Speaker 1 (00:00):
For insights into starting a real estate team. We're talking with Drew Little.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
It's pretty bougie for me to be in a position where I say I work for fulfillment,
Speaker 1 (00:08):
A baseball coach for more than 20 years. Drew's named is Real Estate Business, the home run team, and before becoming a realtor and team leader, drew led and trained retail sales and service teams, served as a director of corporate development for a large format printer and built a record label music conference and downloading platform to help independent artists advance their career. Thanks so much for talking t os today, drew.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Yeah, we covered a lot of topics there in the intro really quickly, like your corporate background and I'm sure that'll come up throughout the conversation. I'm especially excited to bring you on because of the relatively young age of your own real estate career and the relatively young age of your real estate team. But before we get into all of that, I would love to know from you what is a must have characteristic of a high performing team?
Speaker 2 (00:59):
What I look for in a team is people who are able to work together as a team, right? You've got to all be rowing in the same direction. That doesn't mean you can't disagree, that doesn't mean you can't have different ideas about what direction you should go in, but once the decision's made, everyone has to commit. It's like I'm a baseball coach, but in football, if the quarterback calls a play and the wide receiver says, well, yeah, no, I'm going to run the other way, you've got a huge problem. So everybody has to be able to get on the same page and they've got to feel good about it. So as the leader, you've got to determine the course. You've got to take input of course, but you've got to determine the course and then you've got to sell it. You've got to get buy-in from your team so they don't go rogue because if they go rogue, the plan doesn't work
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Really good. I would love for you to speak very specifically to your real estate team as it stands today with regard to high performance. In light of your baseball coaching experience, as I mentioned, retail sales and service teams that you helped build or rebuild and train all the different things you've done throughout your career. Is there anything surprising to you that it either mapped very, very wonderfully onto the real estate experience or it was different in real estate than it was in some of the other contexts? Like similarities, differences in your past coaching experience relative to what you're trying to build and coach today in the spirit of this alignment message that you brought? I
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Think one of the things that surprised me was because I understood getting into the business that real estate was very individualistic. I was surprised at how much of a hunger there is in many agents to actually be part of something larger than themselves. I think it's why a lot of agents stick with the same broker for a long time, even if that broker doesn't serve them well, we're herd animals. We want to be together with other people. And so I think there's a loneliness to that purely individual agent, and I think they look to fill that and I think that's something that teams can really help with.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
You're speaking at some level even to just the very basic social nature of the human being. And it's one thing to be in an office with people. It's a different thing to be in an office on a team with people. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
It's funny. I come from kind of a hard Scrabble background. I grew up in Appalachia, poor family, lots of challenges. So when I started working professionally, I was working for success. I was working for money. As I've gone on through my life and career, that has changed completely. I work for fulfillment and it's pretty bougie for me to be in a position where I say I work for fulfillment. There's a lot of people that are like, screw this guy. I got to work for the electric bill. And I totally get that because I've been there. But I think when it's the best it can be for you, work is not about money. Yes, you get paid. Yes, there's money there, but work is about what you add to the world and how it feeds your soul at its best. And I've been in both places. I've been where I was just trying to make money and I've been where I felt like what I was doing was worth doing. So that's something I try to share with people. I try to help 'em get on a path where they can get away from chasing money and build fulfillment.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Really good. I feel like that's going to be a theme throughout our conversation. I know it's something that when we connected before I aligned with you on, and I even think in a practical sense, and so again, we'll double back to it, but I'll finish the statement. So often the goal supplants the actual thing that delivers achievement of the goal. And by that I mean the more we seek to help people, the more money we're going to make. Whereas the more we seek to make money, the less likely we are to achieve it because the way that it feels to the other people involved in it, you
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Could commission breath.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Well, yeah, great term. I love that term. Yeah, it hasn't come up on this show, but it's come up on another show that I hosted for several years. It came up several times, and again, it's the way we make people feel and people could hear it, feel it, smell it. And the trick is because of the nature of the industry, and I know we'll probably talk about this topic too, a relatively low barrier to get in. There are a number of people practicing that don't put the rest of the true professionals in the industry in the best light. So people are looking for it off. It's the default, it's the norm. We're actually looking for it. Or in this case of commission breath, I hate to walk this out further. We're smelling for it all the time and we can smell it a mile away. Okay. You introduced a little bit about your background. I would love for you to just share any kind of summary of that. I walked through maybe 25 years of your life and career. In that intro, I'd love for you to set up your entry into the real estate business in general as a realtor in order to get into when and why and how you started the team. Walk us into how did real estate become something that you're doing today?
