You mentioned Bara Agency, Justin Benson, founder and CEO as part of this Tech Timber series. So be sure to check that episode out as well. You mentioned the Follow Up Boss success community which you are a moderator of. Thank you so much for your commitment to do that. If to you want are using Follow Up Boss and you're not in that community and you're provoked by some of these episodes in particular, fantastic resource but it's just great to be a part of Anyway, if you haven't joined it, you should. They're like which is kind of borderline shocking. There are over 100,000 follow up boss users and I think this is not a small number but only 20 some thousand of them are in that group. So like that's you know, one in five. So I love what you broke down here. I would like to speak now to that person who's like I'm just not feeling any of this. There are a couple of solutions. One, you've already mentioned it there, there are people available who are ready, willing and able to do a discovery, diagnosis, prescription with you and actually execute the solution. You are one of those people. You could also in theory I would love just your take on this because you've, you've been in organizations of all sizes. One of the things you Said, like wearing all the hats. And I think this is true of transaction coordination, managing or building a tech stack, doing your own bookkeeping, et cetera. Like, as soon as I started understanding the real estate business much deeper than I ever did about a dozen years ago, that was one of the greatest sensitivities I had toward a solo agent is how much they have to do and how much they have to be responsible for. Even if you're not doing some of this work, you're still like the general contractor on. On all of these different projects in all of these different zones, and you may not even speak that person's language, so to speak. Like, are you getting snowed in this deal? You have no idea because you don't even know what questions to ask. You don't understand half the words they're using. You know, obviously, this is real estate team os. I think one of many reasons a solo agent might join a team is so that they don't even have to think about what's my tech stack, how does it work, work? Do I have these things set up correctly? When someone joins a team that's operating really well, a lot of this is taken care of. Thoughts on that observation?

Exactly true. Exactly what you're talking about. And that's why I went to join a TC team instead of doing it on my own. I did have my own TC business, and it's a lot, right? You're lonely, you have no one to complain to. It's just you. And if you fail, it's. It's all in you, right? So having someone as a backup, someone just to pawn ideas off of and just to be in the back corner being your cheerleader, that's what I'm on a team in Denver, and I'm on the team, but I don't take leads from them. But I'm part of what they call community. So it's fantastic. Like, I pick and choose what I want for my makeup of what I need at exactly where I am. Almost like how we piece together, like, follow boss and what I need on. On today's operations, right? So same thing with the team structure over there. And it's been fantastic, Right? Being on a team allows you flexibility to, like, say, I want an office, but I want to go whenever I need to. Right. I don't want to go every first of the month for every team meeting. I'm still keeping up with what's going on with my community, but I travel a lot, I'm wearing multiple hats, I'm doing multiple businesses. I'M a mom, so I can't always make it to the office on Wednesdays when we have team meetings. Right. But staying connected and true to someone who's relevant, up to date, top team in the, in the state, it's been fantastic for me to ride along with that journey and pick what I need at the time that I need it the most. So definitely having a team with their own tech stack that already has a blueprint that's already carrying those financials. And I think we talked about this before as well, like those splits, sometimes you think it's really high for a team, but you also have to remember, like most teams team, like leaders and rainmakers, they're not really profiting a lot of the agent. Right. If you're an agent that's doing a couple of deals a year, you definitely are not profiting from that agent. It's a lot of time, a lot of resource. You're taking up a seat in the follow up boss tech stack and other tools that they're providing. And so having someone grow alongside with you is. It's plus or minus. Right. You don't know which way that agent's gonna go. But definitely I think teams are fantastic. You're gonna probably see more teams develop over time because it is hard being by yourself, doing everything by yourself and not having that expertise, that counsel that maybe a broker, team leader, owner would provide for you.

Yeah, really good call out there. And I especially appreciate the call to splits. I mean, there are the two main objections I hear over and over again. One of them is like freedom slash ego slash disposition. Someone that just doesn't play that well with others, or they really prefer doing it their own way, or they just don't like following the protocols that someone else has set up. That's one reason someone would struggle to be on a team. I know we're outside the bounds of tech right now. And then the other category being splits, they're like, oh, that just looks really, really expensive. But I think a lot of people haven't given thought to what you described there, which is like, it's the cost benefit. It's like it's not just a higher split, it's a higher split because you're getting a lot more for it. And that means you have to, to think about less, execute less, figure out less, and you can focus on what you do best. I feel like an agent in a team that's operating really well is basically paying for the opportunity to spend a heck of a lot more time doing what a sales Agent does best, which is connect with people, have meaningful conversations, and create contracts and closings.

