Speaker 1 (00:00:01):
No matter where your business is today or where you want to take it, you'll get there faster and more profitably with an operating system. Welcome to Team os, your guide to starting, growing and optimizing real estate team. Here's your host, Ethan Butte
Speaker 2 (00:00:16):
For insights into starting, growing and optimizing a real estate team. We're talking with Justin Haver. A few fun facts before we get started. He recently moved his $4 billion real estate team to exp Realty. Prior to that, they were the number one re max team in Canada and top five worldwide for several years running and all along they were also the number one team in Canada in contributions to the Children's Miracle Network. Finally, if you don't follow Justin on social media for his real estate and leadership insights, follow him to meet Yorkie's Olive and Pepper. Thanks Justin for talking Team OS today.
Speaker 3 (00:00:55):
Hi Ethan. Thank you so much for having me here today. I'm super excited and honored to be on your podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:01:00):
Tell us a little bit more about Olive and Pepper real quick.
Speaker 3 (00:01:03):
So Olive was my partner, Carmen's dog for many, many years. And even when Carmen brought Olive home at the time I used to have 130 pound Rottweiler named Romeo who was a big teddy bear and not scary at all. And Carmen brought Olive home and I looked at this little tiny dog and I said, this is not a dog. It's so tiny, right? And several years ago I had a pretty bad accident where I broke my leg and I was laid up in that bed for several months because of the severity of the leg break and car and the kids and Olive moved in to take care of me. And when I got back on my feet, the dog stayed behind and she hasn't left my side since. And the joke is it's now my dog and Carmen basically ended up getting herself pepper to replace Olive. And again, same breed and again, again, it's the unconditional love of such a little bundle of love, right? And they're incredibly loyal and so much fun to have around.
Speaker 2 (00:02:19):
Awesome, thank you for that. And I mean that's great teamwork in general and you got to replace the position. That's another team theme in what you shared there. So to get going, the question I've been asking everyone Justin, is what is a must have characteristic of a high performing team?
Speaker 3 (00:02:37):
I think a must have characteristic of a team, especially a high performing team, is standards. You need to ensure that you have obviously systems and processes laid out for how your client journey goes through your organization on the buyer and seller side. And then you need to have standards which you enforce or have people buy into to ensure that obviously it is a proven journey for both a buyer and seller. And you need to have A-C-R-M-C-R-M is incredibly important to the success of an organization and especially in the world that we are in where we're trying to connect with as many people as possible and try to keep track of it all and having it organized, ensuring that every single client interaction is logged, documented, and that you continue to walk people through the journey of the buying and selling process without dropping the ball, which gives the client that five star experience with your organization.
Speaker 2 (00:03:40):
Man, a lot of stuff roped in there. I feel like we're just going to spend 45 minutes just breaking all of that apart and going one step deeper into most of it. And the first place I want to go is specific to standards. I mean, do you set standards and communicate standards and higher standards around both the quantitative stuff, the activity based stuff, Hey, we need to be doing X number of this and X plus number of that and y number of that as well as the qualitative talk about standards From a really practical perspective, is it simply activity measures that are precursors to results, like measured results or are you also setting standards on how you do all those activities?
Speaker 3 (00:04:25):
It's a great question and I think again, our business is constantly evolving and I think it's important for us to ensure that we also perhaps at times have standards that are evolving as well. And we go as far as outlining what the expectations are of the partners that we bring into our organization on how they are to handle both buyers and sellers. And yeah, that comes to how many contact attempts. It comes to your nurture process and it's very detailed, but at the same time I think it's incredibly important for an organization to look and always study the expectations that you have in the organization on how you can constantly improve and enhance how the clients go through and the conversion rate of the organization. And one thing that we constantly look at is how can we level up the organization by bringing people in at a new hire standard?
Speaker 3 (00:05:29):
Again, we are in the business of dealing with human beings and again, sometimes people are reluctant to change and changing the way they've done this business because they've been in a business for X, y, Z number of years and it works. But then when you bring in newer agents into your system at a higher standard, what essentially can happen and will happen is they will start to outperform. Perhaps the more experienced agents or the people that have been in your system that are reluctant to changing their way, they're conducting business, they start to now look over their shoulder and go, why is it that John is outsell me? John has only been here for so long, but there's something to what they're doing because they're starting to outsell me. So then that's how you can get the more experienced agents that perhaps buy into a higher standard because they start to see that what the other people are doing is working and all they will say is like, well Ethan, I'm just working really hard and I'm just doing what you tell me to do.
Speaker 3 (00:06:40):
But you know what? I think it's for any team leader or anybody that is running a business, whether you're solo agent or a team leader, like I said, you should always be inspecting, inspecting your processes and standards and look at always meeting the consumer where they're at and what are the consumer expectations of a real estate agent In today's world, the one that's always, always top of my list is speed to lead, especially when you're looking at converting opportunities, whether you're generating them from PPC, organic, SEO, radio, tv, billboards, whatever it is, you want to make sure that you meet the consumer where they're at and they're now expecting instant communication and you need to make sure that speed to lead is critical.