Speaker 2 (06:21):
When I was a kid, my mother was a renaissance woman, and among the things she did as a hobby was designed these lavish houses. She would just draw 'em out herself. No architectural training, just inspiration. And so I was always interested. So I was drawing floor plans myself when I was eight or nine years old. I've always been interested in houses. And then I took some architecture courses in college. My business career didn't take me that way right away. I was in the army before I went to school, so I had a family when I was in school and I didn't want to be on a straight commission job, so I wanted a paycheck because I'd take care of my family. And in 2009, my educational background's in history and economics. In 2009, I knew the market crash was coming. So my wife and I started investing in real estate at that time. So skip forward 11 or 12 years, and I've been working in the corporate world for 25 years. I've been very successful, but it was really, really tired of it. And I had a conversation with a boss one day, a guy who I had made probably $200 million, and I really got the impression he did not appreciate what I had done for him. Let me put it that way.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
I really needed 300 from you, man. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Yeah. And so anyhow, I thought, gosh, why do I have to put up with this guy's nonsense? And so I sat down with my wife that night and we looked at our retirement plans and her pension and our investment properties, and I was like, oh, I actually don't ever have to put up with the boss again. So I made the decision to leave, but I'm a little young to retire, retire. So I started thinking about what I want to do, and both of my parents actually passed away. Well, my mom in 2007, my dad just a couple of years ago, but they both ended up working pretty much their whole lives. And so here I am at 50 able to do what I want with my time, and I thought if I could help other people do that, that is work worth doing that's fulfilling.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
And so that's really what I wanted to do is I wanted to help people do what I did. Real estate was such a huge part of our ability to retire the properties that we've purchased, the equity in them as financed other businesses we've owned. I thought if I could do that, then that's worth doing and that's what I want to do. So I quietly got my license while I was still at my job. I passed the exam on April Fool's Day, went into work, gave my boss my laptop and my phone. He said, what is this your two weeks? I said, Nope, this is my right now
Speaker 1 (09:05):
For two seconds. Bye.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Yeah, see you. Good luck replacing me. I wish you well, but actually I don't care. And so I've been trying to help people ever since. And then when I got into the industry, I knew consumers needed help. People know so little about real estate and about markets and even about their own credit. So I knew people needed help. And then I got into the industry and found out agents need a lot of help too. I thought these big brokers were doing a lot more for 'em than they really are. I knew I wanted to be in a team when I started because I'm an entrepreneur, because I've started several companies that were valued in the millions of dollars. I always have an exit strategy, and I knew that to build an exit strategy, I would need to put together an organization that had repeatable results.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
That's the basis of an exit strategy. So I came in knowing that, but when I got in, I saw that there was so much more opportunity to help agents than I really realized so much more that could be done for them and so much could be done to improve the industry. The Zer Burnett lawsuit is a great example of legally a case realtors absolutely should not have lost. I mean, we can talk about that more in a second. It's absurd that we lost that suit. On the other hand, we lost it because as an industry, we kind of deserve a smack in the mouth. We have done a bad job of policing ourselves and our fellows for a long time, and we kind of deserved a little comeuppance there, and it's not over
Speaker 1 (10:45):
A lot there. I don't know how deep I want to go into that, but I know that we agree on the fiduciary responsibility that every agent should be very conscious of and intentional about in every single relationship. Absolutely, and I think that's part of this message as well. And I think it will square up kind of the buy side a bit, hopefully in favor of this, more of a fiduciary position, but I'd love to stay in the team journey. You mentioned I've been an entrepreneur. I had run lots of teams in the past, so I wanted to start a team, but that can look a lot of different ways. So for you when you thought it could be a team could be you and a full-time assistant, a team could be you and a buyer's agent and a part-time and a full-time assistant doing any of a variety of things, whether that's a personal assistant or a transaction coordination or some marketing support or whatever. It could also be 350 agents at a huge staff of folks. When you thought team in the first place, what was that model in your head? What did that look like? And B, what other sources informed your perception of the type of team I want or don't want to build? Just talk about your initial vision for team in this context.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
My vision for team was kind of split, and this kind of comes from being heavily involved in baseball my entire life and also from my interest from army days in military tactics. I'm very interested in small unit tactics, and I think that probably relates to baseball. You got nine guys on the field and they all have to do one thing perfectly to win small unit Military tactics are very similar. You all have your specialties and you have to be very good at what you do. And so when I imagined myself working with a team at the beginning, it was me and six or seven people, a tight unit, almost like a special forces or a seal team of real estate agents. But then my business brand is like, okay, but that's not scalable. You can't be that tight with enough agents to have a scalable team. So it really goes back to this corporate idea of building leaders so that from my team, I can build out leaders who can have their own sort of seal team of real estate agents in various markets. So that's really the idea. We want to get big, but we want to do it in a very tight culture driven way. So that's kind of the big vision and it is really a mix of two visions, a corporate success vision, and a personal, I guess, excellence or victory vision.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
I like both of the parallels that you drew there. So I heard from you in that teams within the team building leaders so that we can build teams within the team. Do you see the support side of it all of the different kind of staff positions being centralized in service of, I also, by the way, heard multiple markets in their potentially or even currently, we'll get to the current state of the team in a moment. But when you say seal team, do you mean teams specifically of agents with a lead agent and then centralized support behind them? Or is your vision one or two support positions within that team with maybe a larger centralized support team in the home base or mothership or whatever?
