The Oversimplification, Hype, and Reality of Teams with Katie Day | Ep 020

About eight years ago, she got into real estate sales after years of experience in adjacent spaces. She serves as Realtor and team leader of the MoveMeta Texas team in Houston. And unless Instagram has given me a false impression, she's got a really good collection of Nikes. For insights into starting, growing and optimizing your real estate team, we're talking with Katie Day. Thank you so much for talking Timo s today. Katie.

Hey, thanks so much for having me.

Yeah, Instagram doesn't deceive me, does it?

No. I mean there's always room for improvement, right? Like constant growth. So I will continue to improve my, my shoe collection. But I appreciate the compliment.

Yeah, I love it. This constant pursuit of improvement, that's what we're doing on the show, by the way. So I'm going to start with a question that I've asked literally every guest on the show, which is what for you, Katie, is a must have characteristic of a high performing team.

And I mentioned this earlier, but I think that it rings true for, for any team is adaptability, especially in real estate. Things are constantly changing and evolving and you know, interest rates go up, they go down. We, you know, have lots of things happening that impact the real estate world. And so for teams, I think that it's important for, for all team members to be able to adapt to, you know, changing priorities and different things that impact us.

For you, was that a strength that you developed through, you know, hard learned lessons and things or was this something that was always natural to you? And then I'd like to kind of go to the team dynamic as well. Like is this something you seek in other people?

Yeah, I wouldn't say that. It's something that I've always had like as an innate skill. It's probably something that has developed over time or it's definitely something that's developed over time, just in lots of different things happening, challenges, you know, people joining the team, leaving the team, things like that. And so, you know, looking back on my career, career, just post college, you know, employment, I think that it's something that I've learned over time and I hope I'm better at today than I was, you know, 10 years ago or 20 years ago.

Really good. Is it whether it's with agents or staff that you've brought alongside you, is it something that you like actively developed, maybe some inquiry around in like interviews or things? Is it something you seek in other people?

Yeah, I mean, when I look at our team members that have been the most successful with the team, they've been the ones that have, have kind of been with us as we, we build the plane as we fly it, as I always like to say, you know, and so they're the ones that perhaps we're doing something one way today and then tomorrow, you know, we, we decide that we're going to do something different. As a leader and as, as the, the team leader, I try to not do that too frequently, right. I, I try to keep things status quo and, and moving along on the same path. But sometimes things happen that, you know, we have to, we have to change the direction that we're going in. And so, you know, looking back on everyone that's been very successful, they, they normally are the ones that can roll with those punches. So I don't know it's necessarily something that we interview too, but it's definitely something that as we add anyone new to the team, you know, there are some key characters characteristics like adaptability that we do want to kind of dig in deeper on.

Really good, not really adaptability, specific. But, you know, when I think about the team model, I think about, you know, it's built of two things really at once, which is the collective goal, which may exclusively be held by the team leader in some cases, and all the individual goals. Sometimes the collective goal is just made up of like, here's what all, you know, 12 of us want to do for ourselves and that becomes the collective goal. Do you think about that at all, like in a, in a team situation?

For sure. I, when I first got into real estate, you know, had that moment where, you know, you hear other people talking about things and if Ethan's doing it, I think it's cool. And now I want to do it too. And I got that a lot, you know, in coaching communities and brokerage communities and things like that. I would see other people doing things. And so, so, you know, that may be selling 100 homes or 200 homes or whatever the number is. You know, I would very often hear you say something and I'd be like, oh, I want that goal too. You know, you hear a lot of billion dollar teams and stuff like that. And you know, so I'm like, oh, maybe that's a goal that I want. And then I would try to kind of impart those goals on my team. And so a few years back I had, you know, one of those leadership lessons of like talking to all of my team members about their goals, right? And seeing, okay, if, if Ethan wants to sell 20 homes, I can't make you sell 50, right? Like if, if this is all you want to do and this is all you need to support your family, you know how I'm not going to get you from 20 to 50. And so we, we basically took all of the team goals, added them up, and then figured out, okay, if all of the team's goals add to 100 and we want to sell 200 homes, are we going to double the size of our sales staff to achieve those or are we going to adjust our goals? And so it's been a learning experience over the past few years, but we've, we've focused in more for the past probably 3ish years on adding everyone's goals up to have a collective and something that we're all working toward.

Really good. We're going to double back into that shortly. But I would love to hear just a story arc as deep or as shallow as you want to go on and how we even got here. How are you on a show about starting and growing real estate teams? When did you get into real estate? And how.

Okay, so you don't want me to go back to like, what.

You can do it however you like. Sorry, that was, that was the setups, like go as deep as you want or shallow you want, whatever you want to do.

So on June 28th. Yeah. All right, so I'll go back to college. So I went to the University of Tampa. I majored in business. And so I graduated with, you know, a business management degree. And when I was leaving college, I was interviewing for a lot of jobs at like insurance agencies and law firms and being a paralegal. And you know, my thought was, do I go to grad school or law school or something else? And then I interviewed for a job with a multifamily property management company where they basically brought in college graduates as what they would called manager and training position. And they would train you so you were a leasing agent and they would train you on, you know, like payroll and maintenance and how to do and run apartment community. So I did that from College till about 2014. ISH was kind of the timeframe for me. So I did that for a few years and, you know, really got a lot of knowledge about leadership, Leadership mistakes, running a business, sales, just kind of a whole, a whole slew of skills. And then got in from multifamily into single family property management. And then in 2016 I got my license and then in 2017 I went full time into real estate.