Speaker 2 (00:07:30):
Do you have separate kind of cadences and processes? I mean I assume that you do, but speak to any differences that you have. You just mentioned some of the different ways people come into your system and come into relationship with you and your team. Organic is obviously a bit different than pay-per-click is obviously a lot different than radio, television, billboards, which I think all kind of work together to create this impression. How different are some of the follow-up activity sequences based on where these people come from?
Speaker 3 (00:08:06):
It's the reality. If you compare a PPC lead where it's essentially also from Google versus an organic lead, depending on, again, if it's an inquire on wanting to look at a property, the people that are looking to view a property are perhaps much later in the exploratory journey of purchasing a home, whereas someone who is a PPC lead registering just to see additional information on the property are more in the exploratory stage in which those leads do require more nurturing and more touch points along the way, which again, you have different marketing means. So obviously incorporate that into the system and then again, follow up on has some incredible partners can also help with the automation and the ai. If you look at a partner like ypo, which is deeply integrated, which is again an assistant that will help the agents stay in touch with these people, and again, they require obviously more retargeting and bringing people back with the AI nurturing as well. But the key is everybody's got to look at this as a contact sport. The more contacts that you have with a individual that is looking to transact, it shouldn't really matter where the lead came from because you want to make sure that you position yourself to be the trusted real estate advisor that will walk them through the buying or selling journey whenever they are ready to do so. And as long as you can be top of mind, it is highly likely that you will be the agent of choice.
Speaker 2 (00:09:41):
Really good. I also appreciate that contact sport because it made me think about meaningful contact and that's exactly where you concluded is guiding them on a journey no matter where they are on it and what their timeline is. Before we get too much farther, I would love for you to characterize your team however you like, whether that's size, the market that you serve. You also mentioned you have some experienced agents and some newer agents, however you'd like to characterize your team. I'd love for you to do that for a minute.
Speaker 3 (00:10:10):
It's a team where there's an incredible amount of contribution and support amongst themselves and how they support each other. I get to sit there as being one small part of this organization and I see how they have created this culture. It is not something that I designed or created. It is something that they created when you can have people in an organization that operate from a place of abundance because we do have so many opportunities and I have never seen a sales environment where people get rewarded based on commissions where they voluntarily hand off opportunities where they're like, Hey, does anybody want to have a client that's looking to ready to view homes? Does anybody want this individual? It's yours. That happens on almost daily basis within our organization, and we've had some agents that have gone through some life challenges, injuries and so forth, and agents are there to step up and help.
Speaker 3 (00:11:25):
We had one that broke both of her ankles recently at a charity golf tournament. Accidents happened, but the team was there to help support her. She was still able to conduct her business here for the last two months because of the support of the team helping her with her clients. And if you are a solo agent out there and if something like that was to happen, I mean it would be devastating to your ability to make an income because you wouldn't be able to go out there and meet with clients. So yeah, the team is relatively large. We have 60 licensed agents and about 18 support staff and it's a lot of people, but at the same time, it is really neat just for me to even have the ability to be a part of it myself. When I got into real estate 18 years ago, I never thought about building a team. I never dreamed about building a team. I just wanted to sell some real estate, get established and take care of my dreams and desires and have a family. But again, part of my obsession over the years has been generating leads and doing search engine optimization and so forth, and that has organically really been the foundation of where this organization is today because of the number of opportunities that we generate.
Speaker 2 (00:12:53):
It's awesome. It's funny, it reminds me of a conversation I had with Gary Ashton and he was like, yeah, the first time I met Justin, I think he said it was at a real estate web masters's conference and you were a solo ancient generating like hundreds and hundreds of leads for yourself.
Speaker 3 (00:13:09):
Oh yeah, you know what? And again, this is the power of going to a conference and the connections that you make and the people that you meet and how the collaboration and a friendship can develop with the people that you meet at these conferences. And yeah, it was 2012 when about this time of the year when I met Gary Ashton, I just saw a Facebook memory pop up where I met him for breakfast beside this pool down in Miami, and we actually had a conversation and reflected on that meeting and how that has turned into pretty incredible friendship. But yeah, I was basically a solo agent sending out referrals to four other agents in the brokerage where I was at and I was generating 150 leads a day organically.
Speaker 2 (00:13:58):
That's incredible. And was that the start of the team? So for example, were any of those four agents part of your initial kind of foray into more of a formal team structure?
Speaker 3 (00:14:09):
Yeah, I mean I guess it was kind of a formal team structure at that time where I was told by my previous brokerage where I was at that I had to start a team, and that was January 1st, 2010 because I was operating as a sole agent just collecting referrals and they're like, no, you should be a team, you got to be a team. So that's how the team kind of got started. But yeah, no, I was operating with four agents and myself. I was actively selling and they're still one of the people that was on my team back then is on the team today. And we laugh sometimes about some of the things. I mean there would be times where I'm like, I'm sorry, but I just put 55 leads on your plate. I know that you have a day full of showings at open houses. Just deal with him when he can deal with them. Nothing automated. It was a bit of a gong show to be honest.