Speaker 2 (14:25):
I think the support team in a lot of cases needs to be with the team. I don't want to dig too deep into military analogies, but there are certain roles that aren't actually, when the rangers are in the field, they may have an intel analyst with them. The intel analyst isn't part of their team. The team is actually supporting that analyst, but without the analyst, the team can't do its work. They're dependent. And so things like ISAs, a lot of people are using overseas, and I get that it's very efficient. My ISAs are local. We had a specific need for a client. One of my ISAs lives in that neighborhood. She went out and walked the street and talked to the neighbors. So she became an outside sales agent pretty quickly, but it's effective. And then I have another ISA who's based in another city and he's just a monster on the phones.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
He can start 70 or 80 conversations a day. I don't mean dial 70 or 80 numbers, I mean start that many conversations. He's incredible. But he has really dug down and gotten to know this market and gotten to know the needs of some of our repeat clients. And so the deal I was working on before we got on today is a land development deal that he uncovered in my backyard. I'm like, how did I not know that was there? So I'm kind of split on that. I like being able to have that close community connection, but the right person can feel local even when they're at a distance. Now, things like accounting and so forth, things that are lower touch in terms of touching the team and touching the clients that can easily be centralized, but for anything that's client facing or agent facing, because we really have to think of agents as clients too. We really do work for them, something that's facing them. We've got to figure out what's best for their situation. And it may be different in one market versus another.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Yeah, very true. I mean, there's one thing that became an obvious theme throughout these conversations. We're now several dozen in, but right out of the gate, the idea that there's one right way to do almost anything is an illusion. And so we need to be flexible. And here you brought it straight to a what's right for the team as well as what's right for this individual person who I'm trying to work with and help right in front of me. Okay. I would love for you to characterize the home run team here in Q1 2024, however you'd like. Size, the markets you serve, structure, culture, whatever you want to share to characterize the home run team, I would love to hear that.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
I think what defines us right now today is a fanatical focus on clients and our fiduciary responsibility. We put clients first because we are not interested in transactions. We are interested in relationships. We view home ownership or real estate purchases as a lifelong journey. We have an international network of agents we work with. We can help people almost anywhere in the world as a network. I've spent the last three years building, and so when we meet someone, I had a bunch of leads over the week and a lot of more rental leads. I don't love property management, but I love meeting renters. At the beginning of that journey, I rented two houses myself yesterday. One of them is a young doctor who's going to have much bigger needs as she goes on through her life. Another one's a family who are just lovely and they've already said, when this lease is up, we want to buy a house and we want you to represent us. And so it's about these relationships and being a trusted advisor across a person's journey, not being a transactional real estate agent. And this was something that was kind of a shock to me when I got into the industry, just the turn and burn mentality of some agents. It's like grind, grind, grind. At some point you burn out. You can't do that forever. A relationship model of an advisor to me is much more appealing and much more sustainable. If I were 25, maybe I could turn and burn all day, but I'm not,
Speaker 1 (18:39):
I mean, this again goes back to your call to have the exit plan on the way in to the endeavor. And in this case, both of those imply a long view, right? And actually love the idea. This takes us back to episode two with Lori Finkelstein reader, who also got started a little bit with working with people, renting, and of course, every renter is a potential homeowner, and so I love to hear that. I would love just to step into your economics background, economic problems, economic decision making, economic incentives, talk a little bit about economic incentives at a high level and talk about where there is good alignment and misalignment and maybe how that informs your approach to your own practice as well as to your team.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Economics is by definition the study of incentives, right? All economics is really about is understanding what incense people to take action. That's really what it boils down to. And so when we look at the real estate industry and the current brokerage model we have, we see a lot of misaligned incentives as agents, we want to get into the business and make a living, but the way the brokerage system is set up now, there's not a lot of incentive for big brokers to help agents be successful. Their incentive is to get as many agents edits. They can capture those one or two transactions that almost everybody has in their sphere and not spend any money to capture them, right? I'll hang your license, you bring me money, and I don't spend any money on you because if you fail and 85% of agents do in the first year, it doesn't cost me anything.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
So there's no real incentive for a lot of these brokers to spend much money on agents. And there's a lot of claims. Well, we do this, we do that, we provide this, we provide that. A lot of the things they provide, if you really look at it like the CRM so they can get all your contacts and their CRM and still have them when you're gone, that's not so much helping agents as building their portfolio. And when we talk about this, what we're really talking about is what is a big brokerage's incentive? Most of them are corporations. They're shareholder owned and their whole world exists on a 90 day timeframe. It's from earnings report to earnings report. And if you're the CEO and you have a couple of bad earnings reports in a row, your career can be wrecked, you can be done. So they're always managing that more than they're managing their fiduciary responsibility.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
