Welcome to the team builder show where the most successful team leaders share, how to build scale organize and ultimately maximize your sales team results. I am so excited to unpack the three most important questions i get when people want to understand what is it like to actually grow a team and, in this case, a team that has done it at such a high level and they're, a husband and wife team, But get this from 84 transactions six years ago to over 3 000 transactions this year with a billion dollars in volume, welcome to the show, lindsey and dj hey thanks for having us, i'm so pumped to have you guys. I mean this is our second podcast. It is right now we are going behind the scenes right with the guru with the guru i like how you called that out.

So so, first of all, uh give people some context um, where you guys from and then we're gon na unpack all the systems. We actually took the time guys to really break it down and write out all the systems for you. We are prepared for you so uh so lens. How long have you guys been in the business gosh? I was licensed in 2009 and i got and i got licensed in 2006 right before you know the good timing.

The great you know the great opportunity, great opportunity, which turned out to be a great opportunity. So, okay, so i have to say this because there's a behind-the-scenes story with the two of you and uh. Your coach once said to me: yeah, i'm coaching this. This partnership in business and i think, there's something else behind the scenes, i'm like what do you mean he's like? I think they might be a couple.

I go well if they disclose that he goes no, but they talk. Like my wife - and i you know who i'm talking about yes, yes, so so when did you guys first get into coaching, so we got in coaching 2016 2015. I believe he was 15 2015.. It was a you did a it was w.

Holloway did an event in orlando. Yes, talking about teams and yeah. Before that we had, we were a team yeah, just us too, and we had an independent brokerage. We wanted to.

You know change the world with leads systems and be cool and hip, and you know we just and then we went to this team seminar and we're like wow lindsay. We need to do this team, so we just started just building the team one by one, which britney was our first hire, which is now the broker of our whole organization and shout out to brittany shout out to brittany so first hire day, one and uh just Well, let's, okay, so we actually broke down. I want everyone to listen to this. They went from so 84 transactions in 2016., correct 162 transactions in 2017.

That's that's pretty significant growth kind of after that event, then 262 added a net 100, then 459, 262 to 459. To 854 in 2020, which i mean i've been your coach now during this process, so i remember you know finishing at 854. We wanted to get to a thousand, we didn't get there, but this year, you're at 2687, closed transactions and lens 470 in pending 470 transactions. You have 470 pending transactions, that's more than you did in all of 2019.

I know it's kind of surreal. It's crazy and you save your dream. All i hear is tom ferry you're, not thinking big enough dj you're, not thinking big enough, and you know here we are and now you're still. But you know i got mad respect for you, so the three things: okay, we actually have to unpack the personal side.

First, so when did you guys finally disclose to your coach that you were a couple probably when we got engaged? Yes, i think that's what the whole world found out. We were a couple right. We were in new york and i'm like i don't want to post this on facebook right now, because, like can't, we just like enjoy this moment he's like yeah, let's break the internet, i'm like nobody knew because you know a lot of times when we we would Go on listing appointments, yes, they would ask, and you know it would be funny. It was just kind of this allure and you know i think brittany found out maybe a year.

People were like those two are definitely having sex, but they're, saying they're, not a partnership. Yeah and they're like yeah, i definitely can see it and we always wanted to keep it really professional in the office like we opened the brokerage in 2013 and you know we wanted it not to really be about us. I guess yeah um until it was. You know yeah and it's it's been a great journey.

I think you could see like i feed off of her energy and vice versa - it's 100 percent of yang to to the yang and what she is incredible at i'm terrible at and vice versa, and we just always pick each other up. So, just naturally that evolution of you know, partnership to you know an amazing friendship to an amazing. You know marriage now and i'm just i'm thankful that we're able to disclose it not keep it from our coaches and right. We got to have our coach marry us, which was great thanks doc.

I actually said someone oh yeah, i married dj and lindsay they're like you married both of them i'm like wait. I officiated the wedding, so i got caught on that one i was like yeah. I married my sister over over last summer. They're.

Like that's odd. That's weird. I was like yes, officiated, uh reverend tom ferry in case you're wondering mike my card is expired, doughnuts no longer so so, do you think a do? You think a team to really scale the level that we're talking about needs to have two people in charge gosh? I think so i think i think you need more than one person in charge, or at least that one person who is in charge open to help right, like just knowing their strengths and their weaknesses and hiring to that. So i mean sure you could be one person, but no you're gon na need.