Speaker 2 (00:15:10):
So good. Okay, so this tees up a very specific kind of conversation I wanted to have with you based on something that we talked about a few weeks back, which is there's a moment in your business when you recognize the need for, and you kind of tease this a little bit off the top, a need for a centralized place for leads and opportunities, a way to have greater transparency yourself and more accountability across the team. I think there's probably also an element of lead efficiency as leads get more expensive. You needed that too, but I'd love for you to take us back to when did this occur to you? When did it become obvious that there was a problem slash opportunity around this for you?
Speaker 3 (00:15:56):
I think it's all part of the business journey of operating a business and obviously learning and growing. And one of the things that I've done to build my business here was having multiple websites in the same marketplace. What I used to have is all these websites, every agent would have the login to their profile on the back of each website. There would be instances where agents would get the same lead essentially because they came on different websites and I'm like, well, no, this is my lead. So that created some interesting conversations at times and we are like, well, the person who writes eats essentially, or the reality is whoever the client works with wants to work with is who would transact. But what essentially happened was I came to realize that I didn't have a lot of accountability, and I even had a time when I was doing all the radio advertising, which is again a huge expense.
Speaker 3 (00:17:08):
I would have all the calls going directly to the agent's cell phones, and in 2017 I had a bit of a turnover on the team where I had a few people, and I mean as a team leader, many of us will do, we put a lot of trust and faith in people that come into our organizations. And I also didn't have the right system because I believe that these people would essentially do the honorable thing and log everything into the CRM and so forth. And it was a couple of agents that were departing from the team and they sat in the office of a broker and they said, yeah, we have enough business to last us a year and a half from the haver.
Speaker 3 (00:17:51):
And I had no way to track a lot of that. And so that's kind of where I said, one, we need to create a central system to have all the websites feed into it. And I had made a massive investment to make sure that that happened. And the beautiful part about having a central place for all your CRM, it one simplifies everything for the agents. They don't have multiple CRMs to go in the back of, it's like, oh, where's Ethan again? Which website is he on? It just creates a lot of clarity and freedom of them not having to overthink where the clients are. They're now there. Now with having these multiple lead sources, if they are already working with a client and that client happens to pop in from another lead source, guess what? That same agent gets notified and it goes back to them.
Speaker 3 (00:18:51):
And then at the same time, utilizing the dialer and the phone system with us, what we did was we basically imported our phone number that we used for all of our advertising now goes right into follow-up. So every inbound call to the organization is logged and recorded. So from a tracking standpoint, which I mean a lot of our agents, they really have to have the ability to listen to the call when the consumer called in so they can get the tonality, get all the details before they call 'em back to go to the listing appointment. So I think that it was the best business decision for myself. I wish I would've done it many years earlier, but everything happens at the right time when you're ready for it. And I think it's very important for all of us, whether you're a solo agent or you're looking to build a team, you got to protect your investment. And we know that in order to survive in this business, you need to generate opportunities and these opportunities because you invest money to generate them, you need to make sure that you also have the best chances of get a big ROI on your investment. And that's by having that central data base or CRM making sure that you build it out so that it is there to help you grow your business and again, create that great client experience with your organization.
Speaker 2 (00:20:28):
Yeah, I appreciate you ending on client experience there too. I can imagine how confusing it might be for somebody to get outreach from two different agents, essentially from the same team. So part of their voicemail, for example, or even their email signature, they look similar. So I can imagine how much that helped we'll get into some kind of intended and unintended consequences of this in a minute, but I also wanted to acknowledge first that this isn't the first time we've had a conversation about essentially integrity. What you would do yourself isn't necessarily what other people would do, and you probably saw some of yourself and what I think the word you used was honorable. You would do the honorable thing, why wouldn't everyone do the honorable thing? But unfortunately that's just not the case. And I imagine that was probably not just an expensive but also probably a hurtful experience for you.
Speaker 3 (00:21:24):
You know what, this is a very interesting topic and it's very interesting. I think many team leaders can probably relate to this or anybody that has made a substantial investment into generating opportunities to help grow the business of the partners in their organization. And the reality is that many people are going to depart from any team. People come onto a team for a recent season or a lifetime. And I think that we always want to believe that everyone has integrity and everybody has good intentions, but it's fascinating to sit there and watch how people conduct themselves when there's an opportunity for personal gain. It's like I know that that lead came from Ethan. I know that Ethan invested into generating that opportunity to me, and I know that that Ethan was introduced to me from the marketing of the team, and I know that I'm contractually obligated to pay referral feedback to the team leader.
Speaker 3 (00:22:33):
And everybody will have to sit there and look in the mirror and go, what is the right thing to do here? And that is a classroom where a lot of people are sitting in and not only from people that used to be on my team or any other team out there as well. And again, there are many people that are so incredibly honorable as well. So it's really interesting from a standpoint of seeing, again, many people and many of us may have had our parents say this as well, money is the root of all evil. It's not, but it is definitely something that can make people not act in an integral way. I think that everybody should really sit there and think about that if they are someone who is considering leaving a team or building a team is like, how are you going to handle these situations?