In my opinion. I've been with a big brokerage. It was not for me. I'll just say that I didn't because of what my values are, it didn't align with the value of serving the shareholder interest because when corporations have a bad quarter, what do they say? Oh, we're going to institute cost cutting measures. Well, what does that mean? It means we're going to get more money out of the agents and give them less. We're going to get more money out of the clients and give them less. That's what that means. And if you're a fiduciary, that is a misalignment. So I take that very seriously. I think our industry would be much better if we all saw ourselves first as fiduciaries, like a financial planner or other professional fields. If we saw ourselves as that first and behaved that way, we'd have a lot more respect and a lot more love from the general public.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
I like the term fiduciary, as I said maybe five minutes ago. I also like the term trusted advisor. I like your parallels to these other ones. In some cases it's by law. How would you define fiduciary? What are some key characteristics and how does that differ from some of the agent behavior you've experienced on the other side of some of these transactions? And I don't mean for you to beat people up. I'm really looking for a clear definition of fiduciary from what it is and what it isn't.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
In the simplest terms, when you're someone's fiduciary, your responsibility is to put their interests ahead of yours. So if you have a client as a real estate agent, getting them the best result for their situation is more important than getting the highest commission or the quickest deal for you. And that's where you have to put your emphasis. And we have conflicts come up all the time. I had a deal not long ago where I was representing a seller and very successful person, had a great property, and we were in negotiations with some buyers that I really liked and I really wanted the buyers to win. But that wasn't my job. My job was to represent my client, and it all worked out in the end. The buyers that I liked got the place and my client got their price, and it worked out great. But at one point, there was a point in negotiation where my seller gave me some latitude to say, well, I'd take this number, but I'd rather get this number. Now, I could have just gone back to them and give 'em the low number and they would've taken it and we would've been done closed. But that's not my job. My job is to serve my client's best interest. So I went back and I got the higher number.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
I had to at least ask for it and we got it. So that's me putting my client's interest ahead of what I want. Some people say, well, you made more money. Not significantly more wasn't of. I'm in a stage of life where a few hundred bucks,
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Yeah, this calls back a little bit to our earlier exchange on the money is the result. It's not the goal.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Yeah, absolutely. We don't have to make a living, right? We all have things we have to pay for, things we want to do in our lives, and that's valid. You have to make a living. I just believe that you make a better living by serving people. Everything we've done, my partner and I, where we've been successful, we came from a place of helping. First when we were in the music industry, we started three companies in six years that ended up with a multimillion dollar valuation. Every single one of them was about serving a community within the music industry. And when people understood that we were trying to serve and help and elevate others, we didn't have to chase anybody. They came to us. And so when we got into the real estate business, we said, okay, let's help people. We know that helping people pays you back. We know that putting others first is not just its own reward spiritually, if you will. I'm not a big spiritual language guy, but it feels good. But then also it also pays for itself financially. It takes a little longer. It's not the quick hit, but what I find with when you make money quickly, you lose money quickly and you lose relationships quickly has been my experience.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
How has an agent to suss out claims from realities? I mean, I have some easy answers off the top of my head, but I'd love to know how do we know that the broker has some fiduciary thought, even if they don't have a fiduciary obligation to the success of the agent?
Speaker 2 (26:12):
I think the first thing an agent has to understand when they're trying to decide where to go is the first thing they have to understand is that the broker works for them. They're hiring a broker. They're not being hired by a broker. So when you interview brokers, do not be bashful about asking hard questions and putting 'em on the spot, you're not there trying to win them over. They need you because that's one thing about the misalignment of the broker model that works in agents' favors. They need you, they've got to recruit you or their business doesn't work. So you can put them on the spot and you can ask them hard questions and you can beat them up, you can negotiate with them, and you should. It's good practice for when you get out in the field. So what you can never do in real estate and be good at it is be lazy. And that starts with bonding your broker, going with the first broker or first team you talk to. Probably a mistake, even if you talk to 10 brokers and you end up going back to that first one, at least why you're going back there. When I got into the business, I interviewed 23 brokers. I took my time, I had a spreadsheet, I did pros and cons.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
I'm going to say for folks watching or listening who are maybe in this zone of considering a new team or a new brokerage or a new team ridge, you can maybe cut that number in half and still be doing a job.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Probably half. I mean, I'm very, I like to really, I enjoyed the process of digging into things to find things out. So you probably don't need to do that much. But
Speaker 1 (27:48):
I guess just to make this a practical thing for folks, were some of the, as you kind of plotted this out, you said 23, I'm saying, well, maybe you could just interview 12. What were some of the key characteristics, like check boxes or rating scales as you're putting the opportunities against each other, what are some of the key categories that you were interviewing around and making comparisons on?
Speaker 2 (28:14):
So obviously splits are in there, but it's bottom of the list because if I'm selling enough houses, it doesn't matter what the split is. So what I was really looking at was culture, opportunities to learn any kind of support, any kind of marketing they do, what am I paying for that's going to make me a better agent? Anybody will hang your license. That's not worth 40%. I can get my license hung for 2 99 a transaction. That's not it. What are you going to do for me that's going to grow my career and make me successful?