You know a community of people behind you right kind of you know, and i say this all the time like some of my best friends are in some of the greatest teams in the country too, and i watch that so i'm not saying it can't be done Because a lot of people are doing it, yes, but i i think what we've been able to do and how we've been able to do it. It's two people that are so obsessed and and what we're trying to do and what we're trying to build yeah that we sit around the kitchen table. We talk about it at night, we, you know, we lay in bed and we talk about it. So you have two people always on thinking about things talking about things which you know.

If you are two different people and you're, it's not your spouse. You have to wait till the next morning or you're texting them, and it's not that same. You know symbolic. You know relationship that you have that to be able to just 100 focus on whether it's the hr that week or the lead spend or whatever it might be.

We can talk about it literally all the time and we prefer to because that's what we like to do - and it's kind of it's really all we've ever known, because even when we kind of first kind of teamed up in 2012 um, it was all we knew. We shared an email, and so i was already kind of responding to things and because she didn't trust me to manage my own email. Let's just throw that on record, not because actually got responded to yes or he used to just delete emails. And like can you just archive that, so i always like huh and i'm like you're done here? Okay, so let's we're gon na pack, more of the husband and wife thing, but uh because there's a lot to unpack there.

But i want to jump right into the thing that i think people want the most which is like, like help me understand like you, and i are sort of chatting before and we're talking about. You know a lot of people have this sort of myth around teams like well. If i just if i just hire a bunch of people, then it's going to work and then other people go well. If i just get a bunch of leads, it's going to work and then some people are like i'm going to build every possible system and then it's going to work, what's what's the actual order, so that was us.

We went to that event. We're hearing about teams. We have teams in our area, there were teams across the country kind of already doing it, and then it was kind of becoming a trendy thing to start a team, and i was just kind of observing what's going on and i was like, i am not doing It that way, and so what was that way? Just i didn't i didn't want to bring someone on into my organization, with the thoughts of they're just going to work. For me, we're going to split 50 50 and i'm going to give them leads yeah.

I was like i can't i can't do that or i'm going to have them set open houses which a lot of teams back then right, weren't, providing anything right. Unfortunately, still to this day, they're, not providing the value that i think a team member deserves with systems and leads, and you know, because we are supposed to be the rainmakers of making that we need the. We need the business funneling in just like a restaurant. If i open the doors and i'm an investor to a restaurant, you need patrons to come into the restaurant, otherwise that restaurant's not going to survive like i don't want, like my like my agents or the servers in the restaurant like out on the streets like hey, You guys should try eating here.

I'm like no, i'm gon na generate a lot of people coming into the restaurant, and so when we started the team, i was very. I want it to be as close as perfect as possible before someone trusts me with. You know like leaving where they are and joining our organization, perhaps quitting a w-2 job to be an agent like i needed them. You know to believe in what we could provide, so we did this very slowly.

Yes, i mean i needed it to be perfect. I needed to know exactly how we were going to onboard them, how we were going to train them, how they were going to prospect what they were going to say on the phone, what systems they were going to use? What do they need to know about the systems, but do they not need to know about the systems like don't even bother clicking here? Just do it this way, and so it wasn't until i had all of this, like fully documented in google drive right like the whole business is there, and that is when we brought brittany on. I was like hey we're at this point. I think it's tight.

Let's bring on one agent and for context: where, were you transaction-wise on this list, where, where did that? When did it take place? When you finally went like i'm ready, that was 2016., we were 2016., we attended the event in 2015., we did some personal. You know we did some coaching and they were like. You have to do this this. You know, and all these things just these wonderful things and like we literally took everything that the playbook of what tom ferry coaching was the 9 to 11 time blocking.

The 100 calls the conversations yeah we do that to this day. We still do that. We, you know, we have the same accountability, script practice everything is tracked and measured everybody's transparency, it's so predictable. I know when someone comes onto my team that i know i can protect them.

I know they're gon na feel safe, they're, gon na feel financially secure because i already know if they do all these things. It's a guarantee right, and i tell my recruiters and and everybody this i would hire anybody's mother sister brother and i would say if you come in and you do this and follow this path. It's a guarantee for success yeah, but there has to be a willingness to work to work yeah right, because a lot of people forget yeah yeah. They forget that part.