Speaker 3 (00:23:31):
You got to, again, from a business standpoint, anyone that is operating a business doesn't matter if it's in real estate or whatnot, you got to sit there and protect your business, whatever that business model in. And you got to also ensure that that is also the standards of that is also upheld, even post departure, it is business 1 0 1. Just because we are in real estate doesn't mean that we shouldn't have integrity in our agreements. We deal with buyers and sellers who, and we're part of people's biggest financial transactions in most cases, and we deal with contracts, we got to make sure that we also uphold our own reputation because we only have one reputation.
Speaker 2 (00:24:20):
Yeah, really well said. I feel like we might double back into kind of the human side of this because of a quote. I'm going to read a quote to you from yourself from the first fcon when you were on the stage, but I want to dwell here still in this kind of system scenario, when you organized and centralized all of this, not only is there greater transparency across the team and greater accountability to hopefully minimize some of that type of behavior, I think it probably affects the culture even in that way. It's like once it is normal that we have more transparency into who's who, what's what and what's going on that probably would minimize that behavior in general. But the question I want to ask here is was anything surprising to you after you centralized this in terms of maybe lead source or ROI or lead efficiency? Did you change any of your behavior after bringing a lot of this stuff together, getting better insight, doing some of that inspection? Did you change any specific methods or systems kind of in a dramatic way?
Speaker 3 (00:25:31):
This is something that we constantly look at as an organization. We were actually diving deeper and deeper into lead attribution. With the marketing team that I have now built, we can now go into each and every lead source that we have and we can say, okay, leads from this website or this lead source spent X number of days on average in our system before they transacted. And then you look at the different lead conversions of those sources as well where you can then now really make informed decisions based on where you want to spend your marketing dollars. And I think that is incredibly important, especially when we are looking at growing an organization. And again, how much of your budget you want to spend on branding and how much you want to spend on lead generation and are you spending the money on lead generation in a practical and sensible way?
Speaker 3 (00:26:29):
And we actually found from what we were doing here recently was that whether it was a PPC lead or a showing request that came in from organic SO people that want to look at house, the time that they spent in the CRM before they transacted was literally only weeks apart. So it helped actually change the mindset of some people that go like, oh, PPC leads are crap, Nana, it's your follow-up. That's crap. They're all people that are looking at transacting. And the reality is that for us, this help paint a clearer picture to our partners within a team. And also we get to look at, okay, should we shift some spend over here and move it to here? Tracking is incredibly important. I think I've been guilty of this myself as well. I've been just throwing stuff at the wall. I'm like, ah, see what sticks.
Speaker 3 (00:27:33):
And I think many of us kind of go through that as trial and error and really we test a lot. Again, this is part of running a team as well. We have the financial ability to do a lot of testing more than others perhaps. But at the same time, we also have a lot more risk and stakes as well when it comes to some of these big marketing initiatives that some of us larger teams do. And again, we all value the talent and treasure and the partnership of all of our team members because they're a huge contributor to the success of an organization in which we are all invested in it.
Speaker 2 (00:28:20):
Yeah, I really appreciate that. It reminds me too of where you started off earlier too, this idea of intuition or gut like PPC leads or garbage. No, they're not. My system is amazing. Why is this new agent outperforming me? Just following the system and really relying on what's working from a measured perspective, it seems so obvious that when, again, I'll just generally refer to this as the centralization of opportunities and the transparency of opportunities when that move happened, it seems so obviously beneficial to agents, especially the way that you described it. I don't need to log into five different systems now. I can just go into one, but you also mentioned, for example, call recording and some people like it. Was there any surprising pushback in this move from agents who are maybe fixed in the way things were?
Speaker 3 (00:29:14):
Oh, well, again, whenever you make changes, people are always struggling to adapt. But the reality is that once it's got to see the value in having the centralized system with where we record all the communication under a client profile, we look at it as it's an insurance policy first and foremost, because if there's ever anything that goes sideways, we have the ability to go back in and inspect. We have instances where someone purchased a property and they had waived all the conditions just waiting for closing, and then they contact us and say, yeah, you know what? I'm not closing. I wasn't comfortable with the home inspection. And we can go back, okay, there was 804 text messages back and forth on this date and this time you said home inspection looks great. Let's waive conditions and move forward. Oh yeah, I said that again, that then insured. I mean there was obviously in this scenario, there were other things that were impacting this conversation because someone had bought a property without the consent of their partner.
Speaker 3 (00:30:30):
But again, these things can happen. I mean, we're dealing with human beings. We are walking alongside them when they're making biggest purchase of their lives and there are emotions that are attached to that, and people are usually sitting in fear doubt. Am I making the right decision here? Now for me and my family, oh my God, I'm going into so much debt. Is my job secure? But having everything centralized, it does become, again, that insurance policy. If you ever have an instance with your broker or complaint or anything like that, it also allows you to go back and review all the communication. Is that then now a teaching and learning opportunity for the organization to again, get better? We will constantly sit in our CRM and inspect the agent communication with our clients to see if we can also coach and help develop them in their communication style with these opportunities. And sometimes go back and be like, Hey, Ethan, maybe you want to listen to this phone call again and let me know if there's anything that you would do differently today.