Speaker 2 (28:54):
So in my case, I was able to point to a long and successful career. This is what I've done in these other agencies. I want to do at least this in real estate. How are you going to get me there? And so those were the things I was comparing. Now, if you're new and you don't have that success, say, my ambition is to be this. How are you going to get me there? And if they don't have a good answer, if it sounds like they're BSing you or they're trying to just buddy up to you, oh, well, it's so much fun. We do Taco Tuesdays. That does not feed the bulldog. You've got to really hammer 'em and stay on 'em. I'm not saying be rude, but be relentless, really make 'em answer hard questions and give you real answers about how they're going to advance your career, because there's always somebody that's willing to do it for less money. You can always find a cheaper broker. I think Suneet was saying that recently. Sunita. Aggarwal, right? Yeah, absolute. You can always get somebody to do
Speaker 1 (29:52):
It cheaper. A direct quote,
Speaker 2 (29:53):
You can always get somebody to do it cheaper, but you got to make sure what you're paying for is worth it. I'll pay for good service. I don't mind that, but I'm not going to pay for nothing. And that's what your questions have to be focused on when you're deciding.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Yeah, I like the core question is what are you going to do to help me get there as the crux? I also like the idea of sliding splits way down. I actually think that hangs a lot of people up. I think a lot of people would be better off maybe in a team model, but they balk at the split. And I think it's because they don't fully understand how to kind of do some of this breakdown. I mean, they know how, I guess intuitively, I mean they're intelligent enough to do it, but they maybe are just stopped cold by the split when they're not really looking at what am I getting in return for this? Especially in light of what you and cite said, which is, yeah, you can always get a better deal. You can always get that number lower, lower, lower, lower, lower. But what you're doing is trading off at some level. You're trading off an investment in yourself and your long-term success.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
And the other thing to keep in mind, if you have ambitions to grow, a lot of agents hang out their license as a broker, become a team leader before they really understand what that means. And so you see brokerages that are small, that are super cheap, and maybe that's great for them locally, but what they've done in building their brokerage that way is they've sort of cut themselves off from further growth. A flat fee brokerage in a local market is going to have an extremely hard time scaling. So if your ambition is to maybe expand and have your own team in your hometown go back to where you came from or move to a new place, you're not going to be able to expand with that team or that company. So it's important that agents, I think, don't realize sometimes that the financial health of the brokerage is important to them because it impacts the resources they have and the options they have for their future.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
So not only is cheapest, not always best, cheapest, sometimes can be a real liability depending on what your goals are. When I started, like I said, I interviewed all these brokerages. I had offers of 75, 25, 70 30. I went with a broker that offered me 60 40 because it was a large local firm, like 700 agents, even though it was local firm, a local firm. So they knew how to scale. They had systems that worked, they had actual training in place. And my broker, my office broker was a legend, been in the business almost 40 years, and she was incredible. I love her. She's very mad at me that I left, but she's great.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
So I went in 60 40 in the first six months I was in the business, I wrote a couple of million dollars in business, which is a lot in my market. It's not New York here. We're not doing $2 million deals every time. And so I went in and said, this is great, but I need to grow. I need a better split. And we negotiated a new split. I always knew I was going to have to leave because I was going to have to be able to pay agents and that the split was never going to get low enough for me to be able to do what I needed to do for my agents. So I always knew that was coming, but along the way, I was able to learn a lot, build some good relationships, some good agent relationships, which are so important if you want to be successful and last. So yeah, I mean it was worth the 40% at first it was worth the 35 or the 30 or the 25 down the road. I was always getting what I was paying for. But then when I got to the point where last year by leaving, I gave myself a $40,000 raise. They just weren't offering anything that was worth 40 k. So I had to go. And you have to be able to make those kind of hard nosed business decisions if you want to grow your business and succeed.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Very good. I would love to put you on the other side of the table here for all the times that you have been and have kind of the same conversation. I want to talk splits. I want to talk like structure and service delivery, but let's start with high level value prop and walk into that,
Speaker 2 (34:11):
The high level value prop that we're going to bring. One of the things that we think is very important, and it's also kind of a litmus test to tell us what an agent is really for us. So the very first hire for this team other than me was our marketing director. So when you join our team, you get the benefit of decades of marketing experience between me and the marketing director right out of the gate. And one of the primary things we're going to give you is we're going to build your brand. My brand's fine. The company brand's fine. We're building it every day, but we're going to build your brand as an agent and when the day comes that you feel like you need to do something else, if that day comes, we hope it doesn't, but it's real estate, so it's probably going to, we're realistic about that brand that we've helped you build.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
