Real Estate Team OS

Your customer is your North Star. They're the reason you're in business. They're the source of revenue and referrals.
 
You may have personal motivations and goals for yourself and your team, but none are achieved if you don’t attract the right people and deliver exceptional customer experience.

So how do you build a customer-centric culture, then sustain and protect it for years to come?

Go inside the company and culture that brings Real Estate Team OS to life every week!

Get warmed up for the Techtember series that kicks off next week!

Learn about tech, teams, customer centricity, and customer-led education with Follow Up Boss Co-Founder and CEO Dan Corkill!

Watch or listen to Ep 040 with Dan Corkill for insights into:

- Attracting agents, staff, and consumers alike to your experience by being thoughtful and intentional

- The self-enforcing dynamics of a strong company culture

- Ways to decide - as your business is growing - who to hire and when (in short: look for where the pain or bottleneck is)

- How Dan decided to focus and niche down to serve the real estate community 

- How the puzzle of online leads became an opportunity for teams and a problem to solve

- The big difference between AI and automation (and how both are useful)

- A quick preview of who and what is ahead in the Techtember series of this show

- Staying focused on your customer, not your product, by investing in customer-led education

For Dan’s responses to our three pairs of closing questions, check out this Fireside Chat at FUBCON 2023: https://youtu.be/ad-_sgeko6s?feature=shared&t=2315

Follow Up Boss:

- https://followupboss.com

Real Estate Team OS:
- https://www.realestateteamos.com/subscribe

- https://linktr.ee/realestateteamos

- https://www.instagram.com/realestateteamos/

In recent years, The Duncan Duo Team has been twice the size and done twice the transactions. Today, they’re in a healthy spot between a small SEAL team and a mega team - and Owner Andrew Duncan is back in, hands-on, every day.

Leadership changes. Marketing changes. Buyer agency changes. Andrew speaks to them all in this conversation. He shares how and why he’s serving as Sales President, diversifying revenue streams, and shifting agents to be more listing-based.

Be sure to listen for their shifts to a more listing-based business, including things “every smart real estate team leader” should be doing and how brokerages will operate more like car dealerships over the next five years.

Listen to Episode 039 with Andrew Duncan to learn:
- The path from top salesperson in a Fortune 500 company to a real estate agent who sold one house in his first year (kinda)
- Why building a team was necessary and why - years later - he chose to get hands-on “blow some things up” in the business
- Playing to your strengths and core competencies
- Their 12-month production goals as they sit between SEAL team and mega team
- How and why they’re shifting resources to help agents be more listing-based
- Why more teams and brokerages will look like car dealerships five years from today
- The origin and benefits of their Guaranteed Sale program
- Tips for profitably leveraging mass media and advertising
- Their leadership structure and his role as Sales President
- What he’s doing Monday-Friday from 9am-5pm
- Why teams will grow more aggressively over the next couple of years and why more agents should consider them

At the end, learn what the Lightning, Warriors, and Lakers have in common, the threshold for coupon code hunting, and next-level networking at real estate conferences and masterminds.

Connect with Andrew Duncan:
- https://www.instagram.com/theduncanduo/
- https://www.instagram.com/theandrewduncan/
- https://duovermovement.com/

Connect with Real Estate Team OS:
- https://www.realestateteamos.com/subscribe
- https://linktr.ee/realestateteamos
- https://www.instagram.com/realestateteamos/

An incredibly valuable part of your team operating system: the ISA function, your ISA team, and your Inside Sales Manager.
 
Here in Episode 38, Lisa Ryan, Director of Opportunities at Exquisite Properties LLC, an independent teamerage in San Antonio, Texas, shares her path from ISA and Inside Sales Manager into her current role.
 
You’ll learn how they build trusting partnerships with agents, how they compensate ISAs, which daily activities are expected, what metrics they track, how they manage handoffs to agents, when ISAs take opportunities back from agents, the role of AI in opportunity development, their training cadence for agents and ISAs, and much more!