I feel like you're at a little bit of an advantage going into. And this is kind of the next step, you know, building a team. Like first of all, running your own real estate business, I think you're already at an advantage for some of the leadership lessons you picked up along the way. And if there are any that stand out as you think about it, like I'd love to hear those. But do you observe any advantages to having other industry adjacent background and leadership coming into a full time sales role slash going into, hey, let's start a.

Team for sure, for sure. I think for many people in real estate it's not their first career, you know. And so I think that a lot of people bring a lot of good background and things like that. And so for me, coming from as you said, like an adjacent industry or, or you know, facet of the industry, it was helpful, you know, because I understood ish what real estate agents did and you know, still have a lot to learn but it was definitely something that I, I understood, you know, the general premise and idea of real estate. So it's something that I had enough interest to kind of jump into. It wasn't just like I like looking at homes and you know, I think that flips are cool. You know, I had some industry knowledge and then as far as like leadership experiences and things like that, I was afforded the opportunity to manage my first apartment community at the age of 21. And you know, when I look back at it now, I don't know how someone would give a 21 year old little and me that much responsibility. You know, I like looking back on it now. If I, if someone told me to hire a 21 year old to manage like my business, I probably wouldn't agree to it but it gave me a lot of leadership experiences. It gave me a lot of like having tough conversations. It was, there was a lot of like, I guess you could just say awkward situations where you know, I'm a 21 year old kid managing 30 and 40 and 50 year olds and so you know, they kind of look at me like who do you think you are? You know, how are you going to tell me what to do? And so, you know, I think that it helped me in the real estate realm and also the running a team realm of like having those tough conversations, being able to communicate hopefully somewhat effectively with different, you know, demographics and ages and, and you know, people and things like that. So you know, I'm super grateful for the, for the experience but you know, still surprised that I had it.

Awesome. When you were full time real estate sales, at what point in that journey did you Start thinking about I need to or I want to bring some people alongside me. Like, what was the original vision? Was it like a this is the next right step. And so now I have a part time admin term, full time admin alongside me. Or like, or was it, you know what? I think it'd be really the next right step for us collectively is to bring a few people around us. I've got this great agent, like how. What was the spark for the team and what was kind of like the early iteration of it for sure.

So the first thing that you said was like that, you know, did you hire an admin? And that was your right first hire and that is the right first hire. And of course that is not what I did. So I got in full time 2017. My husband ended up quitting his job in the summer of 2017 and he got into real estate. But we both kind of did our own thing separately. And so through 2017 and through basically half of 2018, so he was in for almost a year. We both did our own thing. We sold a decent amount of homes, we were doing leases, we were basically doing anything we could, you know, to make money in real estate. But like, we had no life. We didn't see each other, we didn't hang out with our friends, we were working seven days a week. And while we were making like, okay money, we knew that it wasn't sustainable, right, for our friendships, relationship, marriage, all of the things. And so, but we didn't know what the solution was. And so I went to, you know, a real estate seminar, mastermind type thing, and heard a coach speak and talk about time management and how, you know, if you hire, you know, the TC and the admin, the buyer's agent and all of these things, you can grow out this organization that then, you know, gives you back time, you can make more money. And it's just that simple. And so I come home and I'm like, hey, we are going to hire a coach and start a team. And my husband's like, well, why? And I'm like, for accountability. And you know, he's like, okay, well if you want accountability, like, I can hold you accountable. And I'm like, that's not going to work. Like, you know, I'm not going to take it seriously. And so we, we kind of toyed with this for a while and then in, you know, like August, September of 2018, we hired a coach and then kind of went down the path of starting a team. But our first hire was an agent, which I Would recommend not doing that.

You'd recommend an admin? I love the start to that. I mean, I appreciate all of it, but I love to start to that response too. That is what you should do. That's not what we did. That's great. So characterize however you wish your team as it is today, whether that's market size, structure, culture. Just kind of give us a snapshot of like what is the MoveMeToTX team right now?

Yeah, for sure. So we're a small team. We are in Houston, Texas and we operate all throughout kind of the, the greater Houston area. Houston's a pretty big market and we have agents that are kind of spread out throughout different geographic regions so that we're able to service kind of 45 minutes outside of downtown or so. We've got eight agents plus my husband and I, so 10 total agents. We have two transaction coordinators that help with buyers and listings respectively. And then we have two VAs that help with marketing and listing launches and some of the admin stuff, you know, like seller reports and just keeping us all organized.

Awesome. Culture. Like, like how important to you was kind of vision name values? Like I know that you have stated core values. Like talk a little bit about that dynamic of it. Like is how, what role does it play? And was that just obvious to you? Like, this is part of the foundation of what we're building here.

