Leading Through Change with Purpose | LeadingLane Podcast | Ep 65

I don't have the bandwidth or the brain power, and I really don't care. Make a freaking decision. And that's really where the, you know, the same concept on the personal side, it makes the decision of what we're going to have for dinner, because I don't care is the same thing for me, for employees of you're here as a force, more multiplier to make those decisions for me, so I don't have to make so many of those little decisions.

Welcome to the Leading Lane Podcast for Real Estate Pros by Real Estate Pros, with your hosts, Ashley Frederick and Stephen Burch. If you're looking for an honest, authentic, and raw perspective, you found it.

All right. Welcome to the Leading Lane Podcast. We're actually in a unique space today. Well, at least I'm in a unique space today. I'm here in Ashley's office, and I got kicked out of her office because we couldn't figure out how to, you know, be in the same room at the same time because we're so used to being in different rooms. So I'm actually here in the back of her office, and I came up to spend the week with her and her team, and it's been a fun opportunity and learning opportunity for me as well, coming up here. So, you know, I think the topic that we're going to go down is really in life and in business, both. There. There's a lot of change. There's a lot of opportunities that are presented themselves. And thank you. You have a choice, right? Like, you can either. When something happens, you can either sit here and be the victim mentality and being, you know, boohoo type of, why is this happening to me? Or you can pull up your boots and, you know, get. Get in the mud and see what you can do to change and pivot. And that's really where I think that, you know, I knew that there's things that I can come up and help with, but what we're doing this week is being able to see, are there different aspects, you know, different point of views that could be implemented into your business to help you be more efficient, to be able to help your team, you know, be more efficient and happier in their job, in the role. And, yeah, that's kind of the mindset of where I first want to start is you can either be down in the. In the shits, or you can say, all right, this happened, but now what are we going to do? So after this week, I mean, the last couple of days, I've been working with you and your team kind of give a rundown of your perspective of what's happening.

Yeah, I think that in general, when change happens, whether it's expected or unexpected, some people choose to like wallow in self pity of why did this happen or this isn't good timing. Right. But none of us have a crystal ball as to when things are going to happen. But I think that real estate changes every single day. Right. Like our transactions change, laws change, people don't do what they're supposed to in a transaction and we always have to be adjusting like on the fly. Right. So I think that it's no different within your business that things can be changing on a regular basis and you have to be able to just go with the flow and not get stuck in the mud, if you will. You know, a really good example of that for us was, I think it was maybe two years ago now, year and a half, and we had a personnel that their husband took a job at another state and we kind of had, you know, two separate roles. We had an admin and we had a transaction coordinator. And I remember I called you that day too and was like so. So we weren't expecting this and you know, we kind of brainstormed at that point in time and I remember thinking we were looking to get stuff off of my plate anyway, so we changed the transaction coordinator role to be an office manager role and promoted our admin and changed the job duties. Took things off of my plate and really made that more of an office manager type role. So. Right. I could have got upset or you know, left it how it was as far as admin and transaction coordinator. But really we took it as an opportunity to reevaluate re evaluate everyone's goals and everyone's duties. And I mean, you know, now two years later it's fully transitioned into, you know, something that works extremely well, you know, and I think that that's what I would encourage people, is it whatever might happen, a job change, etc. You know, agents, I mean, I think you've had that in your area too where agents are part of the, you know, they're a spouse of the military and they end up getting relocated. Right. And maybe they played an integral role in, in your team, but you just have to to shift with them and figure out if it's more of an opportunity to do things different. What I've appreciated is we always talk about you don't know what you don't know. And that I think will be true forever, but also just getting someone else's opinion or an outsider's look of this is the way I see it. Did you mean for it to look like this? Is this what your end goal was? And I think just being able to have open conversations with you and with the staff. You know, one, I think one good thing we had this week, we happened to have an events committee meeting. And I can see the sun is all over my face. I won't complain about Sunshine after the 7 inches of snow last night, but welcome to Wisconsin by the way.

I wasn't expecting that.

