Speaker 1 (00:00):
You've built a real estate team or independent brokerage and you've done it with exceptional service, high standards and strong culture. Now agents want to start teams inside your team or brokerage and teams want to join your team or brokerage. So how do you handle it? What standards need to be in place for answers? Enjoy this conversation with Eric Bramlett, broker and owner of a 125 agent brokerage. Learn the exact production standards that make an agent team eligible. Learn the three paths an agent might take to get what they want besides starting a team. Learn the differences in your value prop for agents versus teams and get insights to help you grow your team or brokerage profitably right now with Eric Bramlett on Real Estate Team os. 

Speaker 2 (00:45):
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 1 (01:00):
Eric, this conversation on the show is totally overdue. I'm really excited to spend this time with you. Welcome to Real Estate Team os. 

Speaker 3 (01:06):
Thank you Ethan. I'm very excited to be here and agree. I wish I had reached out to you earlier. You have run an awesome show and I'm excited to be here. 

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Thank you. Especially helpful coming from a fellow podcaster and someone who's been on a bunch of shows too, we always kick off in the same spot, which is what is a must have characteristic of a high performing team 

Speaker 3 (01:27):
Focus. No question about it. Focus. I can expand on that please. Yeah, so distractions are everywhere and they're fun and generally speaking, whenever you chase the fun, distracting, well you don't know it's distracting at the time, but it's the new shiny object you ignore the old boring that really moves the needle. So you have to really focus on one, what is your top level goal? I call it North Star. Always focus on that and anything that moves you away from that North star is a distraction and it needs to be excised from the organization. To take it a step further, you need to have efforts. So what our leadership team right now is talking about is what's our one thing for 2026? And you can only have one thing, right? You can't focus on three things and make the same impact. You'll probably make less than 

Speaker 1 (02:21):
It. It's almost a contradiction in terms the way you've just said it. We're going to focus on these six 

Speaker 3 (02:26):
Things. I mean you can't do it now. You have to execute and there are things, you don't just focus on this one thing and nothing else. You have to continue making sure the business is running. You have to make sure that you are introducing other improvements as you go. But if you're constantly like this is our focus and it's amazing and that's for one month and then you move on to something else or you've got three things that you're splitting your time towards, you're not going to do any of them very well. And one of the greatest compliments somebody's given me was actually a friend of mine who for a competitor, he just texted me and said, man, it's been really impressive to walk you focus and execute over the past few years. And it was such a great compliment to me because it was like, wow, I have been focused on building this high quality roster of agents for years now and that's been our North star from the get and then everything we do kind of cascades under that. So focus 100% focus is what you need to be a high performer. 

Speaker 1 (03:28):
One follow up there, I heard you refer to you're working on or you've already developed the one thing for 2026 where this episode releases mid Q4, so a lot of people are thinking about 2026, but I also heard you say North Star and we use that language a lot. We use Vision or North Star, it comes up from time to time, it's come up on adjacent episodes. I know. How far out in the future do you think about the North Star? Is this in other common terms like the big hairy audacious goal that's 15 to 20 years out or is this a five-year vision or how do you think about the North Star versus the one thing for the year ahead? 

Speaker 3 (04:06):
That's a great question. I think the North Star is something that you are always building towards, almost indefinitely the business model would change if you didn't follow that North Star. So ours is amazing client service and that sounds really fuzzy and vague and something you just put on the wall, but I can explain it. Ever since I started the company, I knew I had to be profitable, but I got a real kick out of getting five star reviews and then I noticed that the more five star reviews I got, the more business came in and I was really early to the review game, so that helped a lot. But I'm not joking. I was more excited about closing the transaction and getting one or two new reviews from the client than I was about the commission check. The commission check I knew was going to come, that's fine. 

Speaker 3 (04:52):
And then over the years it just sort of turned into this flywheel. That's kind of the buzzword of today, but when I thought about it, I was like the North Star client service and that hasn't changed because the company's North Star still client service. We just, I personally and our staff help get to that now by way of the agents. So the agents that we bring on their North Star has to be amazing client service, otherwise we're not culturally aligned and it's not going to fit the team leads that we bring on and the teams that we bring on have to share in that same goal, that common North Star, the one thing for the year, what are we going to improve in 2026? What are we going to focus on that's going to help us move further along, improve upon that North Star, which where we are now, we do provide really awesome service. Everybody does. Everybody's aligned. We're luckily not trying to correct anything. So how do we scale? That is really the question. Now, 

Speaker 1 (05:48):
I love this idea of the five star review actually. There's going to be an episode with a gentleman named Brad. Nicks not too far away from this episode and that their ultimate success metric because it is the proof of efficacy of all of their systems, all of their training, all of their coaching. That is the way to measure that. And also kind of as you said there, you talked about the way that it made you feel, but you would also agree, I'm sure that the revenue, future revenue, the commission checks of the future are based in those five star reviews. And so being excited about that five star review is essentially being excited about what you've put into place for the next thing to happen that is going to reward you financially. And the satisfaction is in delivering that experience and getting that feedback 

Speaker 3 (06:33):
A hundred percent. It feels really great. Luckily the universe rewards us for really valuing the client and then we now value the agents that highly because they have to go personally value the client. And so it's great. It would be really awful if business rewarded you for doing bad things, 

Speaker 1 (06:52):
Right? Well, we've seen some examples of that, but it's not sustainable, it's not long-term and it's not something that you're proud to put your name on. Which leads me to Bralet partners. I'd love for you to give a quick walkup from Agent, I think then you were team leader and now of course you're a brokerage owner. I'd love you to do that kind of walkup. How did these steps happen, anything interesting or consequential in making some of those decisions along the way? And then we'll kind of set Bramlett partners as it is today before diving into some topics that I know that you are uniquely equipped to share some insights on. 