Speaker 3 (00:31:48):
And perhaps we go, Hey, Ethan, you may want to reach out to this client again. They said that they have a house to sell. Explore that further. So by doing exercises like this on a daily basis, not only are we helping the agent catch these opportunities that may have slipped through the fingers, but we're also getting them to build and develop their skillset. And I think it's incredibly important that in this business we need to learn to listen more and really pick up on some of the cues that people open up and share with us. Because a lot of times agents can just be singularly focused on, I just need the sale. And when you focus on the sale, they're just going to run away from you. You got to build the connection with the consumer and just learn to lean into learning more about these people that you have the opportunity to connect with and keep building these deep relationships so you can have that lifelong raving fan.
Speaker 3 (00:32:54):
There's many clients that we have worked with over the years that have transacted with us six to 10 times, and that's because they keep coming back and they have that rapport with a team. So I think it's all about creating those experiences and the connections and the CRM is good for that. And another thing that we have been doing as well is we will play a recording of a call at a team meeting or a coaching session, and it becomes a coachable moment for everybody in the organization. And the first time we did that, the look of fear on everybody was definitely in their eyes. It's like, oh, please don't pick any of my calls. But again, it was a very powerful experience for them the first time because it taught them like, okay, you know what? One, this is a safe space and we're here to support each other and for all of us to get better, and how do we now know? Because again, your experience can become my experience. And then when I have a scenario like that again, then that can now be something that I will now know how to handle
Speaker 2 (00:34:10):
A lot of really good stuff in there. From the tracking all of the communication itself and being able to go fish out language that was useful or even, I mean, just the idea of 804 text messages, you didn't make that number up. I mean, you've seen what leads up to a transaction. I'm sure that some of them are well beyond that in addition to all this coaching and training opportunity. One more question in this zone around the financial side. I mean, multiple people can participate in any given commission, and I'm sure that varies based on the nature of the opportunity or the lead source. I mean, talk about the financial, how this aids you in fair financial dealings as well.
Speaker 3 (00:34:51):
Yeah, for us, we run, it's a pretty easy system. Usually the agents, they split with a team, but then if an agent, let's say, goes away on vacation or if there's two agents that work on the same transaction, then they have agreed upon a split there as well. So really there's not four or five people that are involved in our splits at all. It's pretty simple in that aspect. But again, if you look at some of the benefits of someone being on a team, and let's say you don't want to share your splits, one of the things that some of our agents will do is, you know what, Ethan, while you're on vacation, if you cover my business for the next three weeks, I owe you three weeks of coverage when you go on vacation. And we have had agents that have gone away for that long and sold seven to nine homes during that timeline, and that's kind of nice to have a paid vacation essentially.
Speaker 3 (00:35:53):
I can't say that've experienced having that much time off myself, but again, I think it's pretty amazing when you have team members that have had the opportunity and the ability to do that knowing that you know what their business is taken care of. It's taken care of by another agent that follows the exact same processes in which you do and everything is logged and documented. So if you do go away, you can jump right back in. You see all the communication and so forth. And at the same time, again, depending on how the splits are within the organization, that's another thing that I'll say for those who are listening is make sure that your agents have these conversations prior to doing any business and document it in an email.
Speaker 2 (00:36:44):
Yeah, really good tip. I want to give you that quote from the first Fcon, which is over a year ago now. It was from your stage presentation. If there's one thing that would be the most powerful lever you can pull in your business, it's the way you develop your people. We're all here in the business of human development. Now, you teased this a little bit before, but I'd love for you to lay into that idea. When did this occur to you and why is it so fundamentally important when so many people are really talking dollars and cents, conversion rates, et cetera? I mean, to me that all feels like at some level a trailing outcome of pulling that lever and being in the business of human development first and foremost. But I'd love to hear you speak to that directly.
Speaker 3 (00:37:33):
Yeah, you know what, it's because it's been part of my own journey of personal development, and in 2017 I got introduced, it was actually late 2016, I was actually introduced to someone who's a very good friend of mine now and a coach, John Shelac. And again, I know that he's been here on the stage a couple of times now at Fcon as well, and walking alongside him and him helping me develop to become a better person, a better leader, and really diving into my own personal development at the time. What I ended up doing as well is I ended up really opening up to the team and the organization about my journey through personal development. I think it's very important for all of us to really look in the mirror, look in some of our own patterns and how we behave and what's the root of some of these patterns.
Speaker 3 (00:38:35):
We all have experiences from our childhood that whether we want to admit it or not, I mean, if you admit it, Hey, you know what? Congratulations. You obviously recognize that there's something for you to explore further, to really look at that and get to the root of some of these things. We're all human beings, and that's what makes us so incredibly beautiful, and doing that with no judgment as well and ensuring that it is a safe space. I truly have had the honor to see people come into our organization and it has helped grow them as wives, mothers, fathers, husbands, men and women, and how many of them have really grown with confidence, skillset, all set?