Watch or listen to Episode 038 with Lisa Ryan to learn:
- The benefits of modeling behavior in-office and in-person

- The path in and out of ISA and Showing Assistant positions and why the ISA position isn’t “entry level”
- The language and mindset of opportunity
- Keys to a healthy agent-ISA relationship
- How they compensate ISAs on buyer and seller transactions and with bonuses and incentives

- Core activities in the role, including 1,000 calls per week

- How they manage handoffs from ISA to agent (and exactly when and why ISAs are empowered to take those opportunities back)

- Key metrics they pay attention to besides calls and appointments

- What their training schedule looks like

- The pros and cons of AI in lead engagement

At the end, you’ll hear about fantasy football, ramen noodles, family walks, and “adult cartoons.”

Connect with Lisa Ryan:
 - https://www.instagram.com/exquisitepropertiessa/

- https://www.tiktok.com/@isasofsa

- Email: Lisa @ ExquisiteSA . com

Connect with Real Estate Team OS:
 - https://www.realestateteamos.com/subscribe

- https://linktr.ee/realestateteamos

- https://www.instagram.com/realestateteamos/

Prospecting to set up listing appointments. 

It was foundational to a successful real estate business 30 years ago.
It remains so today.

Greg Harrelson got his start prospecting. And growth from appointment setter, to a small real estate team, to a teamerage with 9 offices and 5 markets in the Carolinas that closed nearly 4,000 transactions last year all happened through … prospecting for listings.

Greg, who prospects alongside his agents for 3 hours every day, describes his approach as “developing talent and amplifying wealth.” In this wide-ranging conversation, he welcomes us into the philosophy and practices behind his success.

Listen to this Real Estate Team OS episode with Greg Harrelson to learn:
 - The 3 must-have characteristics of your next real estate team member

- How to find the right coach, how to become more coachable, and why he’s always sought coaching

- The brokerage challenges from which teams emerged, how online buyer leads accelerated teams, and the future of real estate teams

- The four things every brokerage or team must provide (and what they all have in common)

- Why culture is more about agent retention than attraction

- How he built and then disbanded his real estate team

- Insights into acquiring agents, developing agents, and recruiting agents 

- The org structure for their 9-office, 5-market team and his place and role in it (including his 10-80-10 approach)

- What’s been lost in the real estate industry and how easy it is to correct (spoiler: talk to more people)

- Coaching an acquired agent from 40 transactions per year (mostly buyers) to 90 transactions per year (all listings)

- Why he’s coaching pricing presentations, price reduction presentations, and listing extension presentations “religiously” right now

- Very specific advice for the leader of a small real estate team

Connect with Greg Harrelson:

- https://realestatesalessolutions.com/agent-success-academy/

- https://www.facebook.com/groups/235977313258813

- https://www.instagram.com/gregharrelsonrealestate/

Connect with Real Estate Team OS:
- https://www.realestateteamos.com/subscribe

- https://linktr.ee/realestateteamos

- https://www.instagram.com/realestateteamos/

The future of your real estate team is agents working with AI. It's a human experience, not a bot experience. A well-equipped, tech-enabled agent becomes a cyborg.

But don’t confuse a cyborg for a robot. The former is simply a living organism augmented by an artificial component or technology.

So, a well-equipped human is a cyborg. For example: with a smartphone and a ton of texting shortcuts to save time or with a prompting process to write more personal emails or replies to reviews faster.

The future of real estate sales and services belongs to those moving in this direction.
 
Learn how and why - in a practical, approachable, no-hype way - with Taylor Hack, Owner of Hack&Co in Edmonton, Alberta.
 
Taylor shares why he built a team (but not a mega team), how guests of Real Estate Team OS like Veronica Figueroa, Justin Havre, and Kris Lindahl have helped him on his journey, how he’s leveraged his passion for marketing and technology, and specific ways he’s using AI to improve himself, his team members, and their results.