Speaker 3 (07:26):
Sure. Well thank you. This is a great time to ask the question. We just were collaborating with Brittany Hodak with creating super fans and we were going over specifically over start with your story, which is an awesome concept. 

Speaker 1 (07:39):
Good. Here's your chance to try it out. 

Speaker 3 (07:41):
We'll try it out. I'll send it to Brittany and see how I did. So yeah, so I got in the business in 2003. Sort of fell into it. A lot of people do. I was young, I always thought I was going to go to law school and I was waitlisted and I was like, well, what am I going to do? I moved to Austin because I really wanted to go ut and I said, okay, I'll get residency and then I'll go fast forward. I say that I got serious about it when I had to in 2008 had decided not to go to law school and then started the brokerage in 2012. And that's really whenever I looked at it and said, this is my career. I'm building this business. I care the most about selling as many homes as I can, which another way of saying that is serving as many clients as I possibly can and providing an amazing service to all of 'em. 

Speaker 3 (08:24):
So sell a lot of homes, get a lot of five star reviews. In 2012, we had one other agent, will McIntosh, who's still with us today, and then in 2013 we brought on an assistant Bailey Moran who is still with us today. She's now a high producing agent. I think two years later we brought on our second agent Tara McGuire still with us. And we grew really slowly. We all shared this, Hey, let's focus on profitability, let's focus on client service. We really put blinders on, didn't really listen to much other than each other. And what was really working, tried to bring ideas in. We grew into a mid-size team. We were always really high performing. We were always very selective. I would always look at whenever we needed a new agent, it would always, because we had more leads than we could service together, this sort of hesitancy to grow stayed with me all the way until 20 20, 20, 21, 20 20, 20 21. 

Speaker 3 (09:16):
I think we had 20, 25 agents total and I was still really scared, but I decided to take a risk and I remember talking to a really good friend of mine, we were on a ski trip and I said, I think I'm going to grow this. And that was right before COVID hit in 2020. And so that's when we really focused on the brokerage and started putting systems into place and learning how to recruit, learning how to have hiring standards, learning what to do whenever you make mistakes. And it took us a couple of years and then for the last three years we've been the fastest growing independent brokerage in Austin. We're now to 125 agents. We have a 90% retention rate. The average in Austin is I believe 65%. And yeah, I mean it's just really worked and it's been this consistent focus on client service, on quality, on high standards that I think has been sort of the key to our success. 

Speaker 1 (10:06):
So when you started bringing people around you, that was the start of the brokerage 2012. 

Speaker 3 (10:12):
So I never started a team under another brokerage or anything like that. I've been an broker. 

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Was it just too early days or it just didn't make sense to you? You wanted to do it without any kind of loss of control or decision-making? 

Speaker 3 (10:28):
All of the above. There's a lot of brands that have a lot of value these days. I started with a really big brokerage in Austin in I think it was 2004 after I'd started an apartment locating service for that. And I remember when I came in, the first thing they asked for was my credit card. And I was like, what do you need this for? And they said, well, you got to pay for email. And I was like, well, you're charging me 50 bucks a month for email. I said, I can get one on GoDaddy for 10 bucks a year. Well no, no, no, you have to do this. And then they charged us for classes and all this other stuff and I was just looking at this model and I was like, man, this is not for me. At the time, you could get your broker license pretty easily. 

Speaker 3 (11:03):
And I looked into it and like e and o was cheap. And I don't know, one of my faults is that I'm always overconfident. And so I was like, I'll just do this on my own. And in retrospect, I should have probably gone to a brokerage to start. But we learned it the hard way when we did it on our own. I will tell you a pivotal point, and I'm not just saying this because I'm on the show. Whenever I started the brokerage, whenever I finally stopped looking for the perfect CRM and tested follow-up boss in 2012 and I told myself this does 90% of what I want and that's good enough and let's move forward with it. And then we watched the companies, it was amazing because we kind of watched the companies grow together. You guys obviously grew way faster. Kudos, congrats. I love all you guys and love Dan a lot, but it was like being able to choose like, Hey, this doesn't have to be perfect perfectly your way. That was one of the lessons I learned along the way. 

Speaker 1 (12:00):
Awesome, appreciate that. Add in and the open API hopefully closed some of that missing 10%, just providing some of that flexibility. You communicate really, really well. I mean, I'm not just talking about in this conversational setting where you're teaching some of the things that you've learned, et cetera on the website. Some of the language I really, really like is on a mission to become the best brokerage in central Texas, not the biggest. Talk a little bit about, because you did at some point there was a light bulb moment or a commitment to say we're going to figure out some new musculature inside the organization to do some of the things that we weren't doing before, going from 25 to 125 agents. So you're obviously not on a path to 1,250 agents, I don't think, just based on that language, but talk about the balance there and what does the best mean for you? I guess we could use this as a quick drive by on what you and I would both maybe call vanity metrics. I mean you gave a nod to profitability. I think that's the ultimate metric as well as your own satisfaction and client satisfaction and agent satisfaction with what's going on and how. But what does best mean to you in this context and what path are you on in terms of big if not biggest? 

Speaker 3 (13:12):
So I'll start with Vanity Metric, right? When you go to a conference and there's other broker owners or team leads, the question everyone asks is how many agents do you have? I honestly don't like the way it's formulated. How many do you have? Right? Move 

Speaker 1 (13:27):
That. Yeah, how many of you captured like they're Pokemon cards or something? 