Okay, but okay, let's go to unpack that you know too yeah. I think it's important for for everyone to hear these numbers, which are it's incredible. You know it's surreal to me most of the time still and the numbers really correlate from like core elite team plus coaching there's that coaching connect well, it's all exposure for the two of you. First, you just kept getting more exposed to well.

If they can do it - and i can wait, you guys did that mark patterson was able to do that. Kyle did this yeah. I can do that it's great, but then we all helped each other. Do that too.

I i took you know, mark and her and myself and kyle. We still all talk all of the time and but i think what everyone needs to understand is what she brought up and it is patience we were patient in the process of making sure the foundation was laid correctly and still to this day, we are super patient Before we make any decision, however, we're very pivotal and we'll make a decision very fast once you make it, though, as your coach, the one thing i notice, when you guys make a decision, it's all in yeah, i mean i sit there and i just i get To work, you know what i mean like as soon as we're like this is the way we're doing it. I'm like all right like let's go, okay, so so literally we're time, stamping this for youtube. So, let's talk about people systems, okay, so so i want to know hiring onboarding training and then overall communication, okay, right so talk to us about from a systematic standpoint.

How how many agents will you hire this year? Like 2022. 2022, we um so we're going to we're shooting for a goal of 300 agents. So we're going to try to onboard 220 agents this year. Okay, so higher 300 retain you know: you'll have some fallout, so we want to retain.

You know, 240 of that. Okay, so that's a lot of people, so so, if i'm listing this right now, i'm thinking to myself, where do they get their leads? Are you two doing all the interviews like? What's the process, how does if i'm a if i'm a recruit yeah, give me like systematically? How does it work so we have a team of six growth advisors right now and um part of their job every day and we have megan. That is, you know, leading that division. So again we have.

We have leaders now in all of our divisions, starting from tc's to growth, advisors, to admin, marketing the whole. Everyone has a defined leader that answers to to myself, and we talk to you know on a daily basis, so the growth advisors they get their their database from any licensed person in the mls, because i truly believe we do have. We have a model for a brand new agent. We have a model for a five million dollar agent.

We have a model for a 20 million dollar agent to absolutely live the life they deserve and make the money they deserve throughout our systems processes. So it's not a it's, not a scrubbed list, we're literally looking for anyone who wants to work right. So that's what we work off of, but do you actually say, like? I have a a longtime client of mine. That literally says my office is only for agents that want to work, that's it and his per person.

Productivity is off the charts, but but he could probably recruit a thousand agents, but there's only like 25 a year that he says actually want to do the process. The system kind of same concept, yeah it's the same concept and that's why you know we uh. We offer all of these. It's a very like all-inclusive deal yeah.

So even for those people who are like, i don't want to work, let's dig a little deeper. What is it that they don't want to do right? Do they not want to do any of the contract? The paperwork, the you know, contract to close stuff. Okay, we take care of that. Do they not want to do any of the marketing for the listing? Do they not want to put a sign in the yard, because why do they want to go there again, whatever it is, we kind of take care of all of that, so as long as we can figure out? What is that? I don't want to work like? Let's see if we have a solution, i actually think it was your first team plus event when i did a whole rant for 90 minutes on sales.

People should only sell houses and nothing else. That's it right. So how do you operation? That's all we're hiring yeah. Okay, i think the podcast next year we're going to try to i'm going to try to reinvent the wheel once again on how we do that to make sure that the sales people are doing that tbd.

I'm going to talk to your coach about creating some accountability around that there you go all right. So if i'm a growth advisor inside your company, tell me about a typical day for me. What am i doing so, every morning they have a you know as a company, we do a 9 a.m huddle. I lead that, and people get you know.

Most most of the people are in the office, the growth advisors. Every person attends that i try to get them hyped up myself or brett or whoever's leading the call, or that that day will do that before that they'll break off tuesdays, they do objection handling and of different objections that they're getting i'm happy where i am all Of these things of experienced agents that we get, but they also kind of get each other into the zone of hey we're gon na, because they're making the calls from 9 to 11., just like our agents right, they're, all in the same office, they're all working together. So they're working at a of a separate crm boom town, so they're working on a boom town, they're categorizing, you know they're they're prospects of people they're trying to work with to get all people are leads and all leads are people. It doesn't matter if they're agents, if they're buyers, if they're sellers it doesn't matter it doesn't matter because they know, and when i talk to when i when i speak about my growth advisors, there's not people with bigger hearts that care about people, and i think that You know for people hiring recruiters out there they're, they know with what they had they.