Yeah, exactly.

Cool. Transaction coordination. This is a big part of your story. I think you probably have a greater depth of understanding and expertise than a lot of folks. What is really good transaction coordination characterized by and give a couple tips for? Let's just say an agent or a team leader wondering, is this going as well as it could should? Would, you know, like, I mean, obviously, if things are falling apart or they're very inefficient or, you know, clients don't love the experience. These things are obviously problematic. But, like, how do you characterize really good transaction coordination? And then let's kind of move into a couple key pieces, whether it's tech or process or culture or roles or positions that can help really improve a TC function.

Yeah. Characterizations of a good tc, definitely detailed, very organized. If you're looking on the disc profile, they're usually like a C, or sometimes an S, but definitely a C or even like a D. And so those are what you're looking for, but basically somebody who can take the task, execute it really well without probably asking a lot of questions. Right. It's just a really long task list. They've got a hundred of them in there, and they can just plow through them. Right. And they will revert back to the agent if needed. Right. So a really good tec. Some of them may be licensed, some of them may not be licensed. And depending on what state, what market, you can take a look at that. But those who are licensed, like, I'm licensed in two states. That's only just because I have done some of my own production. I've been through that process in the trenches with the agent. I've had files canceled. I've had files come back from the dead. What do you do from that point? Right. And so I had to really organize myself, and that's how I found my love of being a TC is like. Like, I knew those were the things, but I loved more of the paperwork, Checking off the task, making sure everyone's on track. Communications are being sent out at the right time to the right people. How do I handle clients who are just freaking out a week before closing and want to, like, pull out? Right. Like, how do you manage those things? So having that really close relationship with the agent, with the rainmaker, with the brokerage, with the compliance team, like, everyone involved. Right. Even title companies and lenders, like, you have to play nice with them. It's a relationship business. Right. So having a TC that's resourceful. That has. Even if somebody hasn't been in, you know, the TC business for a long period of time, but maybe they've been an agent and they know how real estate works or they grew up around it. Right. Because their parents were in real estate. Right. Like just being able to follow up on things and tracking those responses like hey, title commitment came in yesterday. Does somebody read through schedule C? Right. Did. Does my agent even know what a schedule C is? Right. Walking them through that and explaining and having the patience of saying this is what you're looking for, this is what a title commitment is. I will give you my 2 second version of it and then if you want more details, let me connect you with our title company, who's Preferred and they will have a whole class for you on it. I will usually push them towards CE training, but I will have the short condition version for them if they don't know. So I tend to be the source of truth for a lot of these documents. Like what is this? What is a lien? What is a. Why do we need a power of attorney? What is an estate sale? Right. A TC really goes through a lot of those processes along with an agent and they can say, hey, this happens to my agent without giving too much detail and then transitioning over to kind of help the agent. Like, like this is who you should talk to. Probably your broker. Or next would probably be a real estate attorney or next the title company or go back to the lender. So just having that consultant, right hand person that says I'm there to support you, I've got your back. Let's get through this file together. Right. No matter how hard it is. So sometimes we're up 11 o', clock, 12 o', clock. Just like the agent writing offers and you know, working the file just like you are. So having a good tc. I don't understand work life balance is a real thing. So don't work your TCs to death. But usually they're right there in the trenches with you. So having a good CC that understands documents, understands contractual law and things like that, keeping up to date with the changes, especially with the NAR settlement coming up, what are those things that are going to happen in our market? Right. And then pushing that out to our agents so our agents know that the changes are coming. That's probably coming from your broker, but that should also probably come from your tc.

Really good. I love this idea of reinforcing important things through the TC function. Not just, you know, top down, but permeating the organization. I love that detail you added there at the end. From a, from a software perspective, from a tools and solutions perspective, I know some people are have built very robust TC solutions directly inside Follow Up Boss. I also know that there are a lot of integrated, directly integrated or kind of like zapier integrated solutions. Give, give folks just kind of a lay of the land of what some of the software support solutions are. I mean, by the way, I just mean software to support your TC function. Give a snapshot of like what does that scene look like in general? What are some of the tools that people might consider if they're looking to improve the function.