Get specific tips to increase speed and maintain quality in getting insights from spreadsheets, writing and replying to emails, responding to online reviews, and more!

Listen to Ep 036 with Taylor Hack for:

- A meaningful definition and clear benefits of synergy

- How high-end car sales, mortgages, and irritation helped him produce $1M in commission in his first 32 months in real estate

- Why he started his real estate team and how hard it is to learn to run a business

- Why his 10-person team is exactly the right size (and how to find your right size)

- Why “the future of real estate is cyborgs” delivering “awesome” and “now” five-star experiences

- How to find the balance of people and machines in your business (how to make sure clients can’t “see the wires” of your machines)

- How he learned about AI and a framework to better leverage Chat GPT (concluding with 3 critical questions)

- Places to turn for trustworthy AI guidance (a couple of links here: https://linktr.ee/taylorhack)

- Writing emails, replying to emails, and replying to reviews with AI

- The benefits of a voice paragraph (written by and for AI)

At the end, learn about earning a vintage 911, mowing the lawn, being present with dogs, and trading the two worst hours of your day for the two best.

Taylor Hack:

- https://www.instagram.com/taylorthehack/

- https://linktr.ee/taylorhack

- https://www.google.com/search?q=taylor+hack+follow+up+boss

- https://www.hackandco.ca/team-page

Real Estate Team OS:
- https://www.realestateteamos.com/subscribe

- https://linktr.ee/realestateteamos

- https://www.instagram.com/realestateteamos/

What’s the OS stand for in Real Estate Team OS?
 
Operating System!

So what exactly is in your real estate team operating system?

It’s everything backstage, behind the curtain, back of house, and behind the agent. It’s the people, processes, and technology we put into place to keep agents in dollar-productive activities and to add efficiency and scalability to our organization.

In this episode, you’ll hear about key elements of the operating systems of 7 different team leaders and teamerage owners from New Jersey, Virginia, and Florida over to Colorado, Arizona, and Texas.
 
Specifically, we asked: What are one or two key people, processes, or technologies that you couldn’t have built your team without?

Watch or listen to Episode 035 of Real Estate Team OS for insights from:

Dave Ness
Founder of Thrive Real Estate Group, an independent teamerage in Denver, Colorado

• Two key roles: the integrator (which gets various titles) and a dedicated sales leader
• The importance and challenge of having these roles well-staffed
• The changing needs of your team over time

Micah Harper

CEO of Exquisite Properties, an independent teamerage in San Antonio, Texas

• Why his inside sales leader is titled Director of Opportunity 
• How a truly empowered ISA team operates
• What a healthy ISA-agent partnership looks like

Becky Garcia
Founder and CEO of The Garcia Group, a 99% female real estate organization in Phoenix, Arizona

• Two roles to save time and improve results: operations manager and personal assistant
• The challenge and benefits of migrating from one CRM to another
• Training agents to communicate and demonstrate the differences in and benefits to the consumer of how your team operates

Marcus Larrea

Founder and Team Lead at Palm Paradise Realty Group, an independent teamerage in southwest Florida

• First two hires: transaction coordinator (do-it-all ops person) and marketing
• Two key tools: Follow Up Boss and Cloud CMA (“best tool,” “best investment”)

Mercy Lugo-Struthers

CEO and Principal Broker at Casals, Realtors, in Northern Virginia

• Characteristics all staff and agents need to possess and how she evaluates them in the first 7 days and first 30 days
• A piece of tech that’s “the glue of the team”
• The benefits of an accountability partner like the Zillow Flex program

Joe Oz

Remote Team Leader of Joe Oz Real Estate Group in Montclair, New Jersey

• The benefits of investing in a team member and having them grow into their strengths
• Retention through compensation
• Getting saved from yourself

Abel Gilbert
Broker/Owner of ONEPATH Realty, an independent teamerage in Miami, Florida