Speaker 3 (00:39:32):
It's something that I just, again, I am just humbled by being able to be a part of that and seeing how these people have really grown as people and whether they got inspired by something that happened within the organization by seeing other people growing or being open and vulnerable. I think when people share some of the trauma and the experiences that they have had in their lives, there are many people that can actually connect and may have had the experiences just like them. And I think just accepting people for who they are and also giving them that support where, Hey, you know what? It's okay to not be okay. It's okay to talk about some of these uncomfortable things in a safe environment. And the reality is that if there's something that's going on in your personal life, it is highly likely that it will show up in your work, right?
Speaker 3 (00:40:35):
It's so interconnected, and if you can take care of some of the stuff in your personal life that will also transform into your business and your business will grow. So it's a fascinating journey. I mean, it's a journey that I think that all of us are really on. As we perhaps get older and a little more mature, I think that's when people perhaps get a little more open to looking at some of these things and exploring what you resist. Persists is obviously a saying, and when something keeps popping up, it's like, I seem to be the common denominator in this problem, and I may have been in a similar situation before. What is this here to teach me about me? What is this here to teach me about me? And then really diving into that with curiosity and looking, it's not fun work. It's hard work, right?
Speaker 3 (00:41:37):
It's not a quick fix by any shape, way or form. And I think that for all of us who aspire to become a better person today than we were yesterday, I think it's a journey that everybody should really look at whenever they're ready at doing it. And we live in such an incredibly complex world right now with social media where we see perhaps a snapshot of a perfect photo that has been enhanced, and then we go into that comparison mode. And it's so hard not to go into a rabbit hole around that and oh my God, they must have such an incredible life. Just like, no, you know what? Come on. Everybody has struggles. Everybody has their challenges. Some hide it more than others. And the one thing that I'll share openly as well, I mean in 2007 I only been, no, not 2007, 2009, see, it's been so long now.
Speaker 3 (00:42:42):
I went through a divorce myself, and that was a very painful experience for me, and I associated a lot of that pain with the ex-wife leaving essentially. And there were certain complexities to that with some of the struggles that she was going through, and we tried to always just support that. But there was initially met with, I don't have a problem, and she walked out and I actually put on a work or a mask, a work. I dove into my work. This is all I have left, and I went five years without a one week vacation, and I was essentially, I put on the mask and I hid in my work versus doing that personal development and the reality, what I discovered, and I'm being open about this right now, is nothing to do with the pain that I experienced. Sure. Obviously, the failure of a marriage is something that of those of us who go through that, we obviously have somewhat of a personal responsibility for why it failed.
Speaker 3 (00:44:01):
And some of us may have again associated some pain with that, but my pain didn't come from that. It was pain from my childhood. Abandonment is perhaps something that many of us have challenges with as an adult, and that usually stems from the childhood. And once I got into the root of my own crap, that also freed me and it's incredibly freeing to kind of dive into this personal development and then circling back to the team, I believe that if I can have the ability to have a positive impact on a person's life, whether it's personal or professionally, that can help impact their lives, their families, and so forth. For me, that is not what I measure as success.
Speaker 3 (00:44:56):
The transactions, the dollars, the recognition, I mean, it's a testament to the team and the teamwork that goes into it, but all the awards that I have it sit in my garage up in the rafters. I may have even thrown some out in the recycling bin because they were glass. It's all about if I can have an impact on perhaps an agent that comes into the business, comes on the team, experienced agent that comes onto the team, help have an impact on how they develop if they depart from the team. I know that I can say with confidence that I have had an impact on building a foundation for their real estate career because I know that what we teach and how we develop agents, we do it the right way. We do it with integrity, and they have foundational skills that they will have the ability to carry on with a very successful real estate career. And I'm proud of that, and it's something that I'm incredibly passionate about continuing on with, and it's about impacting people.
Speaker 2 (00:46:18):
Okay. First, thank you so much for sharing that. There's a lot in there. This idea of developing the human as a means of developing the business. It has two ends. One is you actually have a better person. B, you're going to be more successful and that you could not have unlocked what you have unlocked without that hard work, but that work, I don't think a lot of people or enough people perhaps recognize as work. What turned you onto the idea that this is work to do, that this is valuable work to do, not just to alleviate some of my pain or to satisfy some of my needs or my thoughts or some of this. When did you give yourself permission to invest time and money into this as work that would be better, not just for you, but also for the business?
Speaker 3 (00:47:17):
Well, again, I think we all get to a point in life perhaps when we're tired of living in that inner emotional jail. And that's perhaps what I call it, and to kind of want to get peace and freedom and calmness from within. And I think it's incredibly important to really look at, again, if you give something the universe, there's a universal law that has a tendency to give back tenfold. And by pouring into your people and by giving them what they need, it gives them also a sense of belonging and appreciation. And again, I look at having a team now, the team is again, a very recognizable brand here in our marketplace, but I look at it as a vehicle for the agents who choose to partner with the team, for them to use this vehicle to create memorable life experiences for themselves and their families. And in this partnership, the team alleviates a lot of the financial risk that an individual agent perhaps takes on with proven systems, processes, brand. They don't have to sit and worry about where's that next opportunity going to come from? They basically turn on the faucet and opportunities come in. And for people that are in this partnership and in this journey, I'm very open with my team of I'm just like them.