So sometimes I attend those, sometimes I don't. That was also something I think that you and I had talked about maybe a year ago that was eating up a lot of my time was trying to plan events. So we are extremely community minded real estate organization. There are events that we do like parades and festivals and community events and office parties. And it's just a. I mean it probably could be someone's full time job if we really wanted it to be. So we tasked that basically to volunteers and it ended up that I was actually surprised. I remember when I asked and I think four agents raised their hand like immediately that they wanted to be part of the events committee and I was like fantastic. Someone else that wants to do those things, you know, and they're all creative. I gives them, I think more purpose in the office too. And so we've had some great, they've done a great job. We have. We're about to hit the craziness of event season. Between upcoming parade, a customer appreciation, the famous Loop day, Hub City days. It's like this four month golfing, four month window of just a frenzy. So we had an events meeting this week and sometimes I just sit to in to attend, but it was kind of fun to have you sit in as well and kind of watch how the meetings are ran and then to be able to give advice to the rest of the staff and agents as to maybe other ways to improve those meetings. You know, we implemented a separate group on blink that are just for committees this week, just for that committee. We've already been using it to plan the next client appreciation. So it's just something simple that, you know, unless someone's from the outside looking in, you wouldn't necessarily know there's other options.

Yeah, and you know, I think that too some of the times we, we get in the rhythm of, hey, we, we do this event every single year. We have it down. I mean, you guys have a down like clockwork. You have fantastic attendance. You know, everybody's having Fun, great feedback from your clients and the community and, you know, being there, that, that's great. But how do we add and stack on to that to. To the next level and not meaning that you need to bring in a Ferris wheel this next time and make it over the top like that, but how do you. How do we maximize it to where, you know, you can. The reason why you're doing these events. Yes. Is to give back to your community. But really we're in business as well. So how do we market this properly to ensure that we can make this into a marketing event, not just an event that we're giving back to the community. How do we take these guests that are attending and now make them the marketers for next home hub city? And that's really the end goal of. We want them to engage on our social, we want them to tag us in those different things. You know, how do we continue this relationship on online and virtually when we have such a great presence on a physical level, getting people to these events? And I think when I, When I shared that to the gals, all of their faces were like, oh, yeah, that's right. Okay, here we go. Like, and just the snowball effect of how that, you know, went into the next idea, into how we can make this more efficient. And really the goal is again, going back to efficiency. You know, I remember the first time we did a major event, I was the one trying to do everything. I was the one running around with my head cut off. And, you know, I was not delegating properly. And so that meant none of my agents, none of my staff knew exactly what was going on. And I think that the goal when we get in front of people for these events is to have the comm goal collected, feel the poise, show that the event went off without a hitch. And this is a prime opportunity for agents in your team to be able to have conversations with their clients and customers and the community out there. So how do we make it to where it's not so physical work, labor intensive, and now it is more impactful and intentional conversations with your clients. So that was really fun to be able to see those light bulbs go off in that room for that.

Yeah, and that's one of the reasons, that's one of the reasons I truly love the events, is that, you know, Everybody's running at 100 miles an hour, including our clients. And, you know, sometimes we just don't get a chance to see them. So this is an opportunity that, like, they know, like, they're coming. We get to spend, even if it's 20 minutes catching up. It's just a great opportunity. But it's just funny how then, you know, you're top of mind and then you end up getting a referral from them like three weeks later. Right. So it's just funny. That's not necessarily like the quote unquote goal. I mean, we really do enjoy seeing them, but we have to remember that, you know, that they, that they are appreciated, we appreciate the business they give us and that they continue to support us.

Absolutely. So, you know, when, when working with your, your team here too, one of the things that I have done in, in conversations with you and, and as well individually is tapping into what they like to do and really picking the brain of like, what is going well, what's not going well, or do you want to be able to go in the future? So we, not intentionally, this was not planned, but we, we started giving them a template. Your, your W2 staff, your employees, a template of a job description for them to create and reevaluate their current job descriptions and roles. How do you think that has set in with them? And, and what are your thoughts on, on the job description, making your team write that?