Yeah, so a TC role is usually very task based, very heavy on checklists, right. Things to do, things to check off. So most people usually start with old school style, just paper and pen, right. They'll write down all their tasks that they need to do if it's a buyer. This is what I do when I have a new contract. This is a seller. This is what happens when I have a new listing. Some people automatically migrate that over to probably Google Sheets because again it's online, it's collaborative, anyone can check off checkboxes, make little notes. So you can start there free. No very low barrier into that. And then some people will probably upgrade to a project management tool. Probably like Trello or something. Right. Especially if you're a visual person. You can definitely see just like our deals board inside of Follow Up Boss. Which is why I like that Kanban style. You can see exactly where you are with each pipeline and go through there. At some point you will outgrow that. Right? When you're managing probably 15, 20 files a month, that system will outgrow you. Right? Because now I have to check 20 different Google Sheets every single day. Oh, this one update happened. I forgot to go back to that Google sheet. Or heaven forbid somebody accidentally deletes my Google Sheet and then I got to recreate it. That has happened. So just things like that. But yeah, other tools when you get more involved and deeply into it. I started using Follow Up Boss. I saw that there were just some really great features that I could could utilize to my own advantage. So I gimme it. I started using custom fields, building out every single data point I needed in my contract, just storing it there. That allows me and my agents to visibly see every data point at any point without them having to call me at 9 o' clock at night and then also emails. I could see everything there. Text messages between clients we could see visibly there. But also on My right hand side they can see all my tasks that I built that are still outstanding or if I'm on hold, I put a note there that says hey, I'm waiting for the appraisal. We've got an issue with the value. Right. And I tag the agent so they know to respond to it. So just that collaboration tool again without having to pay for outside system. That was fantastic. Again once you've gotten to about 20 to 30 files, you're looking at about a thousand tasks a day. You probably have outgrown that system. So things that I use now, I still use follow up on one of my markets in Texas. Open A Close is what I've migrated to. It's very robust with automations. I can associate a task with an email to be triggered to be going out. Automatically attaches also my files and then also it will have what we call smart block which is great. If there's a cash deal, remove the lender, remove the appraisal information, same email but that template goes out. So just having that in my repertoire has been fantastic. Lots of other transaction management tools out there. You could build your own within Airtable, which some of my friends have done. I've also kind of built a TC system in there as well. There's also brevity, there's TC docs. There's just so much out there for transaction management. Just google the software and you'll be able to find a bunch. But my heartbeat has always been if I can not get it to connect follow up boss. I'm probably not using it again, Follow.

Up boss success community. Great place to learn from the other people what they're using, why and how they like it. In general. I don't love the idea of a tool based or a category based question like wide open teed up but again that fellow boss success community is pretty well curated and everyone has that same sensitivity you do Lisa, which is does it work seamlessly with my CRM. So if you're a follow up boss user. There you go. That was great. I appreciate that pass there. I would love for you to go really high level. The real estate team model, how has it changed in the 13 plus years you've been in the business? You've already mentioned a little bit about where you think it's going, but I'd love for you to kind of like double down on that like high level past, present, future of teams from your perspective 13 years into the business.

Yeah, starting out brokerages were really big. Everybody wanted to be a big brand brokerage and it was a physical office that we had to go to and we had you know, standups every day and you know, monthly meetings. You had to be there X amount of training and everything. You've seen a lot of that grow into like the cloud based real estate offices, right. Where you can be anywhere in the world, right. And hang your hat there and still have support, still have like, like a team that you could build underneath or sponsor and things like that. What I'm seeing now more is like the team Rich model and we talk about that a lot on the Team OS channel. And I think that's where that's kind of the future. Right. Like I'm a solo agent. I tried that for a little bit. I want to be like associated with the team but not fully engaged. Like I have to be like handheld by a brokerage and have like a set amount of days or rules and things I have to, to follow. Right. So I kind of want to have my freedom but as well belong to something that allows me support whenever I need it at the time that I need it. So that's where I'm seeing a lot of teams offering that kind of support. I'm here when you need me. I'm non existent if you don't. Right. And so that's a great way to I guess mold the real estate industry. I think people do really need to stay connected with whoever their broker supervisor is like on file. Know about the changes that are happening in our industry. But don't disassociate yourself just because you want to save a few bucks. Right. Boutique brokerages are fantastic for those who know how to run operations. Right. And so it doesn't really matter I think what brand you put on your business card, but who you associate yourself with, who's giving you that support, who are you learning from on a daily basis basis is probably more important. And I think teams are really offering a place that you can call home anytime that you need to.

