Erin Krueger runs a Nashville real-estate brokerage and built a system to replace herself. She records workflows on her phone, transcribes them with ChatGPT, and turns them into checklists her team must follow. Updated every six months, the system let a colleague cover seamlessly when someone took maternity leave.
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We've got Erin Krueger with us. You lead an incredible team, ran basically real estate brokerage in Nashville, kicking butt in the real estate there for a number of years. So you got a lot, a ton of success stories to share with us.
Well, there's no choice. You come on the team. This is how we operate. And I always tell them, I'm going to put a life jacket on you and then I'm going to push you off the boat and you got to start kicking. You need to get in a position where maybe one day you can actually not be there. I always tell people when they're like, Erin, how do you get them to follow the systems? Like, how do you get them to follow the checklists and the processes that you've built? Well, there's no choice. You come on the team, this is how we operate, right? And we're going 110 miles an hour. And I always tell them, I'm gonna put a life jacket on you, and then I'm gonna push you off the boat, and you got to start kicking, right? I'm not gonna let you drown. That's what the checklists are for. That helps us kind of stay the course. But Maybe you do. It could have been better. Tweak the checklist. Continually change and update and, and be committed to being better tomorrow than you are today, I think, is the bottom line. And I remember early on, a lot of people say to me, where do I begin, right? Like, I'm a, I'm a solo agent, or maybe I just have my first assistant, or I'm a small business and I just have one person that works for me. Where do I start? Well, everything's in your head at that point because you're just doing everything, right? And I always say, get your voice app on your phone and start like talking through what you do step by step, right? Transcribe it. Thank goodness with ChatGPT and everything that's out there, put, upload it, get it into a checklist form, and bam, there's your first checklist. Download and tweak it, and that starts. And then as you start to do these transactions, as you start to do these jobs, these systems and processes get better and refined. And tighter. And I always say to my team members, I do not want 12 Erin Krugers. I want 12 people who do Erin Kruger systems and processes, and you put your system, you put your personality spin on it, right? But it doesn't matter if that client has worked with— had worked with me 7 years previous, or they're working with Georgia now. They're getting the same level of service because they're following the systems and processes, and we're not letting something drop.
I love that. And that makes a ton of sense. I mean, that's the way that you create scale and you create capacity. And it's interesting you talk about, you know, some of those initial SOPs, write down what you're doing. Voice note is powerful, especially now that you can do that. One of the things that I use that I love is a tool, a platform called Loom, L-O-O-M.com. And I mean, there's many like it, but that one I particularly like. And, you know, if you have the upgraded version, the AI version now, It'll transcribe your video and it'll literally give you the option to click a button that says turn this into an SOP. And it's not perfect, but it's a pretty good version 1. And version 1 is where you begin your checklist at, and then you iterate and you let people play with it and practice with it, and they will find the iterations for you. So it's a really powerful way. And a lot of times we don't realize what are the things that we are doing naturally and by habit that we don't even know there's actually a step there. We've done a step. And to someone else, that's a step and an action we take. To us, it's just like, oh yeah, that's just something you do. Like, we don't— you bypass it because it's almost like the second nature. And so you don't realize there's a golden opportunity, a training opportunity, a leverage advantage that you can use by making sure you explain thoroughly how you got to that result. Okay, so you want to keep the wealth in the family. I get it. I hear you. Me too. That's why we wrote this book, Don't Spread the Wealth. Everyone tells you that you want to spread the money, spread the wealth around. No, no, no, you don't want to do that. You want to keep the money in the family with the people you love and care about where it belongs for as many generations as possible. That's what we talk about in this book. In this book, we have an incredible 15-page bonus you can download which instructs you on how to start the conversation with your family on annual family banking meetings, how to host them, some sample exercises and a sample agenda, tons of amazing, great benefits. Go ahead, get a copy right now. Head on over to Don't Spread Wealth. That's dontspreadwealth.com. Dontspreadwealth.com. You're going to love it.
Yeah. And one thing, you know, we love Loom as well and we actually integrate that into our manuals. So for instance, every single position on the team, there is a manual that has to be updated every 6 months, right? Because we're changing our processes, we're changing, we're getting better, we're getting stronger, we're adding something. To our standard operating procedures, right? And so they have to go in there and they literally have to update the training manual of their job. Why is this important? This is important because, you know, while I love every single team member, things happen. Having an all-female team, somebody could be on maternity leave, somebody has to step in. Now we have an updated training manual, right? This is, this is creating a culture of of preparing yourself for every situation, right? That if somebody is out, somebody gets sick, somebody can step in and do the job. There's a manual, there's a checklist, there's something that can help us get it done and done to the caliber it deserves and our clients deserve.
Well, I think that's powerful, and especially in the unique structure of the business that you have, because you have basically essentially a female-driven organization that you've created, which is amazing, by the way, and super fantastic. But that also comes with maybe an extra degree of complexity in that the risk of a maternity leave is maybe higher in your organization than the average, right?
I have a person out right now and they're coming back in a few weeks, thank goodness. But, but it's funny because for her role, it was Flawless who stepped into it because of the manuals and because of the systems and processes that we have in place. And that's what it's all about as a team. And I think that You know, you have to start where you are. Like I said, pull out the voice app, get, you know, talk through it, make it better, get it into, you know, Google Docs and make it tighter. You know, we are all learning and we are all making this better. There's so many things about building a business that's so beautiful, but then it's like, okay, now I built the business. How do I strengthen it? How do I create new verticals? Right now you're looking ahead. Now you're forecasting, like you're doing all of these different things. You need to get in a position where maybe one day you can actually not be there, right? That's the ultimate goal. We all want to have, you know, a life beyond the career that we love, and we want them to be able to still carry on. And this is the way that we create that.
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