In this episode of the Achieve Podcast, host Taylor Baker interviews Ben Laube, founder of Ben Laube Homes and broker at eXp Realty. Ben outlines his dual‑track business: a Central Florida residential real‑estate sales team of seven agents that handles buyers, sellers, and investors, and a nascent AI practice where he trains real‑estate professionals and builds AI tools. He attributes growth to recurring business and referrals driven by consistent, multi‑channel outreach (postcards, newsletters, social media). Key turning points include learning to manage people as the company grew, and the difficulty of hiring high‑quality talent, which requires casting a wide net and presenting attractive opportunities. Marketing is a holistic system, but Ben sees a conversion bottleneck: he needs better attribution and funnel tracking to allocate ad spend efficiently, especially for AI services where Facebook ads are the low‑hanging fruit. AI has been most impactful in rapid lead response and internal transaction‑management automation, freeing agents to focus on high‑touch client interactions. He discusses future opportunities: serving institutional investors for large‑scale property portfolios and scaling AI marketing. Lessons learned center on delayed financial management mastery—understanding lead costs, transaction margins, and the need for dedicated accounting expertise. Looking ahead, Ben is excited about using AI to double agent productivity while maintaining human relationships, emphasizing consistency and compounding progress. He closes with advice to “just do it” and directs listeners to his online presence (benlobbe.com, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok).
Chapters
Welcome to another episode of the Achieve Podcast, the show where we highlight leaders, creators, and entrepreneurs, those who are building meaningful businesses, shaping their industries, and having an impact. I'm Taylor Baker Baker, your host, and today we're excited to be joined by Ben Lobbe, the founder of Ben Lobbe Homes. He's a broker at XP Realty, so, and you can find them at Ben Lobbe or benlob.com. Got a few different websites. So yeah, Ben, first, thanks for joining us and coming on today.
Thanks for having me.
And second, give us the backstory for those getting to know you. How did you get into this space and who are you currently serving?
Yeah, so two different spaces now, actually. So I've, uh, got— been in the real estate space for over 12 years now. And so in that space, we serve, uh, residential sales is what we do. So primarily buyers, sellers, and investors. In the Central Florida market. And so over the last 15 years, I've developed and built a sales team with our broker, eXp Realty, and it's the Ben Lobby Homes sales team. And we've done, you know, over 250 transactions in a year. So we're pretty, pretty heavy in the Central Florida area, which is our main market that we serve. And then in the last year, I've ventured into a new space, which is the AI space. So I'm doing speaking and training with realtors and real estate brokers about how to implement AI into their businesses, um, and then also building AI tools and products for real estate professionals.
Wow, that's amazing. Now, how big is the team that you currently have?
So for the sales team, we have 7 agents, and for the, um, AI team, it's just 2 of us at the moment.
Okay. And so at this stage of the business, what would you say is actually driving the most growth for you guys?
Well, the good part is the team, sales team— I've been in real estate for almost 15 years. The sales team has only been around for about 6, 6 years now. And so we have much more wider reach with our audience because it's not just me as a, you know, as a sales leader, it's everyone on the team. So the real driver is the recurring business because of the service quality that we provide and educating our customers. We are now seeing a lot of people who may transacted in 2020 come back and use us again, or use our sales team members again. So that's kind of been, you know, that's a good portion of where our business comes from is the repeat and the referrals specifically.
That makes sense. And do you more primarily help like real estate agents or like the whole team, individuals or—
Me, so I lead the team on the sales side. So train them and help them you know, with their transactions. And, um, and then on the AI side, I educate, uh, people at our brokerage and other brokerages about, uh, AI. So awesome.
And for those who wanted to get some of that training, do you do it virtually as well?
Yep, yep. So ramping up a lot more virtual webinars and workshops. Um, so started with the— our niche of just, you know, who we know, who I know in the real estate space. Um, And then, you know, really AI training can be applied to a lot of different industries. So more than able to, you know, make it apply to different industries and different professionals. But I do in-person half-day workshops, full-day workshops where we can do like actual stuff together, and then virtual webinars and monthly like AI academies. So for anyone who is overwhelmed and doesn't know where to start. Like that's, that's the bulk of, I think, the audience, uh, at this time.