• The constant change and evolution required in your operating system
• Maintaining your database and sales processes in one, central hub
• Seeing the future 60 to 90 days out and making changes accordingly

Connect with Dave Ness:
 https://www.instagram.com/thrivedenver/

Connect with Micah Harper:
 https://www.instagram.com/micahharper/

https://www.instagram.com/exquisitepropertiessa/

Connect with Becky Garcia:

- https://www.instagram.com/garciagroupaz/

Connect with Marcus Larrea:

- https://www.instagram.com/marcuslarrea/

- https://www.instagram.com/palmparadisegroupfl/

Connect with Mercy Lugo-Struthers:
- https://www.instagram.com/mercylugostruthersteam/

- https://www.instagram.com/mercylugostruthers/

Connect with Joe Oz:
- https://www.instagram.com/joeozrealestate/

Connect with Abel Gilbert:

- https://www.instagram.com/growwithabel/

- https://www.instagram.com/onepathrealty/

Connect with Real Estate Team OS:

- https://www.realestateteamos.com/subscribe

- https://linktr.ee/realestateteamos

- https://www.instagram.com/realestateteamos/

Our themes in this conversation include simplicity, ease of use, interconnectedness, complementarity, intention, unification, transparency, and holism.

Our topic is real estate tech stack in general and real estate CRM in particular.
 
 Our guest is Elena Kee, a real estate team ops leader turned real estate tech consultant. She’s the founder of Kee Technology Solutions, a 20-member team helping people get the most from their real estate tech. And it all began with a CRM migration project years ago.
 
 Elena’s worked with previous guests on the show like Lauren Bowen, Suneet Agarwal, and Nick McLean and joins us to share common challenges, top tips, and practical approaches for agents and teams to solve business problems and capitalize on business opportunities by working from one, central hub.

Watch or listen to Ep 034 with Elena Kee to learn:

- How a CRM migration project unlocked her path in the real estate industry

- How to identify great ops people - including the 3 specific assessments she uses with TestGorilla (https://www.testgorilla.com/)

- One of the most common problems she finds in real estate tech stacks

- Two things that top teams are working on right now from a CRM perspective

- Why leads and lead sources aren’t your real problem as an agent or a team

- A process to improve your CRM workflow, from smart lists to reporting to transparency to notes to automations

- How many stages and tags are too many - and how to land at the right amount

- What agents do and don’t need to know about how your CRM is set up

- Trends she’s seeing in real estate teams

At the end, learn about starting a gigging band, saving on paper towels, hiring a content “ingester,” and getting cozy with video games.

Connect with Elena Kee:
 - https://keetechnology.com/
- https://www.youtube.com/@ElenaKee/playlists

Real Estate Team OS guests mentioned in this episode:

- Lauren Bowen https://www.realestateteamos.com/episode/lauren-bowen-robert-slack-coo-lead-sources-team-leaders

- Suneet Agarwal https://www.realestateteamos.com/episode/suneet-agarwal-real-estate-agent-recruiting-reside

- Nick McLean https://www.realestateteamos.com/episode/real-estate-team-onboarding-training-differentiators-nick-mclean

Connect with Real Estate Team OS:

- https://www.realestateteamos.com/subscribe

- https://linktr.ee/realestateteamos

- https://www.instagram.com/realestateteamos/

As we’ve heard on episodes of Real Estate Team OS with guests like Tom Ferry and Chris Heller, the roots of the real estate team business model are more than 30 years deep.
 
 But we’re still just getting started!
 
 Spend time with seven pioneers of teams and teamerages from New Jersey, Virginia, and Florida to Colorado, Arizona, and Texas.
 