So I think that as far as culture goes, I think that it's so significantly important, but it's difficult to characterize. It's normally when you realize that someone's not part of your culture that it's an issue. Right. And so for me, it's always just been kind of the, and I, I hate this and everyone always says it, but it's like the would I go have a beer with you after work? You know, type thing. And so, you know, we want to make sure that we are continuing to add people to the team that like, you know, we, we still have that family feel and that, you know, we would, we would all want to hang out and go, you know, grab lunch or grab a beer, grab coffee or whatever it may be and, and truly, you know, care about each other and each other's well being as far as values go and, and kind of formulating them and then, and then holding ourselves to them. When we first started the team or realized that we wanted to have a team, we kind of wanted to look at the things that were important to us, but more so, you know, we kind of inverse flipped it around a little Bit and looked at, like, what are the things that we don't want? Right. And what are the things, you know, in the industry that we get frustrated, frustrated with, as far as, you know, when we're dealing with another agent, if they don't have integrity, if they're not, you know, trustworthy, if, you know, they don't, if they're not thinking, you know, forward thinking and growing and learning and things like that. And so we kind of thought about all the things that we had dealt with, you know, over the few years that we had been in the industry, and what did we want to ensure were things that, you know, our agents didn't do to kind of figure out what those kind of stated core values are.

Really good. I appreciate that you twice in that short passage offered the idea of defining something by what it is not. I think that's an overlooked thing, but I found it to be incredibly useful in a wide variety of contexts throughout my personal and professional life. It's like, I. I can't tell you exactly what this is, but I can definitely tell you what it isn't.

Yeah. You know, defining things by what they aren't.

Okay. I have a lot of things I want to do, but I guess the way I want to walk into them is through something you and I talked about in a previous conversation, which is, and this has come up a couple of times, not always in our recorded episodes, but as I'm talking with team leaders, your own ambition for the team itself. Right. Like, there's this, you know, it sounds like you're about 12 to 15 people. You know, you could be 36 by the end of the year. If that's what you set your heart and mind in plan to. You could. And that could be the first step toward becoming a mega team of, you know, 120 agents that, that, you know, dominate four local markets. Like, how has that process gone for you in terms of, like, what are our goals? What are our ambition? What exactly are we trying to build here? Um, talk a little bit about, you know, even from the earliest days to kind of the biggest your ambition ever got to kind of, where is it today?

Yeah.

And by the way, I'm sorry, to qualify it around ambition, like, it's the right thing for you and your business. Like, it's not a lack of ambition not to want to do some of this stuff.

I feel like I'm ambitious, so I didn't. I didn't feel like you were, you were coming at my ambition. So. All good. But, you know, I think that that's something that teams are glamorized a lot, you know, and you go to a conference and you hear kind of what I heard, right? Like, okay, if you hire agents and you hold them to standards and you have them sell 24 homes a year, you know, you could just have 10 agents selling 24 homes a year, and you sell 240 homes. And, like, you know, they do the math and they show you if this is your average commission and you have this commission split with your agents, you're making seven figures and life is great, right? But they don't always dig into the. You know, you have to have tough conversations. You have to let people go. And for every 10 agents you hire, you know, three are going to leave, and two will leave the industry, and one's going to go to another team and, like, all of those things that happen along the way. So, you know, coming into it, I thought, okay, just doing the math, you know, If I have 10 agents selling 24 homes, this is how many homes will sell. And, you know, I did all of the things and mapped it out and had this budget and people and, you know, money, and it looked great. And so, you know, just from hearing, you know, people on podcasts like this and stuff like that, talk about their teams, it was like, it seemed very simple to me. And so I think starting out, like, the ambition was like, okay, we just. If we had a hundred people selling this many homes, like, how crazy would that be? We'd have so much money. And so over the years, you know, and having hiring and firing and people leaving and. And, you know, people that you thought were going to stay forever, leave and stuff like that, like, my. My mindset, I guess, around all of, you know, having a team and what that looks like has definitely changed. And so, you know, for a while, we were. We were kind of on the path of, like, we need to grow and scale, right? And have probably 30 to 40 agents selling maybe 10 to 15 homes a year to make the money that we want to make and have that, you know, be where we want to be. But with that, then comes where leads coming from. What systems do we have? What support do we have? We probably need a sales manager, because if I'm still in production, you know, I can't sell and, you know, manage 50 agents and all of these things that when we looked at our core group of agents and the homes that they were selling, we could probably make the same amount of money with, like, eight agents as opposed to 30, you know, and so we were at A crossroads where it was like, you know, do we dig in and scale to 30 or 50 or whatever that may be and build out the infrastructure, or do we pour into the people that we have? And so for me, the decision was to pour into the people that we have and really focus on kind of that SEAL team. Right. Of people that are, you know, all kind of moving in the same direction and, you know, we just provide more service and, you know, things like that for the team that we have.

The idea of where you are now, I assume you are profitable just, you know, most days.

Yeah.

This. Yeah. I mean, obviously current conditions are threatening to everyone in that way, but, um, you know, you're. You're. You don't have a ton of overhead is kind of what I'm hearing. You know, agent count to staff ratio. You're still in production yourself, and I would assume that you're one of the more productive agents on the team. If I'm assuming based on. I am currently assuming based on what I've heard from a variety of people who've opted to start real estate teams. Is that about right for you? Like, as you were starting to kind of do the math and I mean, doing it knowing that it's flawed in some way, which, you know, again, I appreciate you being really clear about it looks so easy when one person puts it up on a slide at a conference, you know. Yeah, this is what you do.

Yeah, yeah.