Speaker 3 (13:30):
You got to catch 'em all. So yeah, so it's the wrong question to ask. How many agents do you have? If you're looking for the guy in the room that has the most agents, you're probably finding the guy in the room with the most problems, probably not always. There's some really great large teams out there. The right question to ask is how many full-time producing agents do you have? Or you could ask a combination of how many agents do you have, what's your overall production? And then you can kind of back into that. Now there's some other things you want to look at. Whenever I say the best, what I mean is that we only have agents that are very experienced, can provide amazing service and for the most part are full-time. The only reason I say for the most part is we do have some agents that are transitioning into retirement and 100% we want to support, want to support them. 

Speaker 3 (14:21):
But whenever you quantify that even more, we can say, well, we believe that if an agent's not closing at least 10 deals a year, they're probably not. So a minimum now for us is 10 deals a year or 5 million, which is roughly the same in Austin, that's the previous rolling 12 or the previous year. It wasn't always that way. Whenever we were smaller, whenever we were pre 25 and pre 25 agents and certainly pre 10 agents, we could take on development agents, right? Agents that were doing a million or two a year, we had a strong leads program, which we still have, and they could get personal attention and so we could help coach them up. And when you're small, that's what you kind of have to do. If you're able to capture a bunch of really high producing agents, whenever you're real small, you've got lightning in a bottle and you need to keep running with that. But for the most part, whenever you're smaller, you need to bring on development agents. But the issue is that most teams will bring on too many and it causes problems. I'm way off in the weeds on this and I think that I'll probably do that a bit, but best simply means that we are focused on amazing client service and that those that are at the brokerage have the ability to do so. 

Speaker 1 (15:30):
And in terms of metrics, it's something like per agent productivity, 

Speaker 3 (15:34):
A hundred percent. So the number that I've always had is 10 million per agent average. As we've grown and as Austin's been hammered by a recession, we're in much worse shape than most markets in the United States. We're coming out the other end of it now. So yeah, so we flex on that a little bit because of that, but we've always hovered around this 10 million per agent mark. Other reasons I could show you as you're growing, you don't have their full production, things like that. But that's good, that's high production and that kind of tells me what I need to know. Median production is also really important. If you had a brokerage with a hundred, well yeah, if you had a brokerage of a hundred and then you had five that were just absolute crushers, they're top producers and then the rest were not doing very well, that's not an environment that's probably going to be very great and it's going to be a tough business to run because you have so many people that are trying to figure it out. We don't hire people that are trying to figure it out. We hire people that have already figured it out and then we tell 'em like, look, you're going to be successful at any brokerage you go to. I am here to hopefully help you be more successful, more easily and maybe have some more free time. So those are the agents that we take 

Speaker 1 (16:45):
On. Yeah, really good. And I'll just say for folks that didn't follow any of the math there, he said there could be five outliers in a group of a hundred. I would say there could be one outlier in a group of 20 or 25. The math works the same way. It would pull that per agent average up. And so the median is also a nice kind of counterbalance just in terms of getting a pulse of how the group together is performing. So one of the things I love about what you're doing at Bramlett Partners is that you have very specific kind of guidelines outlined for teams within the brokerage. Now obviously there are a lot of teams inside teams, and so you're speaking kind of to both groups. Now we've certainly have had brokerage owners on the show, primarily boutique brokerage owners that are functionally teams run as team ridges. By the way, do you all run as a Team Ridge? What do you say? Or 

Speaker 3 (17:37):
No? No. I mean we're an independent broker. I mean whole other discussion about you've breeze past the open API and follow up boss. And quite honestly, that was another very lucky thing. We've built out a lot of proprietary tech that plugs in, and so we actually compete with the franchises local. Our largest competitor in Austin is Compass. 

Speaker 1 (17:58):
So I would love for you to share, and you can go in it any way you want, but I think maybe as a potential starting point is like who should and shouldn't start a team kind of high level regardless of where they house themselves in their team. And then we'll get into your guidance for really a team leader or a boutique brokerage owner about how to support teams best within your organization. Again, whether you're a team leader with teams inside your team or you're someone with a 25 person brokerage. 

Speaker 3 (18:32):
So who should start a team? You have to start with your why. And I think a great why to start a team is to scale. And that doesn't necessarily mean to make more money. It means to be profitable, have the money you need to do what you want to do in life, but then get more time back. That's an excellent reason to consider starting a team. You will meet some folks that their reason for starting a team, their why is that they love it, they love management, they love coaching. If that's the case, you have to understand that your income is probably going to go down considerably if you're a high producer. You'll see this across industry salespeople generally make more money than those that manage them. It's just the case. There are folks in our brokerage that make more money than me, no question about it right now. 

Speaker 3 (19:22):
There's pros to doing both, but you have to figure out your why. So let's move the I love it. And that's why I want to manage the team off to the side. And let's say that my why is that I want to get more time back, make the same or more money go ski more whatever it is you like to do, right? You should consider running a team or building a team, but you should also consider staffing up instead. So an often overlooked excellent strategy is to hire on really a really amazing assistant one. And by the way, we recommend to every agent before starting a team, you should have a full-time amazing assistant. Then you should consider a team. But instead of building a team and taking on buyer agents, why not hire a second amazing assistant? The numbers actually work out to where you're more profitable when you do that. 