You're going to take that with you wherever you go for the rest of your career. You're going to be able to build on that. And agents that get that and understand what a value that is, they're our kind of people because they're long-term thinkers. They have a vision. So that's kind of a test right out of the gate. The other thing is I don't care what split somebody else offers you. I'm committed to making sure you can't sell any more property anywhere else than you can with me. That's the bottom line. My goal, so our average transaction is about three 40 in this market currently. If we get to the end of your second year and you haven't done 5 million for the year, I'm not going to kick you off the team. Oh, probably not. I'm going to look and see what I didn't do to get you to 5 million.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Because honestly, if you want to make a decent living, good middle class living, take care of your family, pick a couple of vacations, five million's about where you need to be, people do a million and they get somewhere around 30 K in GCI, they know that's not getting it. So they think, well, maybe 2 million. Okay, well that's 60 K in GCI. And then you've got splits and licenses and dues and advertising. 60 K in this business is nothing. It's poverty wages. So you've got to just to break even just to just to pay your light bill, you've got to do 3 million if you want to really start to have a good middle class life and you'd be doing 5 million a year, at least in my market. So my commitment is to get people to that level as quickly as possible and then grow from there.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
And again, what's different from if a brokerage, if you don't do that at a brokerage, they don't care. You're just another agent. They really don't. It doesn't matter to them. I don't want to say every brokerage, but certainly the big corporate brokerages. Whereas if my players aren't successful, if you've got a low batting average, I take that personally and I'm going to get in there with you and figure out what's going on. And if it's a you problem, if it's an attitude problem, if it's a motivation problem, if it's something I can't fix, then we're probably done. But if it's where I haven't given you the support or I haven't taught you the skills, then that's a me problem and I've got to fix that. And I think that accountability from leadership is something that's missing a lot in this industry
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Both up and down. Just going back to your call that the broker is in service of you talk about the structure of the non-agent portion of the organization. You mentioned marketing director was your first hire. You mentioned in part to prioritize personal brand, but then also that some level that is a marketing business. If you're not doing that well, that's the gateway to all the opportunity. What other positions have you hired from a staff or an admin perspective kind of in what order and would you do any of it differently?
Speaker 2 (37:41):
Okay. So marketing was the first role, and that's my partner. She, she's a is incredible. I knew she was good. Our first startup, we did that hit over a million dollars in valuation. She got us 400,000 website users in six months. I mean, she's explosive. Amazing. So that was the first hire, obviously the second, I've got to think back a little bit. The second was my transaction coordinator. I was getting ready to go out of town for a mastermind in March of last year, and I had to write six contracts. I was staying upright in contracts before I got up on the plane. And as I'm doing that, I'm like, this is insane. I've got to put an end to this. So it took me a little while, but I eventually found a tc I really liked brought her on. She's amazing. She has increased my productivity so much, much. The next person was my personal assistant who I hired initially as an intern, and he just takes so much grunt work off my plate. I feel bad sometimes I'll give him these horrible administrative tasks to do that would make me go blind. But he loves being part of the success of the business and he jumps right in and does a great job.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
We have a lot of fun. We joke around in the office a lot. So that was a great hire being able to, so the first two, really the three were all about taking things off of my plate that keep me away from clients. All the things that we do to generate clients, keep us away from the clients we have. They keep us out of face-to-face contact. So I've delegated as much of that as possible so that they can find the clients and actually actually spend the time with them. That's what I'm good at. I'm good at standing around chatting with people. I'm not super talented. I like to say that my partner's the brain and I'm the mouth and that's how we work
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Or the personality. There has to be something feeding the mouth on the way out. So I wanted to go to ISAs next, but instead kind of walk me right up to a question that every team leader asks herself or himself at some point in the journey. And it's in line with this idea of like, oh, good, I can take that hat off now. I have someone assigned to these activities who really loves it and they're better at it than I am, and they can do it for, it's less expensive for them to do it as well. And I can keep my eye on what I enjoy and what brings me fulfillment and is the most profitable use of my time.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
How do you think about the question that every team leader asks themselves at some point, which is whether and how to leave sales production? What I think I heard from you is that you really enjoy that aspect of the business. So I can see you being with a camp of folks who've already been on the show that are like, yeah, I will always be in production at some level. And then of course there's a slightly larger camp that's like, yeah, I left production because I wanted to continue taking the hats off so that I could do other activities besides selling.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
So a couple levels above me in the exp organization in my direct line up is a fellow who hasn't sold a house in about six years. He hasn't needed to. He's got his residuals built and he's killing it without selling a house. And that's awesome for him. And he spends a lot of time training and motivating and just being a good guy to be around. And I admire that aspect of what he's doing. I'm actually coached by Ryan Serhant, who is moving more out of production and more into a CEO role. And Ryan's great and I love him, but I think I'm, of those two, I'm kind of a little more like Ryan. There's always going to be clients I'm going to want to work with. I love Pretty Houses since I was a kid. We covered that. I'm always going to want to have some finger on the pulse of selling those properties, of helping those clients, of just being in those spaces and shooting videos and doing fun stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