Knowing what. Knowing what you've learned over the years, I'm sure you did some of that. Like, if we were at 30 or 50 agents, it probably had a little bit of that, you know, curve to it as you were putting the numbers together. Is it an issue of profitability? Like, kind of like when you get into that middle, really driven by cost of leads at some level, and cost of admin and support.

100%. I mean, that was definitely, you know, kind of the thought. Because the issue that you run into and what a lot of people run into is they'll scale the team, but they haven't yet scaled the leads or the support. Right. And so you have all these agents come that you promise them the world, and then, you know, you don't actually have the things the leads to provide or the opportunity or, you know, whatever it may be, and then they leave. And so it's. You're. You're in a. In a losing battle. And so for us, you know, where we stand, the majority of our leads are more organic. Right. So from social media, from. From past client and sphere referrals, Agent to agent referrals and things like that that don't cost us money up front per se. And so, you know, then trying to figure out like what partners we're going to try to, you know, generate more leads from or how we're going to do different things wasn't something that we felt was the best move for us, you know, and our team.

Yeah, I think at some level it's self awareness and playing to your strengths. For example, some of the very large teams that we've, we've dived into were like, you know, early in their market, really good at SEO and started dominating like local search traffic when that was still like a huge driver. And that gives you this foundation that you can build a lot on versus, you know, we want to build through kind of who we are and the relationships that we have, partnerships that we build, agent referrals. And that's not a, you know, you're going to come over and we're going to give you, you know, 27 leads a month on average. Yeah, it's just a different thing. It's like a self awareness, strength and preference dynamic. I think what I heard you, the reason I even went on to that little monologue was that what I thought I heard you say in that last offering, so correct me or add to it if you like, is the way we were generating business. If we were to go this other route of let's triple agent count, we would have had to do new different things that aren't really that interesting or, you know, in our, in our immediate skill set.

Yeah, no, that's, that's completely right. You know, if we would have gone to a Zillow or Realtor or some sort of online lead, you know, that's not what we'd been training to, you know, and so I think that there would have been a pretty steep learning curve. Um, so, yeah, very good.

Um, so let's speak to like this SEAL team that you described. Um, what was your original value prop to bring some of these people alongside you at that time? And what did training look like for some of those folks? Like, what was it? What was the type of person that has stuck around and been a really good fit for you and your team?

Yeah, so we have, have had basically kind of two agent avatars. One would be brand new agents, which, you know, obviously have their pros and cons, but brand new agents or would be agents that had been in the business for maybe six to 18 months, you know, and they potentially were coming up on a license renewal or you know, had been in the business long enough to have shown some homes, potentially written a few contracts, maybe closed a few deals and understood that they potentially needed more support, right. And needed someone that they could go to on a more regular basis, accountability and for coaching and things like that. And so what we have done in the past and what we still have kind of set up is we do a three week training program where we bring agents through that and they basically do kind of sales, marketing and ops training and kind of how we do things from A to Z, you know, how we get offers accepted, you know, the things that we're doing when we're setting up tours, you know, what a contract looks like, you know, things to consider when you're writing contracts and different stuff like that. And so we take agents through that and it's a good opportunity for them to kind of see how we operate as a team. How we do things may be particular at times, but like we know that if you do things this way you can get offers accepted and stuff like that. And then if they, you know, make it through that three week training program, then at the end of the three weeks we kind of come to a mutual decision on if it is a good fit for them to be on the team or not. And so for agents that went through it, you know, if they're brand new then they didn't know any better. But if they had been in the business for a little while then, then often we had heard that like, you know, they didn't receive that type of hands on training because most brokerages, you know, since agents are 1099 and you know, they're not going to tell you how to do things, they're just going to give you a bunch of ideas and then you have to go implement them. But we're like, hey, if you do A, B, C to Z, then you'll be successful. You just have to do it and then we're going to hold you accountable to that. And so that's where, you know, agents that really excelled in that training program and then, you know, can hit the ground running with the momentum from that. We saw, you know, a lot of success with and are still here today. A lot of them.

That's great. I feel like there's Also, with the 1099 dynamic, a little bit of a hedge, knowing the inherent churn rate in people who raise their hand and say I want to get involved in this industry. And so like, I'm definitely not going to overinvest talk about the development of this program, how much of it was in house? Did you bring in any like, third party materials? Like, how did you put this together knowing that, that as this was happening, you were probably also, you know, putting houses under contract yourself? You were probably maybe having some recruiting conversations. You're probably dealing with a new complex wrinkle for this, you know, 18 month agent who had never encountered this thing before. You had like, where I'm at is it's really difficult for a lot of team leaders to build the foundation that they need for sustainable success. Specifically a three week training program that helps people decide whether they're going to be a good fit for your organization. Like, how did that fit into your life? You know, like, how long do, how long was that in development? I assume it's being, you know, iterated on it on some kind of cadence. But, but what was this? How did that get built in the first place amid all the other challenges and demands on your time and attention?