Speaker 3 (20:09):
And I've seen a lot of situations where it's really great business to do it that way. A third option that's almost always overlooked is if you're starting a team, you should have excess business. That should be your value prop. Refer it out. If you refer it out at 25 to 30%, you're bringing in really close to the same revenue that you would bring in if you're operating a team under a brokerage. So these are three options. Now your goal is you want to sell more homes. You already have it figured out, right? Real estate is humming for you. If real estate's not humming for you, don't even consider it. It's not the right move. You need to figure out how to make sure it's humming for you. Now I want to scale. I want to get more time. I want to make more money. Look at those three options and ask yourself, what do I dislike the most? 

Speaker 3 (20:59):
Do I dislike working, working with clients the most? Do I dislike managing staff the most or do I dislike helping agents who don't know the right answer to the question the most? Because what happens whenever you take on that role of team leader, you're probably still producing, but the number of problems that come in compound, and now you're giving all of this advice, plus you're still producing. Whenever you answer that question, what does this look like for me? Then you will find the path. You'll figure out which path is best for you. Now the weird thing is that you can start referring business out today. So if somebody doesn't know, just refer the business out. You can bring staff on. And if they don't work out, if they're not holding their weight, then you just let 'em go and you replace them. I don't mean to be cold. You coach people up and whatnot with teams. Whenever you start growing a team, there's this, I don't mean ego in a bad way, but there's this egoist effect that if you decided to reverse course, you feel like you've lost. You feel like a failure. And so you don't see a lot of people start growing teams realize it's a mistake and then downsize. So anyways, that's who should consider. That's my long-winded answer of who should consider building a team. 

Speaker 1 (22:17):
So you did a great job of laying out three specific things. An agent, whether that's you watching or listening, or whether it's an agent on your team or in your brokerage that's talking about starting a team. You just laid out three great paths to do what most people think they want to do with it. Another caution for that person who winds up bringing some agents around them because they're not necessarily confident in their value prop. And I've seen this everywhere. I've seen this in all kinds of industries. When someone starts kind of doing their own thing on the side, they always underprice themselves, which is really a reflection of kind of undervaluing themselves because I've never done outsource graphic design before, therefore I'm going to price myself cheaper than the four other people that I'm competing with for this job or whatever. In this case, it's a team leader trying to recruit agents and saying, come do this with me. And so you probably wind up with some development agents when you can least afford to do it, which just compounds the problem. 

Speaker 3 (23:14):
Well, I would say don't do that, right? I mean, it's right. Of course you would. 

Speaker 1 (23:17):
Yeah, yeah. But I think when someone undervalues themselves, they're like, I just need agents. 

Speaker 3 (23:22):
But that's the worst way you could look at it. Of course, I course by the numbers, Ethan, like a brand new agent, 10% of them work out. And then there's this weird dynamic, and I've talked with Sean at Corded about it that I don't know, I think it's something like 60 or 70% of brand new agents leave the first brokerage that they join within two years. So let's just do easy math. If 10% of 'em work out and half of them leave, you have to recruit in 20 agents to get one that's going to stick around that works. So it's not to say that you should never consider a new agent, it's just that business model of let's recruit in 20 in order to get one. Doesn't seem super awesome to me to give a shout out to Brittany. Again, you and super has understand your customer and if you're a team lead, your customer has now become not only the end client, but also the agents that might join your team. 

Speaker 3 (24:08):
You have to understand the profile and you have to understand who you're going to hire and then be very disciplined about only hiring those folks. And when you're small, when you're bigger, if you make a bad hire, it's impactful and you need to correct it, no question. But whenever you're small and you've got maybe three people on your team, you make one bad hire that can blow up the whole organization. So you're much better off being incredibly skeptical on the way in and making sure that whoever you hire is going to be great. Russell Shaw is an old mentor of mine. He's amazing. And he was actually in Gary Keller's, the Millionaire Real Estate agent book back. This is really dating me, but we're pretty good friends and he gave me great advice early on before we hired the first agent. And he said, whoever you take on, make sure that you would be proud for them to work with one of your family members. Awesome. And that's what we did. 

Speaker 1 (24:57):
That's a great standard 

Speaker 3 (24:59):
Of, yeah, and there's another way to say it. It's either a hell or it's a no. And that's a great standard when you're small. If I had to put a number on it until you reach 10, everybody needs to be a hell. Yeah. When you reach 10, be really skeptical about do we even want to remove that? It's a pretty good a litmus. Am I really proud to work with this person? And then I could show you all the mathematical reasons why you should be really skeptical of anybody who's brand new to the business. 

Speaker 1 (25:27):
Yeah, really good question there. So let's get into when teams started to emerge in the conversation, when did some of the agents inside your brokerage start thinking or talking about teams? How did you think about that? And then maybe just roll straight into some of the requirements before permissioning, advancement of a team, and then later on we'll get into how you support teams within the brokerage as well. 

Speaker 3 (25:58):
Yeah, so our first team was our second agent, Tara McGuire, and she runs a really high performing, very efficient team. It is four total agents, including herself and her husband, and two agents, one assistant, one virtual assistant, and she started growing a team whenever we're good friends and her husband, Craig and I are good friends. They started growing a team whenever we were all just talking and she wanted more time, they wanted more time. They're making a lot of money. How do they spend more time in Colorado? They placed in Durango. And I said, guys, here are the paths and what sounds best to you. And bringing on a couple of buyer agents, which interestingly, as often as I caution be super, super picky about who you hire when you have the business, it's much better to have two buyer agents than one for some other reasons, but be really picky. 