Speaker 3 (00:49:06):
I am a human being as well. I have struggles. I have the same challenges as any one of them. And I look at myself as having the privilege to be the leader of the team, and it's a huge responsibility. And I'm also committed to constantly help develop them and myself as again, real estate is a byproduct of what we get to do, right? That's the fun part. Interacting, going, looking at houses, you know what, we're all going to have ups and downs, whether it's in business and personal, and this is part of this journey of life, and it's important for all of us to invest the time. We got to take care of ourselves. We do have to do that in order for us to take care of others. And again, that comes from taking care of your body by making sure that you're active, nutrition, water, and also the information that we put in between our ears as well, because it's equally important to make sure that we really consume the right information, the healthy information, just like it's important to fuel our body with healthy stuff as well.
Speaker 2 (00:50:23):
Man, I love that call. There are so many things more I want to ask, but at the risk of going over an hour, I'm going to stop here. I so appreciate what you've been able to share. I especially appreciate the call at the end for what we're taking into ourselves, whether it's through our ears or through our eyes or other means. I think that's often overlooked too. And I think that ties to what you were sharing maybe five minutes ago or 10 minutes ago on social media as well. I think just being aware is the first step, and I appreciate you sharing that with me and with all the folks watching and listening as well as just living it with your own team. I now have a much clearer perspective. Like you and I have had some conversations before, but I've never spent this much time with you in one sitting, and now I understand the foundation that you've built, the success of your organization on, even just the language you use around partners, the idea that it's haver and associates, this equivalency and this partnership. I just respect very much what you've done. Before I let you go though, I've got a few more questions for you guys.
Speaker 3 (00:51:30):
I'm good for time. I'm good for time, Ethan. Cool.
Speaker 2 (00:51:33):
These are either, or questions by the way, so you can answer one or the other. The first one is, what is your very favorite team to root for besides your own real estate team, or what is the best team you've ever been a member of besides your own real estate team?
Speaker 3 (00:51:49):
Well, being here in Calgary, we also get a cheer for the Calgary Flames. We have a lot of fun with hockey here in Canada, and it's hard to root for the Edmonton Oilers or the Toronto Maple Leaf. But again, I think sports is something that connects people. Again, not every team's going to be the top team and the winning team, but it just creates that connection to the community. And we also have a lot of fun on the team as well, because we have hockey fans from all across Canada, and I think there was one time we had some wagers on the team in the playoffs, and unfortunately pretty much the whole team had to wear an Oilers jersey, which being in Calgary, it put a smile on a lot of the oiler fans on the team, and a lot of us couldn't wait to take those jerseys off. But again, I got to root for the Calgary flames being here in Calgary.
Speaker 2 (00:52:45):
Awesome. And as we record this, this season is upon us, and as this releases, it'll just be getting going. I feel like we have a good season ahead there.
Speaker 3 (00:52:55):
Yeah, well, you know what? The last year wasn't the greatest. We've obviously lost a lot, couple of great players as well in Gare and Chu. Everybody got to see what kind of a player Kach was for Florida their last year, and we had some turnover in coaches and a lot of internal turmoil speaking about teams. But at the end of the day, I think they're all making the right strides and it's a new season, and they have a lot of talented players who want to be here, and they will obviously attack the season, like a new season, a fresh start, and we'll see where it goes.
Speaker 2 (00:53:34):
Yeah, thank you for that. I feel like that's one of the challenges. We both just saw Tim Grover at Fcon. I feel like that's one of the challenges that's distinct between a sports organization and for example, your real estate team in particular, is that the season starts and ends. The games are very well defined, the schedule is laid out, there's a clock. There are rules that most people operate by most of the time. There are consequences for violating the rules. There are people who officiate actively on a regular basis. It's just so clearly defined and there really is no off season for us. Although, again, you gave several great examples throughout this conversation of ways the team can support people when they do need to create an off period for themselves selves kind of a sillier more fun pair. What is one of your most frivolous purchases, Justin? Or what is a cheapskate habit that you hold onto even though you probably don't need to?
Speaker 3 (00:54:36):
I got a few of them, but I got to pick the right one here. Or I guess, you know what? There was a time that I bought an R eight. I actually had an R eight on my vision board and I bought it, and I thought that that was going to be the greatest thing. You know what, the one thing that I didn't like about it was the attention that I got driving it. I'm sure it was a car that sounded incredible with that V 10 engine, but I got rid of that car and I'm like, nah, that's not my cup of tea at all. I like to kind of hide a little bit more and blend in. So yeah, Audi R eight.
Speaker 2 (00:55:19):
Nice. How long did you have it before you were like, this was a bad decision for me?