I'm kind of like, honestly, I'm like having to like think back, right? Like back in time. It's like, how did, how did all of this happen so Effectively, like in 2020, we knew we needed to grow the team. You know, we had, we had turnover and things like that. And so we were like four agents, right? And we'd, we'd, we'd grow by one and then one would leave. We grow by one and then two would leave. And like, so we were around that three to five agent mark. Um, and so what happened in 2019 was that we basically had like three to four agents that came on board with us and we trained them one on one individually, right? And so, you know, Ethan, if you came on the team, we would probably spend 30 or 40 hours over a month with you, right? And then like, if you decided on the next day that you didn't want to actually do real estate or you didn't want to do it with us, like, I just poured 40 hours into working with you. And so as you said earlier, like churn, especially with 1099, we're like, okay, we need to do something different. Because spending 40 hours with Ethan, although it's fun, like, isn't the best use of time. So we knew we needed to like bring people on in groups, right? And we knew we, we needed to have a better system for our training as a, as opposed to just being like, hey, every Tuesday after our team meeting, we're going to sit here and go over stuff with you. So we wrote down basically all of the things that we wanted people to know. Right. So you know, lead, follow up, script practice, how frequently you should be contacting leads, you know, door knocking scripts, scripts for talking to your sphere, you know, asking for referrals, all of those things. Right. Marketing and social media and content. You know, I'm trying to think of what else, you know, all of these different things, disk profiles, open houses, contracts, whatever. Right. And so we wrote all of them down and then we started to kind of chunk them together. And so we came up with kind of like, okay, these are all sales things, these are all marketing things, and these are all ops things. And then what makes the most sense? And this has been, you know, multiple iterations. But what makes the most sense? On if you had never sold a home before or never had a conversation about a home, like, where should you start and how should we teach you these things so that you can start to have conversations, you know, at open houses, you can start to have conversations with your sphere and people that, you know to start to try to generate business so that we can get you opportunity within that first three weeks and hopefully, you know, a contract within your first 30 to 60 days with us. And so it definitely changed a lot from 2020 to, you know, now 2023, 2024. But you know, it's just a constant, like, oh, hey, this worked, this didn't. These people wanted more of this. Or you know, we're missing that type of thing and just taking that feedback and continuing to evolve it as time goes on.

So you're essentially inventorying all the things someone would need to know, kind of sequencing it and then documenting how we do it around here and delivering it in some way that people can interact with and absorb.

Yeah.

Cool. How obviously in a model where you are, you know, at the size that you are staying in sales, production makes the most sense based on profitability. And at some level it's also.

You.

Know, it's manageable from a lifestyle perspective. How else have you thought about that? I mean, this is because you've been, I've already, I already love everything I've heard from you about, like, well, there's a lot of hype about this or people talk about it this way, but it's a lot dirtier, or messier, more complicated. Like, I feel like leaving sales production is one of those topics. Like, well, yeah, of course, that's what everyone is supposed to do. Um, how have you thought about it? Cause I, I, I expect you've maybe gone through a couple different thoughts or feelings about it, like how, what's your Relationship been with that concept.

Yeah. As you said, like, a lot of people talk about it and how great it is, and again, the math seems very simple. Right. But. But realistically for, you know, if you do 30 deals a year, you probably need like, 90 deals from team agents, depending on what your split is. But like, you know, 60 to 90 deals from your team agents to make up that amount of money that you made on your deals if you pay yourself, like most, you know, team leaders pay themselves. And so for me, it was something that I was striving toward for a while, and that was kind of the, the, okay, let's. Let's scale a team and let's grow it. And then as time has, has gone on, you know, like, I think last year I sold 30 homes, you know, and we're in Texas, so we have to sell a lot of homes, you know, not in, like, San Diego or somewhere. Right. But, you know, so for me, that's like a manageable amount of properties to sell per year. It's. It's pretty much all listings for me at this point. Right. And so it's a lot more manageable than going out and showing, you know, 15 homes to a buyer. And so it's something that I like to continue to sell homes to understand what's happening in the market, to understand what's working and not working and getting offers accepted, to be able to coach my agents. You know, I think that as time goes on, you know, I'll probably sell fewer and fewer homes. Right. Just to provide more opportunity to the team, just from a bandwidth perspective myself. Right. But, you know, I think that, that 20 to 30 homes is a doable amount for me, generally speaking, right now. So we'll see if that changes.

Yeah, I'm surprised I did not include in that in the tee up to that.

The.

How do I stay in touch with exactly what's going on in the market so I can be of more value in a variety of different ways to the agents on my team, especially if we're bringing on, you know, new agents as. As one of our avatars, for sure.

I mean, and I think that especially in 2022 and 2023, as the market shifted right. From the frenetic market that we had in 2020 and 2021, I saw a lot of mega team leaders, you know, step back into production. Right. People that I knew that weren't selling homes and hadn't sold homes in four or five years, you know, they were like, okay, if my closing ratio on a, on a listing appointment 75% and my agents are at 50 or 25%. Like I just need to go on listing appointments and then once they sign, leave the house and then my agent can go measure and do all the other things and I'll pay them, you know, whatever percentage. And so I saw a lot of people with like 50 to 100 person teams, like stepping back in, you know, and doing the things right to set the example and to show, you know, their agents what, you know, hard work looks like and to better train their agents and things like that. So, you know, in looking to a lot of friends that, you know, are, have a lot more agents that are selling a lot more homes than I, I was like, okay, like this, this makes sense. And I should probably keep doing it for the foreseeable future.