Speaker 3 (26:53):
And so they did, and they were, and it's funny, there are sometimes that we interview agents that don't quite meet our minimums, which are 5 million. And I feel like teams are really good with those that are at two or 3 million with a lot of potential. I'll talk to our team leads about, Hey, I've got this person, and 95% of the time everybody says no. And it's because everybody is so cautious and intentional about growth. So Tara grew her team. Now. I was, one of the proudest times was whenever we went to the Austin Business Journal Awards, I think it's a production award, and we were no longer submitting as a company, and Tara won. And then Casey Gillum, who's an individual agent, who decided against building a team for a lot of smart reasons, she's going the assistant model, she won. So yeah, so these guys, they are focused, they know what they want and it's working for them because of that focus. 

Speaker 1 (27:46):
So you identify, okay, this makes sense for them, we're going to support that. How did you start thinking about teams within your model from there, and when did you formalize what it takes? Was it just another conversation with someone and you're like, I just need to formalize this, I need to put some standards around this and then get into the standards? 

Speaker 3 (28:08):
Absolutely. So I've done this a long time. I've a lot of friends in the industry and some folks come to me outside of the brokerage. Some folks come to me for advice, and often it's team leads that are bloated and inefficient. And so helping them and talking to them about like, Hey, this is what's not working. What I get out of that is it helps me formalize policies and best practices for our teams. And then watching and observing some agents, cold start teams, meaning there's nothing and they need to grow one and doing it the wrong way and for the wrong reasons. That was really where we started because I was always very fearful of an agent gets some success, they're at seven or 8 million in production, and then they're like, Hey, I'm going to start a team and now I'm focused on a website. Now I'm focused on a logo and all this stuff. That quite frankly is a huge distraction. So those were sort of the first policies that we wrote. And I mean, I'll go into them. 

Speaker 1 (29:04):
Yeah, please. 

Speaker 3 (29:05):
Well, first, the misconception in the industry, this is from the largest brokerages in the United States, all the way down to the smallest teams, is that you support an agent per transaction. That is, in my opinion, it's hypothesis, but that is incorrect. You support each agent that you have in your organization. And my theory is that there's more management overhead on an agent that is struggling than there is with an agent who is happy and producing. So our sort of baseline premise is that you shouldn't think about a team until you have a certain level of success and you yourself are proliferating and doing incredibly well. And so we said in order to be team eligible, you have to do at least 15 million a year personally. And in Austin, that works out to around 30 transactions, 30 transactions a year, and we don't have anything. Well, there are some inflexible rules, but if somebody were at 13 or 14 million and their trajectory is such and they wanted to talk about it, we would certainly talk to them about that. 

Speaker 3 (30:11):
But that's where it starts. And what that does is it helps everybody in the brokerage understand that there's a path and there's a sequence, and the sequence is achieve stability, start really flourishing, and then decide, do I want to build a team? Do I want to get an assistant or whatnot? And that demarcation is 15 million. And so that's relatively easy to enforce within the brokers because those are expectations we set. Every time people come in. We're at a point now where there are a lot of teams approaching us to join, and we have had a number of interviews and we have some very successful teams that have joined us that are doing incredibly well. Their teams perform well in a wind tunnel test, and they have to follow these same standards, so 15 million for the first team lead, and then we want to see roughly 5 million per agent average after that team lead whenever they come in. And our commission structure is such that it encourages that. And quite frankly, we say no to teams that come in that are bloated, that aren't ready to become more efficient. And that means exiting agents. And I would say that we say this isn't a fit much more often than this is a fit with most teams because for whatever reason, most teams are unwilling to shrink in order to grow. 

Speaker 1 (31:28):
Quick sideline here. Is recruiting a team, is it the same standards or is it just because they're in a different place? The conversation starts at a different place? 

Speaker 3 (31:38):
The standards for the, yeah, so we know we have internal profiles of who we want to work with. And yeah, I mean, efficient team is a profile that we absolutely want to work with whenever we're recruiting an individual agent, an individual producer, it's really straightforward. And that's because we do that over and over. Teams are usually a conversation. So our recruiter, a team reaches out or reacts to marketing or whatnot, and then we'll usually look at it together and we'll say, what does this look like? Do we need to have a hard conversation upfront before maybe we even have a phone call? Make sure that they understand that these are our standards. And I mean, Ethan, there are teams that reach out to us all the time that there'll be six agents on the team and combine. They don't meet the $15 million minimum. And those are kind of pretty easy. We'll reach out and ask like, Hey, are you looking at dissolving your team? And the answer is almost always no. But that's what that would take in that instance. 

Speaker 1 (32:33):
Yeah. Talk a little bit about what do you do for team? Once an agent starts a team, what do you do for that team that you weren't doing for them as an agent? Or what do you do? What don't you do for them as a team that you were doing as an agent? When someone makes that transition, what is their relationship in terms of value delivery and service to and from the brokerage? What does that look like? 

Speaker 3 (33:02):
Great question, and arguably the hardest question that you probably asked because what is your value prop like? Okay, Eric, you have all of these relatively arrogant standards. What are you doing for these guys? 

Speaker 1 (33:14):
They're not arrogant. I mean, you got to have them. You got to have them. Yeah, 

Speaker 3 (33:18):
It can be interpreted that way, and I don't want it to be, but yeah. So we think about value prop all the time, man, our number one core value is prove value first. So every day I wake up and think about how can we provide more value to everybody in the brokerage, and then we have different profiles, and how do we do that? So with teams, direct mentorship becomes really important. And then these policies that we have, all of the teams in the brokerage actually look at those as a value add because how often are you approached by friend, family, whatever, somebody who sees your success and they want to hop on, they're like, Hey, I just got my license, or usually I'm getting my license. I take the test in a month. Can I join your team? And them being able to say like, Hey, sorry. 