Well, and I think it's interesting because we've had job descriptions, right? Like everyone has a job description, but I think interesting for them to pull it out too and maybe see how much things have changed, you know, throughout the year when other things have happened. Right. Like we've shifted. So maybe an office manager was doing something. We shifted it to an admin. So that was on their job description. It isn't anymore, but now we added XYZ to the job description. Um, I think for them it was maybe a good reevaluation of what their expectations are, what their roles are, and then again for us to be able to change things. Or maybe they realized, like you said, like, I don't, I'm not really good at this. I don't really enjoy doing that. Does that make sense for someone else to, to do that? So I think it's, I hope also that it's somewhat empowering for them to be able to help, you know, create that role and make sure it is something that they're comfortable with, that they're good at doing and that the right people are in the right position.

And so like, in, in doing that, the. My goal is kind of to overlap all of these different job descriptions and, and really see if there's anything. Do we have too many people doing a certain type of task you know, do we have three employees working solely on the events, you know, and not making one person in charge of it or whatever it's going to be. And because we think we know what our team does, they think that, you know, oh, it's not that big of a deal. And we, I do, I have to say that I sometimes think, oh, it's not that big of a deal. I just do it. It's not, you know, it's a small task. But those really small tasks now compounded together create the inefficiency. And now we're paying more multiple people to get one job done. And we're not all going in the same direction. So I think that it. Once you are able to document in that manner for yourself as the leader, and then you can have them document what they are actually doing and what they want to do, you can really start putting the puzzle pieces together. And what it's doing is, I think it's actually removing the assumption. And I say this all the time, anytime that you assume you make an ass out of you and me. So that you want to make sure that we are not assuming that they know that they need to do XYZ or them assuming that we don't need to know certain types of things because that can snowball that direction as well. So I just think the documentation clear is kind, unclear, is unkind, really streamlines and creates the empowering and confidence in your team for them to know exactly what they should be doing.

I think on the confidence too, you know, on the confidence piece, I think that I appreciate that, you know, the staff and the agents, you know, want to, they want to make us happy and, you know, what our expectations are. But I think helping them with that confidence and that I trust them to make those decisions and that they don't have to come to me for an okay on, you know, every type of thing. But. Right. We also realized that for them to do their jobs better, we need to have a set budget for events, you know, so that that's not coming back to ask, you know, can I buy this, this and this when if we already have the budget, they can just go ahead and I trust them that they're making those decisions. So it's a good evaluation not just for what they're doing, but for what I've portrayed, you know, for them to be able to do.

Yeah, I mean, you're creating a critical thinking team. They have the resources available to them. It's very clear on what their parameters are and if it's something that steps outside of those parameters, then that is something to be raised up to you versus what kind of bag of chips would you like me to buy? I don't freaking care. Right. Like, at least I don't care. You're in charge of this. Like, go and do it within your budget. That's something that you guys want. That's fantastic. And you know, are there times, I mean, do I have a preference of types of chips that I want? Sure. And could I tell them exactly what to go do? Absolutely. And what I've learned over the years is I have to keep my mouth shut up and I have to empower them with making that decision and the follow through. And you know, it very well may be something that I've seen that that's kind of a beige flag, right? Like, not really a red flag yet, but I wouldn't have done it that way. And the beauty of this is they get to learn because when that event actually happens, everything kicks off or whatever this is going to be. It kicks off and happens to be completely windy and we have nachos flying all over the place and trash all over the place and we don't have trash cans. You know, like all of those little details when we do our recap after the event and we do a debrief and we get to ask those questions. And now as the leader, I get to say, hey, you know, what about this? We didn't have the trash can there available or, you know, what about the wind? We didn't take that into effect or the cheese was cold or whatever the little types of things. And then now they are making notes. And what we like to do is put everything on a sauna for that debrief. So the next time that we do this event next year, we know that we don't like the nachos. We would need to go with something a little bit different or whatever the, you know, the small little task is. But if I would have told them exactly what to do from the very beginning, they would have asked me how much cheese needs to go in the cup. They would have asked me, you know, do they want the white tortilla chips or the yellow ones are. I mean, it gets down to all these nitty gritty details. They are more than capable and I trust them to get everything completed. I don't need to make those decisions for them. They can do it.