I'm going to directly quote one of our previous guests, Phil Gerdes. Now he said it for a different reason, but he said, when I got back into production, my agents got back into production. It was more of this kind of the modeling message that you had there as opposed to the we need to like crank some business. And that was also a self awareness. This is just my strength, it's my interest, it's what I'm good at, it's what I want to do. And there were a lot of other, you know, benefits to my agents. Part of it being modeled behavior. When you think about what's ahead, like what is your kind of your planning process like? You know, we're, we're now fully a month into, as we record this, the new calendar year, like what is planning for you look like how much of that is like personal? In your own goal setting, do you include some subsection of your team or is it you and your husband kind of doing the planning and then, you know, bouncing it off for feedback off some of your top agents. Does what does planning look like for you all as you kind of look to not just this year ahead, but you know, the next three years or something?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great question. Um, so we probably 3 ish years ago started doing monthly one on ones with our agents. And so that's something that we are continuing to do this year, you know, just to, to check in on goals, both personal, you know, investing, savings, professional goals, all that, and make sure like people are on track for those things. And then this year my husband and I are doing like a monthly meeting where we're doing the same thing, like with the business, but then also with our personal life as well. So like vacations and savings and investments and stuff like that. Just because I feel like, especially over the past few years with how busy the market was, we kind of just took business as it came and we're just gonna keep selling houses and put our head down and work and, you know, I think that as great as that was, and you know, hey, we sold more homes than we did last year type stuff, you know, I would rather sell a few less homes, but, you know, go on vacation and you know, have fun outings with a team and do different things, you know, for kind of the, both professional and personal enrichment. So that's been high on my list for the year, is just making sure that we, we stick to those both, you know, personally and professionally.

It's really good. I hear that often. Not all the time, but. But this, like what, what I'm hearing is like, what are we doing this for?

Yeah.

Is it so we can say, fill in the blank some amazing claim about who we are and what we did, or are we doing this because we're people living lives and this is something that enables lots of other things in our lives? So, like, I appreciate that, the health in that approach, in that balance, which kind of brings me to something we haven't really talked about yet. I've come to the thesis in talking with dozens and dozens of team leaders that there are probably tens of thousands of agents, if not 100,000 or more in North America who might be better off in a team model. And I kind of heard that in one of your avatars, which is someone who's been with, you know, another structure, another team or another situation, another environment. But they came here and because of the way that we do things, it really clicked for them. More training, more support, and it kind of unlocked their productivity, etc. A, do you buy that as a concept? And B, what type of agent is the team for? And maybe what type of agent is the team not for?

So I, I definitely buy into changing of environment can sometimes help you to unlock things that you didn't know you could do or unlock things inside of you and, and things like that. But I think that too frequently agents say, oh, well, I didn't sell enough homes this year, so I'm going to change brokerages or I'm going to, I'm going to, you know, whatever it may be, insert brokerage, team, whatever here because, because what? This brokerage isn't the right fit for me, but that one probably is. Right. And so you see agents, you know, a lot of times at the end of the year in the beginning of the year, hop to a new brokerage, and, you know, then the next year they hop to a new one, and the next year they hop to a new one. And so I think that you have to take kind of an introspective look, you know, if maybe you're not seeing the results that you want in real estate today of, you know, what are my goals, why am I not reaching them, you know, and what are the things that are getting in my way? And is it me? Right? And so if I had more accountability, if I had more, you know, training, if I had more people around me that were high performers, would I sell more homes? Right. Or, you know, teams all have different levels of accountability and how often they meet and the things that they do. Right. We're a pretty high accountability team. So I think you just have to take that look inside yourself to know if that's something that you work well with or not. Right. And then if joining a team is the right fit, I think that as far as agents, to join a team, depending on what the team structure is like, generally speaking, you need to be coachable, and I think that you need to not have an ego, which is. Is difficult in the real estate space. So I think that those are kind of two of the biggest things is just being coachable and then just being humble and knowing that, like, especially if you're on a team, like, we're all working towards a bigger goal. It's not just, you know, all about me kind of thing.

Talk a little bit about that humility, like, why does that matter? And what I want you to do is kind of settle into more of the reality around it, where I think when some people hear that, they think, oh, I need to subvert myself. Specifically, it's not about my brand. It's about someone else's brand. I'm not building anything for myself here. Right? So, like, I want anyone who heard what you just said and maybe overreacted to it, she's. I'd love you to kind of like speak into this kind of this ego and humility dynamic just for another minute.