Speaker 3 (34:02):
No, Eric's the bad guy. That does help. So I'm a huge fan of creativity, and I'm also a big fan that our way is not the only way. So we're always looking at are there other alternative models here? And there's a couple of teams that do things a bit differently, but they're all very successful. But we provide a framework and we say, this is what a successful team looks like. We provide mentorship. We have the brokerage activities that most teams can't put together themselves. So these are meetings, this is training, this is tech training. This is a unique value prop for us or our proprietary tech, like automated gifting management of your SOI in a very detailed way. We have, I could go on and on about the tech forever, but also that's a big part of the value prop, and we have a really strong brand. 

Speaker 3 (34:57):
So often there'll be an agent that comes in as a development agent for a team lead that maybe wouldn't have been able to come in directly to the brokerage. And then we have non-compete with all of our teams. So they can't recruit from the brokerage, we can't recruit from their team with joint agreement. We could, but if they develop somebody and that person were to come to me and say, I want to join the brokerage directly, my first call is to the team leader to say, are you okay with this? And usually the answer is no, but it doesn't happen. Well, it doesn't happen super often because culturally, that idea of we always have to bring value, they all share in that. So they're thinking every day about how do I provide value to my team members? Then the question becomes, well, what do they do that we don't do? Direct mentorship. If you want direct mentorship from a really high producing agent, we're not the brokerage for you. You need to join a team. You need to think about your split very secondarily, if not a tertiary thought, and then you go get mentored by this awesome team lead because that's something that a brokerage at scale just simply can't 

Speaker 1 (36:00):
Do. So you mentioned a path, and one of the reasons a lot of team leaders are permitting this is it's kind of a retention play. It's also once they get to your stage of here are some standards to get to this point. When you do this, you get that When you do this, you get that. When you do this, you get that. When you do this, you get all that plus. So it's a little bit retention. It's a little bit of a path. I think a lot of people need that. I think it kind of gamifies the situation a little bit. It gives some structure and some expectation. I think it makes a more interesting recruiting conversation. We have all these stages essentially, but a successful team is wondering, am I in the right place necessarily? What do you think about a team inside a team versus a team inside a brokerage? There are obviously financial consequences. You're probably giving up more to a team inside a brokerage than you are directly inside a brokerage. Any thoughts on that dynamic? 

Speaker 3 (36:53):
I mean, what's your north star? Is it going to help you get there? And if your north star is profitability and you're doing this as a retention play, it's probably not the right move. If you're doing it because you have a profitable model that you want to test and then once proven, continue doing it, then great. But just to make sure that somebody doesn't leave, all it's going to do is you're just going to add more support headache. And if it's not super profitable, then it just doesn't make sense. Everybody in a team and at a brokerage, you should know the average revenue that you're bringing in on each agent, and that should be a good number for you. And so then if you look at the average revenue you have per agent, and I didn't know this, and then I know the average revenue I'm going to have per team member, those better be good numbers and it better make sure that it helps you towards your goal of profitability, out of fear, full stop. Just don't do it. Let 'em go. That's probably not your ideal customer to begin with. 

Speaker 1 (37:56):
Any other keys to retention? I mean, obviously it's something that you are rightfully, I'm not, same as you qualify the word ego. I'm going to qualify the word prideful. I don't mean it to put anything on you with it. I mean, you're rightfully proud of the retention that you've had inside the organization. Any other keys to retention, whether it's an agent or a team? 

Speaker 3 (38:17):
Yeah, it's culture, and this is such a fuzzy word. We're actually doing a mastermind in a couple of weeks and Michael Pre's hub where we're going to try to define culture, right? We're going to do a round table and talk about it and then feed it through AI and figure out what it comes up with. But I do know that culture is a way that we all operate in a set of beliefs that we all share, right? Common goal, that's something that I would define culture as retention is the most impacted by culture. Actually, I'll send it to you. We did a study recently on what do agents really want in a brokerage? And Sean Soder and Mike and I did it, and they want a feeling of belonging and they want to have a feeling of a common goal. These are all the emotional components that most brokerages don't get, right? And then you have the practical side, and people generally overemphasize the practical side. What's the split? What does the tech look like? Now, those are table stakes. You have to get those right? But if you want to have a very strong retention rate, your culture has to be really, really awesome. That's a great moat. They won't leave 

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Brittany Hodak come up a couple of times. I'm going to link up Eric's conversation with Brittany. I also had her on a previous show that I hosted called the Customer Experience Podcast, and superfans creating super fans is their book. I'm going to link that down below. You mentioned Dan Corgi, co-founder of Follow-Up Boss. I'm going to link his conversation here on this show, which was really interesting about the rise of online leads concurrent with the rise of real estate teams concurrent with the rise of follow-up boss and how all those things kind of worked together to make the company what it is. But it really is to the spirit of what you're talking about. I mean, the customer centricity that it was inherent to Dan, that became a cultural element of the company, is the reason it all worked out the way that it did. And that continues to be a thriving company, that 41 of the top 50 real estate teams in the United States use. That was more promotional than I intended. No, no. But then also 

Speaker 3 (40:12):
Deserved. Yeah, deserved, 

Speaker 1 (40:14):
Yeah. But this proprietary research that you did, if you share that with me, I'll definitely link that up down below. I also listened to you talk about it with the other gentleman that you commissioned it with. It's obviously functional for recruiting, and we don't need to go necessarily to all the top line results. You shared one of the biggest takeaways, which is it needs to make sense. The math needs to work, it needs to make sense to them, but ultimately it's about, do I belong here? Is this my place? Are these my people? Can I be who I want to be here personally and professionally? And to your point, it is really hard to put a finger on it the way that I've always described culture is what it feels like to work with us in that way. It works with clients and it works with agents, and that just is what it is. 