Speaker 3 (00:55:24):
I think it was within a few months it wore off, and I think I sold it after a year-ish. But yeah, no, you know what, again, now I'm a one car kind of a guy and SUV, and that's all I need. That's plenty. Awesome.
Speaker 2 (00:55:42):
What are some of the ways that you keep learning, growing and developing, or what are some of the ways that you really prefer resting, relaxing, and recharging?
Speaker 3 (00:55:52):
Oh, you know what I could answer actually, both of those. Cool. The way I learn and develop is obviously going to a lot of conferences, going to fcon, collaborating with other industry members across North America. I collaborate on a pretty much daily basis with my friends, Gary Ashton and Chris Lindell, where I get to learn from them. And again, it's a pretty special friendship that we have, but attending conferences, then also listening to podcasts, webinars, YouTube. Again, information that may be one thing that you learn from someone. Maybe it's one quote that you can apply to your business. You're like, ah, I get it now. I think another thing that is incredibly important for me is taking time to unwind. Again, I think the stresses that we all have in this business, whether you're an individual agent or a team leader, it's high pressure, high stakes, and I think one of the things that I recognize more and more is I need to take care of myself, and that is making sure that I have boundaries in and around, taking some time off, unwind, recharge, physical fitness, meditation, sauna, do all of these things just to make sure that I get a good night's sleep.
Speaker 3 (00:57:20):
Having a routine bedtime. I have no problems going to bed early. Going to sleep for me is the time when I kind of reset my energy system and get ready for the next day. So having a really disciplined bedtime routine is non-negotiable. If you see me at conferences and you won't see me out late, I'm Batman, I go to bed.
Speaker 2 (00:57:48):
Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, me too. I've really come around to going to bed what most people would regard as early, but it just sets everything up so much better. And frankly, I come to look forward to that time of day. I mean, I don't feel like I'm giving up on the day. I feel like I'm now making my next investment of my day, and it happens to be the last one of the day, and I'll wake up and do it again the next day.
Speaker 3 (00:58:09):
Yeah, you know what? I find that it's more about waking up feeling good and feeling rested, getting older. Yay.
Speaker 2 (00:58:19):
You'll also not see me out late at a conference either. This has been awesome, Justin. I so appreciate you spending this time and sharing all of this with me and all the folks who choose to watch and listen. I also love listening to podcasts as well, and I'm like you in, I don't try to memorize all of the things people say, but if I can pull two or three things out of a conversation, it was worth it. And I know that folks, different people will pull different things out of this episode and the ones adjacent to it as well. And so I appreciate you being part of what we're doing here on this show. And before I let you go, if anyone's made it this long, I assume they also enjoy you and the time that we spent together, where can they go to connect with you or learn more about you or learn more about your team?
Speaker 3 (00:59:04):
You know what? They can connect with me on social media, Justin Haver, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, all that stuff. Justin Howard team is our team pages and make sure they do that. You can visit our websites, justin howard.com and even calgary.com for that matter. So it's hard not to find me, I guess. But I had love to connect with any of the followers of this show, obviously. Thank you for everything that you and follow up Boss do. You guys are building an incredible product, first and foremost, and community where there's a lot of collaboration on how we all can utilize and help enhance, follow-up Boss grow, but also our businesses. And it's again, something that is suitable for every real estate agent or team, but I also know of companies and organizations outside of real estate that use follow up costs as well, so it's not just solely focused on real estate.
Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
Yeah, really fair. And thank you for doing that. And by the way, since I've got you and since you've got the new merch on, feel free to step back and show that new merch office,
Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
So Team Os. There you go.
Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
Nice. Well done. Appreciate you, man. Okay,
Speaker 3 (01:00:21):
Thank you, Ethan. This was really good, and I mean we could have talked for another couple hours here on a lot of these things, so if you want to do it again, I'm here and we're working on some pretty exciting stuff within the team as well. I am actually just taking possession or occupancy of a new space for the team tomorrow morning. I announced it to the team yesterday, so I've kind of been keeping this a secret. It's probably the best worst kept secret in town because trades people that we're working on the space or the furniture place, they're like, I'm furnishing Justin Halver's place. And then people were like, he has a space. It got out there pretty quick, but I guess that's part of having a big brand in the marketplace where Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
That's awesome. Congratulations. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 3 (01:01:11):
Going to be exciting. And you know what? We are really doubling down on training and development for the team, and I can't wait to kind of roll out what we're rolling out and seeing the impact that's going to have, and I'm sure you'll see and hear more about that. And my partner, Carmen, she is deeply involved in that as well, because this teaching and development side of things, because she comes from a classical music background, she has some pretty incredible ideas that we're going to implement into real estate, so it's going to be really cool just to kind of see how it comes together.
Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
That's awesome. By the way, that was just a great content tease for things we need to talk about on a future episode. Yeah,
Speaker 3 (01:01:56):
Yeah, no, awesome. Cool.
Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
Good luck in launching that stuff and I can't wait to see how it goes.
Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
Okay, thanks Ethan. Appreciate your time. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
Thanks for checking out this episode of Team Os. For email exclusive insights every week, sign up@realestateteamos.com.