So, I mean, I think that all teams are different, right? Like, there are many teams that is very much so, like the Katy Day show, and there's. There's agents there, but, you know, no one. No one cares what's happening with them, because it's my show and it's my way or the highway type thing. So, like, I think that, you know, if you just heard what I said a minute ago right before, before, even Asked another question, like, depending on what teams you've experienced or encountered, like, it very much could be, you know, there's a lot of ego involved. And I don't want your ego because my ego is too big. Right. So that's, I at least just want to acknowledge that before I move on. But I think on the flip side, you know, in joining a team, often you're able to lean in on team experiences and the, you know, kind of collective of the team in order to build yourself up more. Right? And so, you know, when my agents go into a listing appointment and they can say, hey, we sold 200 homes last year. If they were on their own, they wouldn't be able to do that, right? And so, you know, also with, you know, as an individual agent, you know, maybe you have five or six listings, right? But if eight agents on a team have five listings, right? There's 40 listings out in the marketplace. So if, you know, this logo is on a sign, you're seeing, you know, the logo far more frequently than just seeing, you know, your individual name. And so I think that, you know, obviously of the collective experience that you can, you can lean in on and things like that, you also have the ability to, you know, have like minded people. And so again, like, depending on what your experience with teams are, that may not have always been the case. It may have not been as collaborative. But I know for my team, like, they constantly are, you know, checking in with each other on their goals. They're checking in with each other on like, hey, I need someone to come with me on a listing appointment. Hey, this is in your neighborhood. I know you live there. Let's go on this together. Right? And so there's a lot of like lending a helping hand, right? And collaborating to ensure that, like, we get the listing, right. And it may be Ethan's listing, it may be Katie's listing, it may be Andrea's listing. But you know, if I can help you to get that listing by going on the appointment with you, you know, I would love to be there. And that's where I feel as if, you know, where our team stands today. Everyone, you know, wants to give that helping hand to each other. So I think that sometimes the setting aside of the ego and being like, oh, well, if I went to the brokerage on my own, I could be at an 85, 15 split with a low cap versus I'm on a 50, 50 or, you know, whatever split here. You know, if you're able to make, you know, 150k not having any expenses, you know, having a videographer paid for, having your tc, you know, coordination done and different things like that. Oftentimes, you know, the team route in my mind is a better route, but of course I'm a team leader, so, you know, obviously I think that.

Yeah, really good. I appreciate a lot of the ground that you covered there. And I would just layer in, as you were talking about vacations earlier, the idea that you could actually take a vacation and whoever is stepping in is the person you stepped in for, you know, eight weeks earlier. And they're, they went through the same training, you know, they're, they're of this kind of collective mindset and the idea that we're all kind of on the same page, from our training to our culture to our scripting, to the way that we deal with certain situations. Yeah, so many benefits there. How about for a. Someone who is in the early stages or thinking about starting a team? I remember one of the things you shared with me is that one of the first hires you tried to make from a staff perspective was some kind of magical, all in one person who could literally do, you know, marketing and transaction coordination and client, like the idea of not expecting too much out of maybe your first staff hire or something. But like any other lessons that you've picked up or as you're interacting with different people in their different phases of their own real estate journey that people have found helpful from your own experience in the early days or early stages.

Of starting a team, I think that it's important to understand what you need, right? And as you said, like my first hire, I was like, okay, like this is what you're doing. And it's basically just like everything that I was doing in an, in like an admin sense, I was trying to put onto this person. Right? And so often what people will say is like, you know, for a week or two weeks or however long of a time period, it may be like, write down everything you do in like 15 or 30 minute increments and then start to highlight them. Right. Of things you like, things you don't like. But I would, I would kind of go a step further and like categorize them into like, what are your admin tasks? You know, specifically in the CRM, what are your, what are your maintenance of your listing tasks? What are your listing launch tasks and kind of start to see what common themes there are. And from that then you can start to create job descriptions. Right? Again, like, mine was kind of just like, hey, I'm, I'm building this Thing, I have this big vision, and I would love for you to be a part of it because I like you. Right. But I didn't dig deeper into the, like, is this your skill set? Are these things you enjoy doing? You know, will you be good at it?

Even make sense together?

Yeah. No, they didn't. They didn't. And so for. For me, that was something that, you know, it took some hiring, some firing, some quitting, you know, moving people into different positions and things like that. And so, you know, now if we hire people in an admin task, if it's licensed, like, I want to make sure that they don't want to sell homes. Right. Because a lot of times people will, like, go get an assistant job to then go sell homes, you know, a month or two or three months later, once they have some money under their belt. Right. So I think having kind of the. The tasks laid out of what you need help with, and then I think, really digging deeper on what people are saying when you're interviewing to understand what your goals are and how I can be a part of helping you to achieve those goals. And sometimes it aligns and sometimes it doesn't. But if. If you. You ask, you know, one or two questions deeper than just like, where do you want to be next year? What's your. What's your income goal? And things like that, I think that you can, you know, find people either aren't going to work out or, you know, hopefully will be a really good fit.

Yeah. I want to blend two of the things you shared there as a caution to people who have not done a lot of hiring. I think what happens very often, and the first thing I'm going to share is, like, I really like you, and I want you to be a part of this thing that we're doing because you seem like I like you and you're competent. I feel like if you have not done a lot of hiring, you're. You tend to look to validate what you think about the person. And so when you get it, you get that initial response, you're like, oh, yeah, that checks the box. That's what I hoped and expected to hear. As opposed to being really present in the moment and trying to actually evaluate, not to tear it apart or to, like, you know, dramatically scrutinize it, but to really, am I. What am I actually hearing here? And can or should I go a layer deeper and setting aside any of your own hopes or expectations for this person and really committing to do the work to make sure that you make a Good hire.

Because it's.

I mean, you've mentioned it a few times throughout our conversation. I know how difficult it is to hire, fire, and have people leave. So the more we can get it right the first time, the better.

Yeah, for sure.

Okay. I don't want to run too long, but I would love to hear, because you've. You seem very present to me on social. You mentioned social as one of the channels where you're generating conversations that result in buyers and sellers. Are you just showing up on social because it's something that you enjoy doing? You're good at? It seems to be producing good conversations with other agents and people in the industry as well as people in your local community. And, oh, by the way, we turn some of these conversations into sales. Is it that. Is it like this kind of natural, organic thing, or is it, like, what is social about for you?

Because.