I make them observe for two weeks of what's going on around the office, they're mandatory have to talk to 10 agents before they even get on call. I have a whole list of questions. They have to ask getting to know you. What's it like working here, where did you come from? Is it exactly what you you know? Did you feel like what you thought it was going to be that it is or did you feel like you know, we fed you a bunch of you know things that weren't really going to happen right.

So that's a common thing with agents when they move they go uh sounded too good to be true. I went there and you know it was lots of promises and it's not like specific 10 agents. They have to go to there's 90 agents in the company. Go to any agent and ask them that question, because i want them to feel because if they're gon na going to have people join our company, they have to put themselves on the line, they're gon na trust and believe in us.

So then, with all with everything they can gather from that they can now talk to the you know: potential prospects that right of why and how why they should join the company. So then they'll dial from 9 to 11.. You know we do have an appointment. We have an appointment, chat, um, that they take down appointments and we we use workplace for communication.

So it's a very, very much a you know, a group effort of camaraderie like every time somebody makes an appointment. You know everyone's reading each other on there's gifts in there, and so we do the same thing on slack, so yeah so okay, so hold on. So boomtown is the crm nine to eleven they're. Also they're uploading agents inside the mls.

Do you guys do any new agents any yeah? So we actually, we actually have a person in the office ashley who actually like kind of scrubs different databases, different mls's or you know, licensees from the state um and then so she dumps them into boom town. I think i don't know daily or weekly standard here's your calls for the day plus they've got their follow-ups right yep. So if i'm working for you from so i'm gon na get pumped up, i'm gon na role play and i'm going to make calls from 9 to 11.. What's the expectation for how many appointments i'm going to book and what's my appointment to show ratio, what's my appointment to conversion okay, so we our our goal daily for each growth advisor is five appointments per day, okay and there's six of them, six of them.

Setting five, so the goal is to set 30 recruiting appointments a day every owner manager. Right now is like going. I need sex growth and i know what you're thinking like wait. Why don't you have a thousand agents? Well, it goes back to tom saying i think it's even gon na be hard.

It's gon na be hard to do what we're trying to do, but we're getting in front of people, and we know what we i know, what the agents are are thinking what they're doing right now, so the show rate is we always like to cut it in Half so if you book 30 15 yep 15 show 15 show out of that 15.. How many? How many disqualify uh right off the bat? Another half okay! So it's a seven and a half seven and a half model right now that you have to do things and they might need a part-time job. They might be. You know, mom that has three little children and which is great um and then the other five.

Five. 5.5, it's really up to us to determine. Do they have that sales ability to go on? You know, because i was telling you the other day. We have 13 million dollar properties, all the way down to 30 000 properties right.

The connectivity with every person in between that needs it's important and we are in a sales role and showing up every day. It's hard and being coachable is, very, you know, unique to a lot of people, so we look for all of those qualities, so usually out of out of 30. We probably hire two okay. So, but if you, how often do you actually get to 30 appointments in a day um, not very, we hit last two last two days: we've hit 22..

Okay. So that's the some of these growth advisors. Are you know, one of them is brand new. Sure two of them have only been here - you know 30 40 days so and for context for the people that are listening, give us the evolution of the growth advisors, especially for the mega team leader.

That's listening right now, they're like do. I just go and hire six tomorrow. It sounds like the mistake of hiring six hours. Megan was our first one, and that was you know three years ago and we just hired one, and that was when we were like we're ready to go.

I can't always make the calls, sometimes i think it's better from a third party making a call and kind of reaching out um, and so megan was the first one, and so i mean she has had tremendous growth. I mean she's she's been incredible, but to back up because i'll even go back to brittany right now, when we hired brittany yep as our first team agent, i was so nervous and with the all of our spend and what we were doing, i would she would Like go on the on the appointments and then i would negotiate the deals and she'd be on the phone, but i would write it up and so the same thing with when megan came on megan - and i would you know we did indeed ads. We'd, do all of these different things to generate business, so we tried it all, and then i would do the interview she would set the our calendar and then we would enter. We would interview, she wouldn't even be in then it evol.