Yeah. I think that I had gotten an email before our orange party just asking what, what type of drinks I wanted. And I just wrote back and said, I Fully believe that you can pick out the types of drink that, that you think everybody will enjoy. We've had these parties before, so a little bit of everything for everybody. And I think they were like super excited because they had like, we didn't have a lot of extras. Like, it was like almost perfect amount of drinks for everyone. And I was like, you did just fine.

And so like, and that goes right into, like, we have a roster of what everybody's preferences of drinks are. So I know exactly each person in our team. Right. So I now I don't have to ask every single time. I mean, we do multiple events. And so that goes back to that efficiency side of things. Instead of trying to remember how much did I order last year or, you know, for our Christmas party, like, what is the bar order? How many bottles of this do I need to get? What kind of wine do I need to get? What does she like to drink? Like, I don't want it. Those are so many freaking decisions I as a leader do not want to make. And have a side note here. Mel Robbins is one of my favorite people to follow. And on the drive up here, I started the Let them book. But I've listened to her podcast and this one, most recent one that I listened to, talks about a study about how the average person makes 35,000 decisions a day. 35,000 decisions. That's the average person. An average person doesn't run multiple companies. An average person doesn't have multiple employees. Right. So I'm going to have to say that we. Let's just double that. And so when we have those decisions that we have to make day in and day out, those little decisions of what do I want for dinner? Right. Like what do you want to do tonight? These types of things, I don't have the bandwidth or the brain power and I really don't care make a freaking decision. And that's really where the, you know, the same concept on the personal side, it makes the decision of what we're going to have for dinner because I don't care. Is the same thing for me, for employees of, you're here as a force multiplier to make those decisions for me so I don't have to make so many of those little decisions. They're important. I don't want to degrade them, but I don't want to make them. That's what you are here for, to help me and force multiply what I am great at. So just a little intended on Mel Robbins there.

Well, and I think that that's where we've talked about before, like, decision fatigue comes in, right? Like, that's why. Why when I get home for dinner and then ask what I want, like, I literally don't care at this point in time because I am fatigued out of making the decisions. But you mentioned the force multiplier. So do you want to just tell us a little bit about that book?

Yeah, it's actually a really great book. Charis is the one that pushed that over to me and recommended the book to me. And really the. It talks a lot about an executive assistant. And for me, like, I removed the titles, um, because I think that you can have. That you don't need necessarily just an executive decision or executive assistant. You can have multiple different people and including your spouse, your partner, be a force multiplier. And really what it is is that you need to hire towards your weaknesses and get those different things. And there's. There's difference of weaknesses. I'm not good at it. There also is a. I'm good at it, but I don't want to really let go of it. And that's really the hard part of. You have to let go of the things that you like to do, even though that it's not maximizing your time and potential, really, with the force multiplier, your employees or these people that are helping you to be taking your weaknesses, pushing you towards your strength so that you can continuously and repeatedly do what brings in the revenue and generates the revenue and grows and scales the business. So they're. They're really the workforce. Right. Like, I do not like doing the compliance review of a file. Drives me slipping nuts. My brain goes too, too much. I can't jump between different files and then try to track everything. And so one of the first things I did was hire somebody to be able to help with the compliance side of things. And that was Kim. And we, we have grown together. And then eventually I knew that, okay, Kim, you've learned way much. You're, like, so great at this. You actually clicking through and saying, yes, no is not utilizing you to your fullest potential. And I know now that your brain, you can do it, but that's not what your brain enjoys doing. So then we put a VA underneath her to be able to force multiply her, which then allowed her to force multiply me even more. I think it's this, the hierarchy and structuring it properly into where you are always pushing and restructuring your people's positions to ensure that they're working towards their strengths, working towards your weaknesses, and then you continue to grow in a parallel direction for where you want to take the company. What are your. Your insights on. On the force multiplier? I mean, you read it a couple times, right?