Speaker 1 (40:58):
And what do you agree? I guess I'm diving back into culture here in the context of retention, that branding, we're going to do branding efforts. We're trying to impact something that we don't control. Ultimately, the market and the consumer controls the brand. They define the brand, the brand's definition is theirs. All we're trying to do is influence and impact it. The same thing with things that we're doing to impact culture. No matter what those efforts are, it's ultimately lived and brought to life. And in that way, then defined by the people in the brokerage or within the team that the agents define the culture. All we can do is seek to influence it. 

Speaker 3 (41:42):
I'm going to disagree with you there. 

Speaker 1 (41:43):
Okay. Please. Yeah. That's why I offered it that way. 

Speaker 3 (41:46):
Yeah. So I think that whoever is the founder ultimately plants a seed of culture and then continues to nurture it. And then however, well they are able to direct that culture, that's how it'll be received. And you're correct that the agents are the culture and the founder will learn from them, and things might change and evolve. But you certainly don't want to look at culture as, oh, well, we're going to have hiring standards, and then whatever happens, happens In 2018, we wrote a culture code. I'm a writer, especially when I'm stressed, and we had some things that were not going awesome. And I was like, okay. And I would just wake up early and start doing all this writing, and the end of it was this culture code, and it was way too long and whatever. It was maybe a bit grandiose at the time, but we've always had our mission statement and our core values, and whenever people come in, they're exposed to this, we champion them. And then a goal of the staff is that with every meeting, we're able to mention at least one core value and how it relates. So the leader can certainly impact. And when you get, 

Speaker 1 (42:58):
Yes, we're actually saying the same thing. I just said it a little bit too crudely to let it go. But I guess the further way to influence it after it's codified and you're recruiting to it and you're celebrating it in the moments, and all of this is getting rid of that high performer, that is just not, I think that's another way to say, no, this is real. 

Speaker 3 (43:23):
I always called 'em quadrants. And then Sean Solderstrom, he told me they're called two by twos of McKinsey. He's an old McKinsey guy. So you have these quadrants, like these graphs, 

Speaker 2 (43:32):
Right? 

Speaker 3 (43:33):
And I like to put things there. That's how I think. And so you have the top right, which is that's a high performer who's also a very large culture ad. And then you've got the bottom left who's a low performer and not a culture fit. Those are the easiest quadrants. Yes, make sure all day, never a hundred percent get rid of them, no question about it, make sure they're happy, no question about it. And then the other two quadrants are where you have to act. And I can argue that if you're at the top left where it's like high performer, cultural problem, got to go, I don't care how much money, the only way that person should stay is if you will make more money working with that one person than you would with everybody else. So they have to go and maybe a corrective conversation, maybe if you've known 'em a long time. 

Speaker 3 (44:28):
People go through peaks and valleys of their own stuff, so you take all this stuff into account, it's not ones and zeros. And then you have the other difficult are the low performing cultural warriors. What do you do with them? And exiting them is a problem. That's something that can cause, can cause issues. And so we've landed on you try to coach up whenever that's the case. If you can't coach up and they're dissatisfied, most of the time that cultural warrior side of 'em goes away. But no, I mean back to, that's again, a long-winded explanation of mega producer who's huge ego, total pain in the ass, get 'em gone. They don't belong there. They're not your customer. It's the same thing if for producing agents, you'll get some clients. I don't care how much money the sale is worth that they are such a suck on your mind space, on your time, on everything they've got to go. It's just not worth it. 

Speaker 1 (45:22):
I want to know how that culture conversation goes, and maybe that's going to be like a three person episode and we'll bring Mike in. I would love to figure out what you all learn and then maybe talk with you both about it. 

Speaker 3 (45:36):
Well, I mean, yeah, I'm excited about it. 

Speaker 1 (45:39):
Yeah, of course. It sounds super fun. And there's same reason you're doing it is the same reason I want to share it on this show, which is everyone understands that it's critically important. It's really difficult to get your hands on it because of that slippery nature and because there's always something to work on or improve or that's on fire. A more hardcore type a personality is just going to kind of keep driving by it, and in the meantime, you've got this minor rot going somewhere inside the organization that you're either blind to or whatever. So anyway, culture comes up all the time on the show. Everyone knows that it's super important. No one can get their hands on it. And Eric, I'm trusting you to bring us whatever emerges from that time together. 

Speaker 3 (46:28):
No pressure. Right, 

Speaker 1 (46:29):
Right. Of 

Speaker 3 (46:30):
Course. Yeah. 

Speaker 1 (46:30):
Yeah. 

Speaker 3 (46:31):
We'll talk about the human soul on the future episode or something like that. 

Speaker 1 (46:34):
Yeah, totally. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Why are we here? Exactly. Exactly. No, no, no. On earth. No, 

Speaker 3 (46:41):
I know that. I know. 

Speaker 1 (46:42):
Yeah. Cool. Well, again, thank you so much. Really enjoyed this. Before I let you go, I've got three pairs of closing questions. You can answer one or the other or both if you prefer. What is your very favorite team to root for besides Bramlett Partners, or what is the best team you've ever been a member of besides Bramlett Partners? 