So yeah, I think that's the bulk of humanity at this time.
Yeah. Yeah.
And so it was like a firehose learning. Yeah. Looking back, Ben, for you, what would you say are the biggest turning points that have the greatest impact on how you run the organization?
Um, a large impact was just like learning how to manage people, right? When you go from being an individual salesperson to a business owner and you're hiring staff and you're hiring, you know, sales consultants, that's a huge different mindset shift, right? Because you're dependent on their production and their abilities and you're responsible for them. And so you have to, you know, make— and you have to set the standard and enforce the standard. And that leads to sometimes some very hard decisions if, you know, someone is you know, not necessarily meeting the standard. Um, and you have to be like willing to have confrontation with people and, and deal with that. So it's, uh, business is like a journey. It's like every, you know, few years there's a whole new like thing you have to learn as you grow and scale. And it's, it's why I love it. I would get so bored at a normal job.
So true. A totally different set of skills. I mean, Michael Jordan, Phil Jackson, like Different skills, like leading and doing it. Wow. Now, as you have tried to grow and expand, what have been the biggest bottlenecks and obstacles that keep showing up?
Finding great people, like finding great talent is always difficult and it's just like you got to cast a much larger net, right? So if you, if you are looking for someone who's specialized or good people like you, I think I, it took a while to learn that, you know, So if you only interview 5 people, then your pool of people that you're hiring from is very, very small, right? So if you really want to find the best people, you really need to be looking all over and creating an opportunity that really attracts the people that you want to be working with. So, and thinking about, okay, this type of, this type of agent or this type of salesperson or staff that I really want on my team, what is this person looking for in an opportunity and how can I present the opportunity that's attractive to them, right? So if that's the way you really get good quality people without having to like burn through staff or, you know, you know, dealing with the wrong fit.
So, you know, yeah. Now, this next question is kind of a two-part question. When it comes to your outreach, your messaging, your marketing systems, what do you feel like has been working really well to attract and keep customers?
Attract and keep customers? Everything. I mean, it's definitely a little bit of everything and really the consistency in it. So there's people, you know, we send out postcards to our past client database, we send out email newsletters, we post on social media. So there's every piece of component that keeps us top of mind. And that's really where we want to be is just, you know, when they have that conversation with their friend or relative who's thinking about moving, our name needs to be top of mind so that we're the person that they recommend. Um, and so it's not really just— it's like the whole system has to be, you know, making up— making us aware to the customer in multiple different, you know, methods. Um, so I don't really attribute it to just like one component.
That makes sense. And so the second part is, where do you feel like you're still— there's still money on the table or opportunity?
Um, I think there's— for the real estate side, there's definitely more money on the table working with larger institutional investors. Um, so it's kind of like a niche service that we've been working on with, uh, building these relationships with the financial institutions that buy portfolios of properties. And how can we be their service manager or transition man, uh, transaction team as they go through and rebalance their portfolios, whether it's more acquisition or liquidation. So those kinds of relationships bring a large, you know, volume add, but it's very specific, you know, people and introductions that we're working on getting and a different kind of networking than just like the retail buyer and seller. So that's a big expansion. And then on the AI side, it's really just mass, you know, marketing. So Facebook ads really is, is where our biggest current, like, lowest hanging fruit is that we need to optimize a bit more.
So, okay. And you think it's more like a visibility problem, conversion, a team execution thing? Where do you see like there's a biggest opportunity?
I would say it's a conversion problem at the moment. Yeah, it's just finding the right combination of the ads and the flow and trying to get the, like, the attribution of where does the customer, like, enter the funnel so that we know exactly the customer journey from, you know, where did they first see us and when do they convert. Nailing down that pipeline of events so that we can trace it backwards and then spend more money on the right sources is, is much more technical and difficult than just drawing it on a piece of paper.
So, yeah. Now you had mentioned AI. Where have you guys found ways to utilize it internally and where do you still see opportunity with that?