It's been a while, so I need to reread it. We actually put it on, I think I told Caitlin and Jessica to both read it, but I think it's really more so what you're talking about as far as, you know, the things that you don't like to do, the things you're not good at. But I also think it's like, not. Not necessarily having training staff to think for you, but knowing your expectations, knowing the things that you expect to be done, you know, on a. On a regular basis so that those are. Are done. And then it's just more or less like this yin yang type of. We're all working together, so we get to that. That next level. And I think that sometimes we think we're good at something and then we task it out and we actually realize that somebody else is better at it or more efficient at it. Or maybe it took us, we could do it, but it took us longer. So I think it's just always evaluating yourself and then also just always helping your staff to evaluate if they're still enjoying what they were hired to do, if we don't want to change tasks, if it makes sense for someone else to do in the time frames of where everything else is at. So, you know, I don't think that you can continue to. To grow as a team or grow as a company unless you're willing to have those kind of hard looks in. Into your business.

Yeah, no, I think that we talk a lot about tasks of the force multiplying, and I do agree with that still, 100%, because again, can I go and still do compliance work? Of course I can do. Do I want to? No. But you know, really what I think Forks multiplies me now is my team anticipating my next move. And I think that anticipation is something that we don't talk about in the business world of how and how do you teach somebody to anticipate your next move? Because let's be very clear, you and I are not very good at the. We don't even know necessarily what our next move is. We're going to pop into whatever, you know, feels good at moment and move that direction. And that may not be something we should be working on. I guess I should say me, you. You're very efficient in that manner. But, like, how do you teach the anticipation of, you know, you. All right, have them be able to look into the future for you. And what I mean by that, and it's funny that we're kind of talking about this, is that yesterday we were talking with Caitlin about closing gifts. You know, how do we get her to be able to see? And she knows that these are the XYZ closings that are coming up. And we don't have to say, get this closing gift. She's more than happy to do it. She will. She does a freaking rock job of her video that she posted yesterday of the putting the baskets together. But how do we teach somebody anticipation? And I think really what it is, is you have to create the relationship. You and Caitlin's relationship is phenomenal. I think, you know, she can read your freaking mind and know what's going to happen. And, you know, one of the things you said yesterday is don't be afraid to push me a little bit more. So you're giving her permission to now. Okay. Anticipate a little bit more push and shove. And that really is pushing you to grow as an individual and as a leader, too. But what. What do you feel that your. How do you feel that your business and life would be different if you had everybody around you anticipating your next move? What I meant to say the caveats, that. That's really freaking scary that many people can think for me, but we're creatures of habit. So how do you think that would. How. How do you think that would change your business?

I think it wouldn't only change business, but I think it would also change some personal things as well. You know, so we talk a lot about stress, and I think that stress is a. A misused word, if you will, because there are good types of stress, there are bad types of stress. You know, so stress in a transaction like, like that, to me, like, that is what it is at this point in time. But there's other stresses that we don't necessarily have control over. Like, I've been sick for a while, right? Like, that's a stress that we don't have control over, that you realize that ends up affecting everything else, right? But if you have people firing on all cylinders and even like at home, right? Like, we talk about if Ben's meal prepping for me and if Ben is running all these errands, that then I'm not leaving work, know, constantly throughout the day or now Caitlyn's not running those errands and she's doing more stuff at the office, right? So if you kind of get people in these lanes, if you will, of helping everyone on taking things off of each other's plates. I think that for me it gives me the ability for my mind to rest a little bit. And when I think when your mind can rest is when you can actually plan for bigger moves. You know, as far as that slow recruiting or different roles that we've discussed that we haven't, you know, actually hired for. So I think that when you're like bogged down with all of the small day to day things that maybe don't bring you joy or get in the way, then I think you're just kind of holding yourself back from what that next step looks like. So I think that we've done a really good job at the girls here, picking up a lot of those smaller type of things. I think I'm excited for the next 60 days, you know, just as far as some goals that we have, what that might look like putting them in more of not like a captain's seat, but you know, like a ability and confidence to make decisions. You know, obviously I tell people like, I wouldn't have put you in those roles if I didn't feel like you had the capability to do those things. But I think that what it does for me too is it gives me the opportunity to look at things as the brokerage as a whole. So what are, when I am like stepped back and have some extra time, like what are the things I can do here? What are extra trainings that we can do, you know, have Steven come in, you know, those types of things which then you're looking at a big picture in my mind just continues to elevate everyone else to the next level. So I think it's just important for people too to watch other people. And if you see someone struggling somewhere or maybe you see it takes them like two hours to create a canva design, but it takes you 15 minutes. Like is there a way that you could just help someone, Hey, I do it this way and this doesn't take me any time. So I think, you know, on, on the backside of that too. Like you need people to be open to receiving those types of suggestions as well.