Because I think a lot of people say, well, you can't generate money on social, or people think that you have to do, like, Facebook ad campaigns and retargeting to generate money off social. But I think it's. I think it can be a lot more natural than that. And I don't. How is it for you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, I got into real estate 2017, you know, and. And all of the coaches say, you know, go post on Facebook, social media, you know, video, all the things. And so I knew it was something that I had to do in order to build a brand. But I like, I only, like, I'm very coachable in that, like, if you tell me to do something, I'm gonna go do it. Right? And so, like, in all the years I've had coaches and things like that, like, I have my to do lists, and I just, like, work on getting those things done. Generally not as quickly as they want me to do them, but I get them done. And so social media was one of those things for me. Right. And so until we started to generate conversations and relationships, which then, you know, transition into business, I didn't really fully, I guess, get it. It was just something that I was doing because I was told I needed to do it. And so, like, if you go back to, like, you know, my first post on Instagram, all it was was just listed, just sold, you know, but then as I, you know, I like food, I like to work out. I like, you know, going to new bars and restaurants and stuff like that. And so it was stuff open. You know, I would highlight them. And so for a while, it was just like me taking pictures on my phone. And it's. It's evolved over time, right, into hiring a videographer and doing different things like that. And so, you know, for me, I do enjoy doing it. You know, sometimes it does feel like a chore, right? Like if I have a content day scheduled or something like that, and I'm just, like, tired, and I, you know, don't really want to do it. It's one of those things. Sometimes it's just like, I have to do this today because I paid for it and it's happening. But, you know, I think that especially in today's market, you have to build some sort of brand. You know, I'm going to Orlando in a few weeks, and, like, I'm already getting, you know, targeted posts, right, Because I booked a flight. So now I'm seeing, like, restaurants in Orlando and stuff like that. And so the same thing is happening, you know, to people that are thinking about selling their home. You know, they're seeing content being served up to them. And, like, you know, if you're just shooting it on your phone and editing yourself, it's effectively free. Right. And it's something that. It is, I think, imperative in today's market to. To build a brand and. And have a presence of some sort.

Awesome. Thank you for sneaking that in. I guess I was trying to sneak it in here toward the end of the conversation. I appreciate what you shared there. And first of all, iterative approach, as is the case with literally everything we talked about today, what you're doing today is. Is better in a lot of ways than what you're doing before, and you learned a lot between now and then, and that speaks to the adaptability that you opened on before I let you go. Katie, first, thank you so much. I really, really appreciate this. I'm really glad we could spend this time together, and I appreciate you doing it. And second, I've got three pairs of questions that will close up, but you only need to answer one of each of the questions.

All right, I'm nervous.

Okay. What is your very favorite team to root for besides the Move Me to Texas team? Or what is the best team you've ever been a member of besides the Move Me to Texas team?

So in high school, all of my. A lot of my friends and I quit the school basketball team, and we went and played rec. And so we were people that should have been playing, like, varsity basketball at our high school, playing rec league basketball. And it was just so much fun because we could just joke around, and we dominated the rec league. So my High school rec basketball team.

What was the motivation? Was it just like, we want a looser environment where we can just kind of play and have fun?

There was like some coaching changes and drama and things like that. So a bunch of us just didn't try out one year and we played rec basketball, and it was just, it was a blast because we all should have been playing, you know, varsity basketball.

That's awesome. What is one of your most frivolous purchases? Or what's a cheapskate habit you hold on to even though you probably don't need to?

Well, so we won't dig into the sneakers just because, you know, in the off chance my husband listens to this, but I have these little, like, lip gloss things that you like. Vaseline makes them and instead of buying like the new $2 one, I'll normally just refill it, you know, from a larger Vaseline case and I should just buy a new one.

Yeah, that's pretty. Unless they come in like, different flavors or types or something. Like you can buy them.

You can buy all the different flavors in the store. It's. It's just. I don't know, it's one of those things.

Yeah, I'm a refill kind of guy, too. What does it look like for you, Katie, to invest your time in learning, growing, and developing? Or what does it look like for you to invest time in resting, relaxing, and recharging?

I haven't done a great job on the resting and relaxation and recharging, so I'll take the, like, learning and growing. And so for me, you know, going to different real estate conferences and events has been something that. It has been super helpful for me in, you know, learning, networking. And, and it's. The content is. Is normally the, the highlight, but then the added bonus is normally like the lobby conversations or the hallway conversations where we're just randomly talking as we're walking from roommate or room B and I pick up something that we can implement in our business.

Yeah, so much good stuff about that in person dynamic, including I'm walking there with someone I've known for three years, but I'm going to meet someone that they know who I've never met and like, just all of those things, including bringing digital relationships to life. Okay, last question for you. Where would you send someone who has gotten to this point in the conversation? I assume they enjoyed it because why else would you spend this amount of time with us?

I don't know.

Where would you send them to learn more about you and your team?

Yeah. Best place to connect would be Instagram. And so it's movemetotexas. M O V E M E T.

O T X Move me to TX on Instagram. I'll link that up. Wherever you are watching, it's linked up right down. You're watching on YouTube because that's where it is. It's down below in the description. If you're listening in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or another podcast app, it's right down below in the description. We also put these up@realestateteamos.com there will be a link there too. Katie, you're awesome. I appreciate you and I hope you have a great rest of your day.

Thanks. You too.

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