Yeah, so the most impactful implementation has been first contact with customers. So if a customer, you know, registers on our website or reaches out via phone or text or something, having that first like reach out and simple qualifications to just then set an appointment with an agent has been the most impactful from a return standpoint because, you know, people are registering or signing up or filling out a form in that moment. And if we are on their phone responding within a minute or two, it's a huge different impact than an hour or 4 hours later, right? When a human could handle it. So That's been the greatest impact. Beyond that, we've— the last year has also been just, you know, implementing like processes and backend systems. So all the internal stuff of managing transaction management flowing through the transaction and then our marketing creation and content pipeline.
So, okay. So Ben, when you think about the next stages of the business, what are you most excited about?
Getting even more efficient. I think, I think with the implementation of AI, we're able to serve a lot wider group of people and many more people with the same staff and the same overhead. So That's exciting because we've already seen a little bit in that growth. But for us to be able to, you know, hopefully double everyone's productivity and make it easier for the agents, the sales agents to actually, you know, handle their transaction and make it more convenient to them, then it helps them have more conversations with more people. Right. And in sales specifically, you make money when you're talking to people. So that's where I needed them to be rather than having to deal with paperwork or having to deal with admin stuff or any of the other stuff that can really be automated or, you know, really like handled by AI. So the sales agents will always maintain the long-term relationship and the relationship with the customer because that human-to-human component is needed within a high-ticket space category like where we are. So that will not change. But if we can give them that assistance of AI, then they could handle hopefully double what they're doing now would be like the goal without so much more effort.
I love that. And that's, that's a well-stated utilization of AI where it's like keep the human connection, like you can't replace that, but take off the busy work so they can focus on that.
Exactly.
And so now when you look at your own journey, the wins, the mistakes, what lessons stand out to you you wish you learned sooner or took longer than they should have?
Great question. Took longer than they should have. I think really the, like, financial management component of running a business took much longer than it should have to figure out. I think there's— if you want to scale past a certain point, you really have to either hire or utilize someone who specializes in, you know, accounting, bookkeeping, or financial planning, or you need to study it and know it yourself as the owner or the founder. And I think that's crucial, especially for forecasting and really defining, okay, what is our margin that we need to hit to be successful, right? If you can't answer that, then you really aren't really running a business. And there was a time in the beginning when I was figuring out how, you know, what I was doing and I didn't know. So I didn't know what the cost of a lead was or the cost of a transaction. And it took too long to really like figure those numbers out and really plan from that. So on the AI side, with the AI products and tools, it's a lot easier to be like, okay, we know what our overhead is, we now know what we can market this at. We know our margins built in rather than just, you know, throwing a dart at the wall of what we're going to price this product at. So, which I feel like a lot of people do.
Yes. Like prayer and hope is not a business plan.
Yeah, exactly.
They're good to have for sure, but they're not a business plan. So if you had to pick one constraint to focus on and solve over the next 90 days, What would it be?
One constraint over the next 90 days. The amount of time I have.
You solve that, you become a billionaire.
Yeah, that'd be great. Operating on like 4 hours of sleep would be great. Yeah, I'm not sure. I feel like we don't really have that many things constraining us that we aren't already working on. So yeah, just moving the needle forward on everything a little bit every day is my goal.
Consistency.
Yeah, consistency.
Yeah, yeah. And that compounding effect of that is amazing what it does in business.
And you gotta— you gotta remember to look back and observe the compounding effect, otherwise you'll feel like you're not making any progress.
There's some wisdom right there. Yes. Without that, without that progress, that motivation, it's hard to keep going on those hard days. So yeah. Wow, Ben, thank you so much. Any final thoughts or advice for other leaders, others coming on a similar journey?
Yeah, get out there and do it. Stop planning, just go do it, right? The only one stopping you is yourself, and you shouldn't do that.
That's awesome. And for those who want to learn more or get involved, where's the best place? So they can go to benlobbe.com, they can go to LinkedIn, anywhere else you want to send them?
Yeah, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, basically everywhere on the internet you should be able to find me at Ben Lobbe. That's L-A-U-B-B-E.
Awesome. So reach out. And then thank you to our sponsors of today's episode, Achieve Fractional, which provides fractional executive leadership for growing businesses. And if you enjoyed the episode, or if you have questions, reach out to Ben. He'll be able to help you out. Him and his team can show you what the options are and how to utilize the technology that's available now. So reach out, and we'll see you all in the next episode of the Achieve Podcast.