Absolutely. And again, like it goes back to that relationship. If you don't have a solid relationship with your team, then they're not going to be open minded, open hearted to receive any sort of criticism or feedback or suggestions whatsoever. And I think also as a leader you have to be vulnerable and in order you need to be vulnerable in my opinion, to be able to have Them understand where you are and they may have making assumptions about you already and they can be completely off kilter and they need to know ground you and then ground with you and then being vulnerable of this is how I feel, this is where I want to go. And a really great book is the Domino Effect. Nick can't think of his last name at the moment. It really talks about how as a leader you go through. The analogy he uses is really great actually is, you know, if you have somebody that is going to follow you in a car that's never been to Marshfield and has following you in a snowstorm, has no clue where we are and you know, if you went just like you normally would go, you know, your regular route and you would be going, you know, 50 miles per hour and I would be going 30 miles per hour saying like, where in the world am I going? If you don't use your turn signal, I'd be stressed out. If you don't, you know, slow down to make that turn and I tried to just turn it, whip it around really quickly, I'd be in the ditch in your front yard, right? So the, the analogy he uses is think of leadership. Just like if somebody is behind you, following you in your vehicle, you have to slow down, right? You have to be able to turn your turn signal on. If you gave them all the instructions in the world right up front, they would be overwhelmed, shut down, never be able to get to the destination that you're trying to and to achieve, right? So the goal really is to be able to give them little cues you're watching in the rear view mirror, making sure that they're following close enough. If they get too far behind you, you're going to slow down just a little bit enough to make sure that you know they can catch up. If the yellow light turns on, you're going to slow down to make sure that they don't get stopped at that red light. So I really love that analogy aspect of as a leader, you don't have to tell them everything. You don't have to make, you don't have to make sure that they know every single step and all the processes right now. But you do need to make sure that you are slow enough for them to follow you properly. You're giving them the correct signals and signs and making sure that they're not going to end up in a ditch. And sometimes you have to course correct a little bit and pivot and that's okay. And sometimes with a detour and that's okay too you just need to make sure you're constantly communicating back to your team. And I think that vulnerability and that insight then creates the relationship and then. Which in turn is actually getting the anticipation that we're needing from them to start thinking, and how would Stephen Howard actually do this task?

And I think it's a matter of getting in the trenches with them as well. Um, most people know here that, like, the back storage room is. I just. I can't. Like, it drives me insane. Um, it. You know, normally, like, after an event, everything just kind of gets, like, thrown in there, and then you'll go in there for something else, and then you, like, can't find anything. It was really difficult when we moved.

You had that, too.

Yeah, it's gotten better. But, you know, I think, like, they knew that I came in on a weekend one time to. I just, like, my brain couldn't handle the unorganized part of it anymore. And I think I emptied out, like, five, you know, Tupperware bins and just threw a bunch of trash away that we didn't really need. Was old, was, you know, rickety or whatnot. And then I think, you know, one came in on Monday and was like, were you in the back room? And it's like, yeah, I was. I just couldn't take. I wasn't done. But, you know, it's funny that, like, that week, I didn't go back in, but it got done. You know what I mean? So I think that them seeing like that it frustrated me enough that I put some extra time into it. Then they saw that, you know, they would make some extra time in their schedules to get it back to where it should be.

What you're doing is you're stepping up and taking the initiative to help a team member. Like, if I have to clean the toilet and the bathroom, I have no freaking problem clean getting down there and doing in the dirty work of everything, because I think that shows that we're not too good to do these different things. The difference is, if you're not cleaning it and you're never, you know, stepping up to take the initiative to help anybody else, then that's a different story. Right? Like, I want to make sure that I'm not doing your job and paying you for me doing your job. I'm here to help 100%.