I enjoy it. But then also I really get a lot of utility from helping people, which is something that if you had told 25-year-old me, you're going to be all about helping people. One day I'll just be like, you're an idiot. I'm all about money. That would've been my reaction, but it really is what it's about for me now. So definitely want to be engaged with the agents at all times. But yeah, I want to continue to engage with customers. I have investor clients I work with that we'll just hang out and go to dinner and stuff. We like being around each other. I'm not going to tell those guys, oh yeah, I'm too much of a big shot to sell you a house now or to help you buy a piece of land. Of course I'm going to help those guys always as long as I'm in the business because those relationships are just important to me.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Yeah, really fair. When did this occur to you? Was it something someone said, Hey man, you should really consider having some ISAs do that, and you're like, tell me more. Or was this on the roadmap from the get go? You already described, I think you said you had two of them, one truly local, one a little bit out of market who's an absolute champion on the phones. When did this occur to you and what, just characterize really quickly and at a high level, kind of like the core activities that they're doing in service of you and your team.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
I've always been kind of 50 50 on ISAs, right? I have a client who's an investor who has an ISA bullpen in Central America, and he had tried to convince me to use his ISAs and nothing wrong with them, they're really good at what they do, but I was just concerned about a disconnect in that client relationship if I was using I ssas or especially using ISAs from across the world, and I don't at all knock anybody that uses 'em or the quality of 'em I wanted at this stage in my development anyway, to have a tighter relationship with the clients. And I just wasn't sure how to get that out of an ISA. So it wasn't that I was critical, it was that I didn't really have a vision for it. And so I had a client I helped a couple of years ago who just loves real estate.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
She's just fascinated with the industry, and she sent me a lead on a house. She's like, I'd love to see this house. I was like, I'm obviously not going to buy it. I just bought a house from you, but I'd love to see this house. Can we go see it? I'm like, sure, we'll go see it. We're buddies. That's fine. And so we went out there and we saw it and I was like, look, you don't want to buy this, right? And she's like, yeah. I was like, okay, I'm going to show it to one of my investors. It was a steal and I showed it to my I investor and we bought it. And she's like, that's cool. I helped you do a deal. I was like, that was cool. Would you like to help me do more deals? And that's how she became my ISA.
Speaker 2 (44:28):
So she went from client to team member and we're really excited and she brought me one just the other day that it's a million dollar deal if we can get it done. So she's having fun. She is setting, she's a young mother, she's setting her own hours, doing her own thing. I'm teaching her what I can, we're working together. We're working on getting her license. So because there's things she can't do right now legally that once we get her license, she will be able to do. The other fellow was and is working as a wholesaler, and he was bringing me deals from my clients and he's like, I can bring you 60 a year. And I was like, if you can bring me 60 a year and I'll put you on the team and I'll pay you more, we'll get you more money. And so he and I worked out a framework where he still does his wholesale stuff in his market, but he helps me uncover deals here for my investors in this market and sometimes just straight up listings for me. So they both have other things going on. They have other lives, but they're able to work with the team and I'm able to pay them on a commission basis, which I love because I'm not paying for something I don't get, which as we discussed with brokers is something I don't like. But then they also have the support they need to really make some good money, so I'm able to help them be more successful. So I get the accountant side of me is very happy and the helping people side of me is very happy.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
You have to love both the variable costs slash pay for performance aspect as well as I love just the love the story of I had a relationship with this person and we figured out something that made sense for both of us, and now we're winning together. I love that. At the risk of running long. One last question before our three standard closers for you, drew, any advice for a solo agent thinking about starting a team?
Speaker 2 (46:21):
I think no. Why You want to do it? Be really clear on the goal. If the goal is to smooth your revenue, that's a worthwhile financial goal, but there's got to be more to your team than I just want to not have the commission check roller coaster because you can't offer anything if it's just about smoothing revenue. What are you providing to the agent? You've really got to put the service you provide first, and you've got to really understand that and have that clear in your mind and be able to deliver it. Because when you start talking to agents, they're going to want to know what can you do for me and can you deliver it? And if you don't have good answers to those questions, you're not going to build a team. It's not going to happen. Or you're going to have somebody come on the team because they like you and then they're not going to like you pretty quickly, which is a rough spot to be in.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
Thank you so much for that. You may know that these are coming because you've been listening and watching these episodes. By the way, do you prefer to watch or listen?
Speaker 2 (47:27):
I watch actually. Well, it's funny because if you could see my computer right now, I have like 45 tabs open, so I multitask a little bit. So I'll start watching, but then I'll do something else and do this other thing. I'll talk back. It's
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Watching and listening together.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
Yeah, I listen, I watch. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
Love it. Well, thank you so much for spending time in these episodes. I'm glad that there are value to you. So again, you may know that these are coming. First up, what is your very favorite team to root for? Drew, besides the home run team or the best team you've ever been a member of?