Then the evolution was. She would sit in on them, then i was like all right, megan you're, a rock star, do it and even then we let her do the first interview and then i did the second interview i'm like. Let me just make sure this person's a good fit. So how much of that is common sense and and sort of your process of i want to? I want it to be right before i can delegate it versus just control us maximus, it's called i.

I think it's patience more than anything, because if we don't, if we, if we did it any other way, i think we would have onboarded and off-boarded a lot more people sure i think that then the culture suffers, then your w-2 employees suffer because now they're workloads More now we got to move more leads around, so it it's it's it's the control, the control, but it controls it's a controlled because it's chaos, quality control, yeah right! You know what i mean. I use control us maximus because that's what my kids call me: yeah, like all right controllers, maximus slow down like no, but it's quality control, yeah and everyone, and we get that a ton like. Oh, they just want to do this, but really it's it's not it's bigger than lindsey, and i now now it's it's ashley and erica. That's on boarding and now stu offboarding and moving different things.

So you know it's it's 10 to 12 people it affects now. If it's not the right hire right. So if we didn't do that correctly in the beginning, then you know it affects the whole world. So right, it's you know it's it's a snowball.

I hate to wait the sound it, but it's it's the cog in the wheel right, there's, just multiple cogs like everyone's got to be working correctly for the whole machine to work. Okay, let's go to onboarding, so you guys said you use tranul yeah. We use training. You never say that right yeah.

So what is tranul? It's like an online learning, lms learning management system, that's exactly what it is um and so it's a combination. I think we use tranual as well as probably uh sisu does a lot of our onboarding. So you know she can just check off the tasks. I mean there's a lot of onboarding when it's for a team, so we have to get them on all these different platforms.

You guys have a checklist that you started out with like that's involved. Yes, so it was on paper. We actually started on paper so like when megan, for example, would bring people on. I would do all the onboarding.

I used a sheet of paper that i actually it was like my task list on a paper right and i actually put like six of them on one sheet of paper. So i could save paper and i would cut manually cut them right, it's crazy and then i would check off as i did things yeah and then you know. Sometimes we would on board people in a different city like jacksonville, and i'd have to send this paper or like take a picture and email it. It was.

It was crazy and then we brought ashley on she's like whoa whoa whoa. Why are you guys using paper? We can put this in google and it's free. Let's put this on a google spreadsheet, everyone has access, we can see everything and who does i'm like whoa, that's amazing, right and then from there. That's when we moved to csu now so csu does all of that um, because there's different tasks for different people and what they need to do to onboard someone and offer kind of like monday, once one person checks it off, it triggers the next right step.

So so we're going to get into csu in a minute because that's more under kind of management systems um but training will. So if i'm listening to you and i and i'm i have a team and i'm on boarding two agents a month, because i'm losing one and that's pretty typical right, everybody else out there um do. I need a solution like that. I would say it would be a good practice and, what's in it, to go ahead and start that way: okay, rather than learn whatever we did, everything from what mls's you have to sign up for what lock box key, how it works.

What brittany's role is what todd's role like what everyone's kind of goes over the over, so i'm learning the entire management process of the company transaction process. Lead management yeah how to use the you know how to use boom town, how to properly set up a lead when you get a new lead and you're on a lead shift. What do you need to do? What do you need to say? How do you need to set them up? I mean it walks them through step by step, and they can always refer back to it. It's when you have a closing.

What do you need to do? You need to schedule this? You need to talk to your list. Your transaction coordinator, you need to show up to the closing right, they don't know, some people are brand new, they don't know, and then we have a separate training well once they graduate to listings and we have a whole listing training of like how to you know How to properly do how to schedule photos how to get the house ready? So it really it's a leverage of time and everything we do um. Then you also have to constantly update it. Okay, i was just going to say you got a, but what a great name for you, if you think about it like tran, because it's really it's a manual right and it's a great training format shout out not, i i'm not an investor in this company, but I really should be now just just thinking about it all right, so you use it for that and then what about? What about sales training so like? If i'm, if i'm on your team, forget the forget the i want to switch to the listing side.