So. Well said. I love that take so much. I'll point especially for that kind of agent you described there, I'll point people to episode 30 with Jordana Tobel and to the Inside the Lawton team series. You know, again, for that new agent or that agent that's been in the business for two or three years but never got their feet under them because they didn't necessarily have the support or training or culture or accountability that they needed to kind of transition into the industry. Well, we've talked with a lot of team leaders who are great at shaping and Molding and coaching and training those people up. But for that kind of, that more mature agent who may or may not need a team, who looks at the split and they get kind of like, well, I don't know why I would do that. That kind of culture camaraderie, the ability to plug in and align whenever you want, but do your own thing when you want and how you want whenever you want, but be associated with people that want to do business the same way you do, that reflect your values that you feel proud to be a part of. A lot of teams are designing splits and fees and services in a way that accommodates that person in particular. It's not all. I mean, people are like 50, 50. Like, no, if you're a high producing agent who just wants some of what Lisa just described, there are teams that have designed financial arrangements that make it mutually beneficial to grow together rather than have you continue to spin your wheels and, you know, struggle with things you don't necessarily have to struggle without on your own. Anyway, love that. That was a really good go. Lisa, any closing thoughts or ideas for people? Like, from a tech perspective, is there a question you wish you never had to be asked again? You know, like, if everyone just knew or understood this, the world would be better? Or is there something that you're looking forward to in the future that you're super psyched about? Like, give us kind of a parting word on this Tech Timber series episode of Real Estate Team os.

Yeah, I'd probably say don't be afraid of technology. I think AI, whenever people hear it, they either love it or they hate it. Right. And I hear a lot of agents like, this is going to try to replace us as human beings. We're going to, to become like, you know, the world's just going to take over with AI and that's not true. I think technology is there to help support us if used in the right way. And we need to evolve. Real estate has changed over, you know, decades, even before I even started in the business. And so those who can adopt, those who can use it, just even like scratching the surface of it, it can do so much to save us a lot of time. So I'd say you, if you don't know, if you don't understand it, even if you're of kind completely against it, just get in a room with somebody who has a opposing thought, right? Like that loves AI, that can't stop talking about it, can't wait for the future of it. And I think that's where I learned best. Is from people who don't have the same opinions as me. And we can have a discussion without, you know, throwing each other under the bus. Right. So I think the community is fantastic for that. Some people love this, some people love that. But at the end of the day, how you run your operations, at least I have the information in front of, of me to make a sound, educated, you know, decision on how I want to run my operations.

That's, I mean, that was very specific as a use case. But generally speaking, I would observe that your advice there is just basic good life advice. You know, seek people with other opinions and be open to understanding and learning from them and then we'll all find our own way. Like there's no one right way to do anything that we talked about in this episode or ever in any of the dozens of episodes we've released on the show. Are you more excited about the idea of AI being built into all of the tools that we're already using, or are you more excited about AI as kind of a standalone thing and kind of custom GPTs and some of the, you know, we can do our own stuff with this because. And this is just kind of barrier lowering for other people too. They're like, AI. I don't know what to do with AI. I mean, I maybe tried to have a property description written with ChatGPT. It's obviously so much more than that. I think one easy thing to observe for people is this is coming into the tools that you're already using. But you personally, are you more excited about a lot more of your tools being a lot more artificially intelligent? Or are you excited about some of the tools that are being built more natively or separately, I should say, as AI solutions that you can craft?