Speaker 3 (47:00):
Yeah, it's interesting. I'm super into individual sports, so whenever we talk about athletes like Jeremy Jones, Travis Rice, guys like that, Ji, I mean, I don't know if this will work. I mean, it's both my favorite team to be a part of, and it's also one that I'm really rooting for, and it's not a conventional team, but the org I talked about a minute ago, the innovation hub that Mike Del Preti put together. It's a team of a hundred leaders that are all pretty like-minded, and it's almost like a movement of focusing on what actually works. That's usually the boring and really cutting through the noise. And Mike started this a year and a half ago, and it's really proliferating. It's really doing well, and so I'm proud to be a part of that. And then I'm also massively cheering it on. I mean, for selfish reasons, plus, just because I think it's awesome. I know that's promotional. It's not mine at all, but that's no problem. I'm a huge fan of it. Yeah, 

Speaker 1 (47:59):
Yeah. It's honest, and that's all that matters. What is your most frivolous purchase, or what's a cheapskate habit you hold onto even though you probably don't need to anymore? 

Speaker 3 (48:10):
Yeah, frivolous purchases. I bought a model plaid. I bought a Model S plaid and then watched it go down in value 75%. And then cheapskate is I will not get food delivered. I still go pick it up because I'm like, man, who am I to spend 10 bucks on this delivery? If it's within a couple miles of the house, then I should probably, my wife gives me crap about it all the time. 

Speaker 1 (48:32):
Yeah. Well, I don't know, man. It depends what you're getting. I also struggle with what was once a $7 and 50 cent burrito is now an $11 burrito, but it becomes a $25 burrito by the time it gets delivered and tipped. It's 

Speaker 3 (48:49):
Absurd. 

Speaker 1 (48:50):
Absolutely. Can't do it. 

Speaker 3 (48:51):
Can't do it. I won't enjoy eating it. That's the problem. All this thing about all the money I wasted while I'm eating this Taco Bell burrito or whatever. 

Speaker 1 (49:00):
Yeah. I don't know if I did this math correctly, but it's like 4 cents a bite. 

Speaker 3 (49:07):
I love 

Speaker 1 (49:07):
It. What does it look like for you, Eric? I think I know the answer to this. I don't think we've given anything away that a viewer or listener would unless they know you, but what does it look like for you to invest your time in learning, growing and developing, or what does it look like? What are you doing when you're investing time in resting, relaxing, or recharging? 

Speaker 3 (49:24):
Yeah, recharge for me, I mean spending time with family, a hundred percent. It is cycling, snowboarding, and rock climbing. And so Dan and I actually used to always joke about that. I've always had a metric of how many days on the mountain of year. This is back whenever I was just a team lead and yeah, I mean the number's pretty high, but if I didn't hit this number, I was like, something's wrong in the business. So yeah, I can't sit still. So the weather in Austin's great right now. That's why if I get some free time, I'll go grind out some miles on the bike or, yeah. Anyways, that's what I do for fun. 

Speaker 1 (50:00):
That's awesome. Where do you go when you are hitting a mountain? You mentioned Durango. That was obviously where those agents had a place, but where are your favorite mountains? 

Speaker 3 (50:10):
Yeah, so Southwest Colorado, so we get a pass at Wolf Creek all the time. I'm big into side country, finally to Jackson Hole. And Jackson I fell in love with, and then there's a real, I call it a dirt bag mountain. They don't even have cell service there called Silverton, which is my absolute fave. That's a trip whenever you go to Silverton because you're going up the million dollar highway and all this. But those are my faves, man. I like to get out in the middle of nowhere. Nobody can reach me. I've got to actually work for it a bit, but not so much. Those are kind of my faves. 

Speaker 1 (50:41):
Love it. Yeah, I was hearing bike in advance. The mountain thing was the fun twist, whether you're watching on YouTube, whether you're watching or listening in Spotify, whether you're listening to Apple Podcasts, whether you're watching or listening on the website, we put all these up@realestateteamos.com. There's a ton of other stuff there too. Down below, I write these up. There are learning points in there if you want to jump to specific parts of the conversation. But equally important, there are links to all kinds of stuff, and I'm going to link to Eric's standards on teams down below as well. I've mentioned several other things that are linked there. I round those because I know some percentage of you watching and listening want to go deeper, that this is more than just something to listen to while you walk the dog or ride the bike or whatever you're doing. So check out the links down below. Eric, I will add one or more additional links. Where would you send people to follow up and learn more about you and what you're up to? 

Speaker 3 (51:31):
Yeah, I mean, the easiest, this sounds, just Google me and you can find stuff. Our socials, like Instagram brand partners, my own Instagram. I think we have our own YouTube channel. Oh, we have podcasts, Bramlet Partners, podcasts and stuff like that. But if you Google me and you're interested, just me, you can shoot me an email, eric@bramlet.me. A lot of ways. A lot of ways. I'm like many agents, I'm not very hard to find. 

Speaker 1 (51:57):
Cool. And Bramlett is not super common. 

Speaker 3 (52:00):
No, no. We're not talking Spit Realty or anything like that. 

Speaker 1 (52:03):
Yeah, Ethan Butte is not common either, but you can misspell my last name pretty easily. Yours is pretty straightforward. Two t's on the end. 

Speaker 3 (52:09):
Thank you. Yeah, 

Speaker 1 (52:10):
Eric, you're awesome. I appreciate you. I hope you enjoy some nice outdoor time sometime later today. 

Speaker 3 (52:15):
I appreciate it. Ethan, thank you so much for having me on. I'd love to do it again in the future if you ever want to do this again. So thank you. 

Speaker 1 (52:21):
Yeah, well, I do have a lot of questions. We have that original research on what agents are looking for and we're going to have something about culture. 

Speaker 3 (52:30):
Okay, great. Great. Love to share. 

Speaker 2 (52:32):
Thanks for checking out this episode of Team Os. Get quick insights all the time by checking out real estate team Os on Instagram and on TikTok.