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Both are tough. I think the best team I've ever been a member of is the team me and my partner have. We've been together 31 years and I wouldn't change a thing. Well, I've been a jerk. Sometimes I would change that, but as far as having the relationship, I wouldn't change that at all. And I mean, the other one, obviously, the other one my favorite team to root for is the kids I coach. There's nothing seeing these guys become young men and seeing how they interact, and I'm blessed to work with a lot of really great kids as well as some really great athletes.
Speaker 1 (48:37):
That's awesome. What age ranges do you have you coached before and what age ranges is really the one that you feel best at? I've
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Coached from eight U to 19 U my favorite and where I've kind of settled in. Once my son got to a point that I wasn't coaching him anymore, I really kind of settled into the 16 U. They're a lot of fun. They're kind of figuring out who they are as people, if they're going to be good ball players. They're pretty good ball players, and there are some dynamics with them. Interpersonally, I learned about OnlyFans, didn't know what it was until I heard my players talking about it and I was like, oh, this is unfortunate. But
Speaker 2 (49:22):
So they keep, most of what I know about new music comes from my son or my ballplayers. I use a lot of viral music in my videos. It's all from the kids, so they keep me young, but it's just seeing how they, so I've got a kid that's, I've coached him since he was 13. He's in college now. He's throwing 96 miles an hour. He's going to go pro. It's going to be my first pro player. I'm really excited about that. I've got another kid I coached who was a great ball player for me. He's six foot seven, and so he's going to, he's about to leave for Penn State in the fall on a volleyball scholarship. I've had conversations with him and things I taught him in baseball. He's carrying through into other aspects of his life because when I coach in baseball, I'm not just coaching the skills of the game. I'm coaching attitude and how you treat people, how you carry yourself in a game so that you're not a jackass. And I teach kids that and it sticks sometimes and that feels really good.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
Yeah, that's fantastic. What is one of your most frivolous purchases, drew? Or what is a cheapskate habit that you've held onto even though you probably don't need to anymore?
Speaker 2 (50:36):
My cheapskate habit is I don't make any frivolous purchases at all. I mean, like I said, I grew up poor, and so I really learned the value of a dollar young, and now that it's not as big a deal to me, I still really struggle with just doing fun things with money partners. She's got a completely different attitude. She's like, let's go, let's party. So it's a nice balance. She gets me out doing things and spending money sometimes, but for the most part, I just don't spend money. I just don't do it. I don't think it's bad, but I am probably missing out on some things I don't really need to miss out on, and so maybe that's something I need to work on.
Speaker 1 (51:27):
Yeah, self-awareness is the key. What does it look like for you to invest time and energy into learning, growing and developing or to invest time into resting, relaxing and recharging? What are you doing when you're doing one of those things?
Speaker 2 (51:43):
So I think growth and development for me, I'm more of a person to person learner than a book learner. I do read a lot, I watch a lot of podcasts and listen to a lot of podcasts, but mostly when I learn it's best spending time with people. And so I try to shut up and listen when I'm around people, especially people with different backgrounds or different experiences, and that's where I get a lot of my learning. But then I do try to do more formal things through reading and podcasts and things like that. So I guess I'm just kind of an omnivore for improvement.
Speaker 1 (52:22):
Yeah, that's great. I can relate to that. Absolutely. If someone has gotten here to this point in the conversation, they may want to learn more about you or your team, where would you send folks to connect with you?
Speaker 2 (52:34):
Well, the easiest way is probably just to text or call me. My link tree is on my Instagram, which is Coach Drew 7, 5, 7. So you can go my link tree there and go to the website and all kinds of stuff that we have on there. It's probably too much, but I'm always happy to hear from people. My email's on there can email me. You can check out the website, you can get the contact page there. That's home run team.com. So those are all the usual ways and I'm happy to talk to people however they're comfortable talking, whatever medium they want to use.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
Awesome. Right down below, whether you're watching in YouTube or you're listening on YouTube and you have other tabs open, or whether you're in your podcast app or if you're on the website, realestate team os.com. Down below there's a description. I will have a link to Drew's team page, as he mentioned to his link tree, as he mentioned, and to his Instagram as he mentioned. All that stuff is always right down below. Drew, I appreciate your time so much, both watching and listening to other episodes as well as taking the time to make this one happen. I appreciate you.
Speaker 2 (53:40):
Thank you, Ethan. I, I'm really glad you're doing this podcast. It's very beneficial. I think it helps all of us to learn more about what's working for each other and to make connections across the industry. This industry is going to get into its best state, it's going to be its best version of itself at the team level. It's not going to happen at the brokerage level because of the misaligned incentives we're talking about. We as team leaders and conscientious agents have to make this a better industry if it's going to survive in anything like the form we're used to.
Speaker 1 (54:13):
Awesome. I appreciate the positive feedback on the show and the vision to the future. That's why we have these conversations, and I wish you continued success in driving that message, and I'm glad you could share it here.
Speaker 2 (54:24):
Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity. I.