Yeah, I'm more on the AI being built from the ground up. Right. I think we already see AI in a lot of things. Like Google Workspace does a very fantastic way. If you go into Google Sheets, it will just say, hey, do you want to use this template? Right? Or are you trying to do this with that data and just giving those prompts already? So if you haven't noticed, it's there. Right. Siri can automatically do that. Google can do that. And as it's listening, it turned on for me. So. But, but you know, AI is already built in our day to day life. What I'd love to see is industry specific things that AR are built for a purpose. It's just like human beings, we need a purpose. And I think having something that's definitely curated Using AI as the background as a platform and, you know, even Follow Boss, like it was created for real estate agents. Right. And you're building AI summaries and things into it because it's a specific use case that we have it for instead of making it too general. So I'd love to see more AI specific things like AI for restaurants, AI for nail salons. Like, that would be fantastic. Because one solution is not a fit all for everybody. And so I'm seeing a lot of specific things that, hey, this is the one thing that we do. Which is why I've always loved Follow Boss. They do one thing, and that's contact relationship management. I'd love to see that one thing for AI more developed over time.

Really good call. I'm glad I asked. Okay, three pairs of closing questions. You only need to answer one or the other. The first one is what is your very favorite team to root for? Or what is the best team you've ever been a member of?

Greatest team I've ever rooted for. Houston Astros. I was raised there. We won a couple World Series. It's been fantastic to watch their journey. So, yeah, anytime they there's a Stroz game, I am there and watching it.

Awesome. Love it. What is one of your most frivolous purchases or what is a cheapskate habit you hold on to even though you probably don't need to?

Probably frivolous purchase. Oh, my goodness. Probably. Like my MacBook Pro, I decked it out to the max. I probably shouldn't have. It's really meant for creators, editors, photographers, but. But so many processing and things that I needed to have done. I'm like, I need the best of the best. So I splurged.

Yeah, I mean, there's just so many dropdowns. You're like, yeah, it's funny, but I will say it's interesting. Like from a. Just because this is a tech timber episode. You know, back in the day when I first started buying computers for myself, you know, you could buy them, but you could, like, upgrade the RAM really easily yourself. Like, these MacBooks are designed for you not to touch them at all. So, like, you might as well pay for it when you get it out of the box.

Yeah.

Cool. Last one. What does it look like for you, Lisa, when you're investing time in learning, growing and developing? Or what does it look like? What are you doing when you're investing time in resting, relaxing and recharging?

I definitely am more the first part. So when I'm learning and growing, it's really hard for me to shut off my brain, but I'm usually on YouTube a lot. I digest a lot of content. Just what are the new productivity tools? What can I usually do? So that's just my heartbeat. So when I take a YouTube video, I will go alongside with it, pull up that tool, I will sign up for a free account and I would just go in there and just play with it. What can I do to break it, right? What can I do that someone hasn't thought of yet? So just researching and getting into tech tools to see if it works and, and maybe somewhere down the road, five, 10 years, you know, somebody's like, hey, I'm thinking of doing this. I'm like, hey, I got a solution. I tried this out the other day. Why don't you give it a try? And then walking that person through that experience and how they can use it on their business or personal level has been the most rewarding thing. It's like watching a child grow and learn tech tools and then go out on their own and do build their own.

Awesome. That's by. By the way, that's a great closing. Tech tip. If you're looking to figure out how to do something or if something is possible, possible, yes, you could start with ChatGPT or yes, you could start with any of the other kind of AI interfaces or you could start with a Google search. But if you want to see how it's done and work alongside someone who's probably a pro at doing it, do that search in YouTube instead. Great tip. Appreciate it, Lisa. You are a wealth of knowledge and you're a joy to spend time with. If someone wants to follow up on this conversation, learn more about you or the work that you're doing. Where's a couple places you might send people?

Yeah, best place is Lisa loves Pub.com and simply Close.com is my other website. But basically just find me on those two. I'm usually always in the Facebook follow Boss Mini as well, so find me there as well.

Awesome. See that first link again.

Lisa loves fub f u b awesome.com cool.

That stuff is linked up right down below. Whether you're watching in YouTube, listening in Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or you're watching or listening at Realestate tv. We always do write ups with detail things you can learn and we also link up. I personally go fish out links to a variety of things, not just the ones that you tell me, but those are always down there too. So hope people enjoyed this. I hope you go down and click some of those links. Lisa, thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed it and I hope you have a great rest of your day.

Thanks so much. Ethan thanks for checking out this episode of Timo Silver. For email exclusive insights every week, sign up@realestateteamos.com.