 Each answers these three questions:
 
 1 When did the team model come onto your radar? When did you first learn about it?
 
 2 Why did you commit to the model as a team leader or brokerage owner?
 
 3 What’s the future of teams? Will they continue to play a bigger or more dominant role in the industry?

Watch or listen to Episode 033 of Real Estate Team OS with:
 
Micah Harper, CEO of Exquisite Properties, an independent teamerage in San Antonio, Texas

• Creating a team by solving his own challenges as a high-performing solo agent
• Why traditional brokerages are losing value
• Asking important questions about the future of teams

Dave Ness, Founder of Thrive Real Estate Group, an independent teamerage in Denver, Colorado

• Why he started a teamerage, homegrown from day one, a decade ago
• Why they’re so prescriptive for the first 3 years with team agents
• What level of production is required to be a true real estate advisor

Mercy Lugo-Struthers, CEO and Principal Broker at Casals, Realtors, in Northern Virginia

• How an “awakening of possibilities” occurred and drove her team
• Two takeaways from the Workman Success Systems research on teams (download it here: https://workmansuccess.com/teams-report/)
• How the team helps agents manage one of their biggest challenges

Abel Gilbert, Broker/Owner of ONEPATH Realty, an independent teamerage in Miami, Florida

• What role human experience plays in the real estate industry
• Why agent count is a superficial number
• Why independent teamerages with great culture and optimized per-agent productivity will dominate the future

Becky Garcia, Founder and CEO of The Garcia Group, a 99% female real estate organization in Phoenix, Arizona

• How she grew her team to 30 agents and 9 staff members
• How she transitioned a team started in an REO market through a major shift
• Which signs and trends suggest that teams will continue to grow in importance 

Joe Oz, remote Team Leader of Joe Oz Real Estate Group in Montclair, New Jersey

• The role of Gary Keller’s The Millionaire Real Estate Agent and mega agent model
• The spark for starting his own team
• How he’s transitioned to a remote team (operating a NJ-based team from Orange County, CA)

Marcus Larrea, Founder and Team Lead at Palm Paradise Realty Group, an independent teamerage in southwest Florida

• Why the need for a team became immediately clear to him when he entered the industry
• What the consequences are of the “Uberization” of society
• Why team production will continue to grow in the years ahead

Connect with Micah Harper:
- https://www.instagram.com/micahharper/

- https://www.instagram.com/exquisitepropertiessa/

Connect with Dave Ness:
- https://www.instagram.com/thrivedenver/

Connect with Mercy Lugo-Struthers:
- https://www.instagram.com/mercylugostruthersteam/

- https://www.instagram.com/mercylugostruthers/

Connect with Abel Gilbert:

- https://www.instagram.com/growwithabel/

- https://www.instagram.com/onepathrealty/

Connect with Becky Garcia:

- https://www.instagram.com/garciagroupaz/

Connect with Joe Oz:
- https://www.instagram.com/joeozrealestate/

Connect with Marcus Larrea:

- https://www.instagram.com/marcuslarrea/

- https://www.instagram.com/palmparadisegroupfl/

Connect with Real Estate Team OS:

- https://www.realestateteamos.com/subscribe

- https://linktr.ee/realestateteamos

- https://www.instagram.com/realestateteamos/

The most common problem with corporate training and education, including real estate training, is its classroom-style, content-based, and lecture-based approach.

We tend to pile on more modules, courses, topics, and information, rather than focusing very specifically on closing a skills gap.

We often toss new agents into “sink or swim” situations, rather than supporting them in their roles.

We tell them what to do over and over, rather than create a valuable learning experience.

It’s exhausting, ineffective, and unkind. And it’s more work than you, your leaders, managers, staff, and agents should be doing.

If you want better results with greater efficiency, you need to see or hear Carmen Morin. The fractional Chief Learning Officer with the #1 eXp Realty team in the world, Carmen shares with you the performance-based approach to education and training.

She's an instructional design strategist, an award-winning classical pianist, and an entrepreneur who's partnered with Justin Havre and Jon Cheplak on https://AgentDevelopment.com.