Just i joined your team for the first year. I want to sell houses like what kind of like am i taught like a buyer consultation? Am i am. I just answer the phone and book the appointment like what's the process um, so we start everyone off. So you get the training and there's some basic stuff in there, some different you know, podcasts and and everybody because we're in team plus we they get access to the back end of tom ferry, a lot of good resources.

So we have different ones that they should go to and different. You know things they should listen to every tuesday. We have script training every tuesday morning before they start um in every office. Every wednesday you know we're adding classes constantly for the changing market.

So we have ongoing classes now, four days a week um and we have three offices - jupiter, st augustine and jacksonville, and just continuously training on all of that. But before they get on on leads like a new inbound leads they're working on a database of you know leads that might have registered three to four months ago, so they're actually getting their phone skills by good. You know dialing because we have 135 000 leads in our database right now, some of them some people just fainted as they yeah. So i mean you can think.

There's there's plenty of shows so they're doing yeah they're calling 100 people a day just to kind of get their phone cadence up getting getting their confidence out. Can you ask him to say: do you know the script, but it's gon na sound bad, but i do not know the script. I actually just rewrote the script for the inbound okay um, but we have a different outbound, but no but it's but it's the essence of it. But it's, i think it changes like i'll say on a monday meeting like hey.

How was your thanksgiving, like you know so, you're keeping it fresh keeping the pressure? That's what i wanted people, please do not say i'm just checking in we all know, that's that's it yeah, but that's how you get hung up on, but yeah these are. We do no outbound calling no circle dialing like that right now, as a lead as a lead force, except for a new agent. That's joining you're going to call existing leads, but they really train so they raised their hand, they were hand raisers. They went to a specific property on zillow, realtor.com or google, so, in my opinion, if in this day and age, if you're gon na raise your hand, probably a decent lead for sure, because of how many new agents we have come in, like i tell them, they Always pull out somebody and work with them from those calls right that person that might have called them.

The first time might not have had the same skill set as they did as they do now so or even the buyer, on the other line could have just been rushing to get the kids out of the house that morning right, and so it was a crappy Conversation so the other agent just marked him as an archive or whatever and moved on. That person doesn't want to talk to me, but then the next day brand new agent calls them right, has no fear, hey, sarah and sarah's great right and she's like i want to buy a house and you're like. Why did these notes say she was so rude? But that's because that was her day yesterday. Yes, it's modality.

What we all understand like modality is, like you know, i i register. I want to see this house right and then, like 20 minutes later, the agent calls me and i'm in, like pickup line to pick up my kids from elementary school. I could talk 20.. I'm like, i can't talk right now: click and they're like totally rude, jerk right right and then i'm like how come that.

Did you never call me back? I want to buy a five million dollar house right. Yeah modality is i'm in pickup line and that's why i'm in the grocery store all of these systems in place to where we are constantly reaching out to these people all the time at all of these different times in the day, whether it's strip, campaigns or automations Or manual calling or manual okay, you've already led me right to where i wanted to go next. Well. Can i touch on this because i think timing's so important for the growth advisors too, because a lot of people will be like wait, there's only 11.

000. 12. 000 agents in all of northeast florida and you're, making that many calls with that many growth advisors, even with agents that agent, that might not be interested right now, three months later, timing is everything who knows what's going on, people are leads, the leads are people, it's All the same, it's all the same, so you might, you know, have that conversation that they might be open to 15 minutes of their time. Just to hear - and i don't think you know when we have 50 coming soon at all time - and we know about the properties that are hitting the market - it's not a bad thing to come in meet us understand what we do right.

We don't want to be. You know if we're not your destination now we just want to be the first person you consider when you do decide to make that move, which is a whole branding conversation which we'll talk about too. So, let's talk about see so just hiring it's boomtown and it's growth advisors and it's 9 to 11. Making phone calls trying to get to 30 appointments a day which is which is a big number calling texting.

Video texting going to events calling text, videos, onboarding and training through tranual plus sisu, because they've got the checklist in advance. Thank you guys. So much hey, listen, make sure you like share comment. Uh, you can follow.

If you just google, you'll, see they're everywhere right, whether you like it or not, if you click on something they will follow you around too, because they do all the same stuff. Yes, but thank you guys so much we'll see you soon. You.