So even, like, the. The floors, you know, it's salt this time of the year. It sucks. It drags through this gross film or whatever. But again, it's like this. I get this fix of things that I Don't like. And then I have to fix them. So I, like, came in and it was disgusting. So I just went and I grabbed a zipper and I suffered it. And then, like, two people, like, oh, my gosh. Like, I can do that. And I was like, no big deal, you know, but then it's funny because, like, the next two days, somebody else was doing it. So I think it's just about, like, a kind reminder and a way of, like, showing people maybe what you would like them to look for or the things that. That bother you. And then they realize, like, oh, I should have noticed that those floors look really bad for a first impression, but, you know, until maybe someone else.

You're leading by example. Yeah, that's what you're doing. And it's so funny. Did you do that on Tuesday?

What's that fourth. Mm.

Oh, well, because I came in on. I think it was Tuesday, and I said, caitlin, like, how do you guys keep these floors so freaking clean? We can never keep our office this clean and we have the same freaking floors. So I just think that's really funny.

That, you know, we have a cleaning lady on Sunday, so she does fantastic. But yeah, I think it was even when we were prepping for the Orange party last week, I saw, like, two different people out with the Swiffers beforehand. So, yeah, I think, you know, you're right. Just leading by example. And I think that that also just leads into when you continue to do the leading by example, and maybe people aren't understanding or people aren't taking the initiative. I think that that's always just a good time to kind of keep a mental note of, you know, people that are fallen, that are picking up, maybe people that need a gentle reminder or at some point in time, maybe that's not the right role for that person or not the right fit for the.

Company in general, 100%. And, you know, one with the aspect of all of this is leading by example. We started with, you know, sometimes there's challenges that are presented to you that you never expect in business and in life. And if you as the leader is out there frantically flaring and running around with your. Your head cut off, your team is going to follow that. You. It's perfectly a okay to say, man, this is really shitty timing. This stuff sucks right now, but you know what? All of us are together. Let's work together. And you're leading them into the positivity and them to be able to see the future and the opportunity that it's actually really presenting then that triple effect happens way quicker, in my opinion. I think if you were to go the opposite direction and you were to be negative, that toxicity would be so much more infectious and stick to way longer. So that's why we always have to have that positive, or as much as we can have that positive outlook. Because for whatever reason, sometimes that positivity in others dimmers out way quicker than what that toxicity can stick to the rest of the team.

So when I have to say, like, I'm. I'm very, very lucky with my team, I mean, we've had to, you know, over the last, what, five years, we've had to let, I think, figured it out. Maybe like five people go for different reasons. And what I've always appreciated is that there's never been a question as to why, what happened? Nothing. And then literally, it's like, the next day, you know, I'll get a message of, like, what can I do to help? And then we just see people, you know, you've seen it this week, people stepping up and doing things they wouldn't normally do and, you know, and never asked. So I just think that it goes to say a lot about our group as a whole, that everyone supports each other, and I'm really lucky to have the team behind me that I do.

You have an amazing team. I mean, really do. The, the. From the. The staff to the ownership to the other agents in here, everybody really. You know, I think it's so cliche that, because it's used so often, but it's so true here in your office. But you guys really are a family, and it's great to see that everybody shares those same expectations and standards, and you guys have really created a center of excellence here.

Yeah. And I think that they appreciate, you know, that we always do want to do better. Like, there's always ways to improve. I know that Steven's going to lead a training later on today, and everyone is super excited to see what that's going to entail. So I think, you know, I enjoy that they find that, you know, we're trying to make things easier or more efficient for them. And sometimes I think it's just a matter of when we start having those types of questions for them. They start thinking a little bit more outside the box and coming to the table with new thoughts and new ideas. So I appreciate that everyone's always willing to just run with whatever I throw them and random guests that show up.

You're a great leader. And I think that this is a great timing. Everything is lining up and as always, the universe has a fun way to make things happen when they need to and when they're supposed to.

Yes. And always extremely thankful for you and your friendship and your leadership as well.

Of course. Of course. Thanks for having me. All right, as always, guys, if you have any topics or any suggestions of people that should be a guest on our podcast, please reach out. Let us know. We would love to hear from you and tune in next time.

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