Here in this episode, you’ll learn to set the right goal or outcome for your teaching programs, to develop skills, behaviors, and mindsets rather than knowledge alone, and to come alongside your agents just as teachers and mentors have done for millennia.

The result: a more efficient and streamlined approach to developing foundational skills that produce performance and results.

Watch or listen to this episode of Real Estate Team OS for Carmen’s insights into:
- All knowledge, skills, behavior, and mindset can be learned through focused and intentional training (90% nurture, 10% nature)
- “Teaching as the mother of all leadership” and where we went astray
- Transitioning your training to performance-based and learner-centered rather than content-based and content-centered
- The importance of constant feedback and a sense of autonomy throughout the entire learning experience
- How the solo, self-directed nature of real estate affects the way it should be taught, trained, and coached (think: more like golf or tennis than like basketball or hockey)
- Key differences between teaching children and teaching adults
- The sales successes, cost savings, and cultural benefits of the beta cycle of their 90-day, foundational training program
- What types of training to deliver live vs written or recorded
- Why your revamped training system is built around and cycles back to foundational skills
- Advice for someone who wants to take a performance-based approach (whether agent, team leader, or brokerage owner)
- How the habits to shape skills in arts and music benefit you in a professional pursuit like real estate

At the end, learn about Beyond Real Estate, (nearly) empty gas tanks, and resting in an active, multidisciplinary way.

Check out the training program for solo agents, teams, and brokerages:
- https://www.agentdevelopment.com/

Connect with Carmen Morin:
- https://carmenmorin.com
- https://www.instagram.com/carmenmorin.co/

Check out The Justin Havre Real Estate Team:
- https://www.justinhavre.com/

Connect with Real Estate Team OS:
- https://www.instagram.com/realestateteamos/
- https://www.realestateteamos.com
- https://linktr.ee/realestateteamos
 

Taking two steps forward might require taking one step back. In other words, growth doesn’t always look like growth.
 
 In this conversation with Marcus Larrea, Co-Founder of Stellar Medical and Founder and Team Leader of Palm Paradise Realty Group, you’ll get a few very specific examples - including ways he protected agents, clients, and staff by creating and communicating calm even amid chaos.

Marcus shares several marketing and operations ideas that he learned through R&D - which means “rip off and deploy” as much as research and development.

Gamifying standards and performance, improving every agent’s social media presence, more effectively leveraging your first hire - get all that and more here in Episode 031, which we recorded together in person at the Pendry in San Diego.

Listen to this episode of Real Estate Team OS to learn with Marcus:

- Ways to create a competitive edge

- The path from co-founder of an FDA-certified medical device manufacturer, to licensed agent, to team leader

- Why “swiping a credit card” to buy online leads and reinvesting 100% of commissions back into more leads worked for him but wouldn’t work today

- Why he committed to the team business model and how it helps clients and agents alike

- Who his first two hires were and how they provided a foundation for the team

- Their process for the team and their agents to produce more social media engagement

- PARADISE as core values

- How to protect your staff, agents, and clients from chaos and why “what you don’t know doesn’t hurt you, as long as it doesn’t affect you”

- How he ramped down personal production to commit to a leadership role

- Why “growth doesn’t always look like growth” and three examples of taking a step back before moving forward again

- How they gamify team standards and create more agent success

- A few systems and tools that have been critical to their success - from SOPs to Cloud CMA

At the end, Marcus talks Florida Gators and travel soccer, an underused VR headset and an indulgent “shoe thing,” and work as a series of sprints then anticipated breaks.

Connect with Palm Paradise Realty Group:
- https://palmparadiserealty.com/
- https://www.instagram.com/palmparadisegroupfl/

Learn more about Real Estate Team OS:
- https://www.realestateteamos.com

- https://linktr.ee/realestateteamos

Follow Real Estate Team OS:
- https://www.instagram.com/realestateteamos/

- https://www.tiktok.com/@realestateteamos