[00:00:01] What's up, everyone?
[00:00:02] We are back track a had their difficulties and track B just had their difficulties. Now I'm pretty sure Track B's downtime was less than trackways. So we're going to we're going to take that as a badge. We got Doug coming in and I am very excited about this one. So we got it figured out. Doug, I'm going to bring you on.
[00:00:26] What's up, doc, we've got to I hear you now. How's it going?
[00:00:29] What's happening, everybody? I'm good. Colorado's selling same.
[00:00:34] I think everything just got way too excited to have you come on to this and you guys do such massive transaction volume that I think it just crapped out our system for a sec.
[00:00:45] So I think I broke the Internet. All right.
[00:00:47] And then you broke the law in Colorado.
[00:00:52] Give us a little background for those of us that don't know and what you guys do for sure.
[00:00:58] So we're an independent brokerage, long history in real estate. Our CEO has been on the brink of tech and real estate for 20 plus years. He he was a founder and zipRealty, which was one of the first to do X and actually put listings on the Web, which was highly controversial then.
[00:01:18] But obviously is standard practice now. Moving to Colorado was under Remax, had a good run there. We started a website that before 07 of those high traffic website in Colorado for Fast Forward in 2009 and 2010, we started a Z. Real estate has been a great run. We started with about 30 agents and and now we are we're at one eighty seven as of this morning. And we just crossed a billion for the third year in a row on volume and transaction wise, as I pull up my Sisu, we just went over two thousand transactions on the year twenty forty two to be exact. So it's been a strong run and and we're not stopping here. We got the lofty goals here in the future.
[00:02:08] I could see those two dashboards real quick.
[00:02:12] You want me to share my screen? Are you game with that. Yeah, I can. I can certainly do that.
[00:02:20] Let's see here on the green share and then give you the option.
[00:02:27] I don't know if I know what a billion with a B. looks like in our system yet. I want to bring this.
[00:02:34] All right. Are we seeing my screen or seeing it right on? So there's our close to this year or Bycel next month, a day or fifty seven transactions already the 7th, but we're projected to go to three hundred twenty seven, which would be a record for us in October. And see that volume. One hundred fifty mil, one hundred sixty one on the projected to be our fourth month over one hundred fifty.
[00:03:05] And right there you can see one point two million. That's actually what we closed out last year. So we're going to be dialed by a little bit this year and obviously we've got two months left to do it.
[00:03:17] So there it is, folks. I love it.
[00:03:21] I had to see that.
[00:03:22] And one of the things I think it's cool, you guys are huge, but you've scaled very well. So you definitely a brokerage, but you maintain a high per agent productivity. And and a lot of ways people would say, OK, well, they do a lot of things that brokerages typically struggle with, that teams are better at. It kind of does, does it? All right. And what we wanted to talk about today was, was that and how you're looking to scale. What would you say your goal was? 30 Sydes, an agent. Twenty twenty one.
[00:03:55] We're going to average 30 transactions per agent by twenty twenty two. So we've got a little bit of time. We're currently we're at twenty two point eight in twenty nineteen. Anxious to see how twenty twenty takes out. It was a little worried. It's been an interesting year, but I think things are going to shake out pretty well in this year. But obviously we've got to do a lot of things. Well, for that to happen, we have to create a ton of efficiencies in. And you mean you said that our mindset is to operate like the highest efficiency teams. I'm in a lot of real estate circles where you see super high efficiency teams, forty, fifty transactions per agent and that's per license. I want to be clear. We don't we don't mess with that is individual agent needs to do their average service to someone we do in twenty five. So we do a fifty. But you got to operate at a really high level like you see those teams do it and then figure out how you sell that.
[00:04:59] Yep. So what do you think that is. I mean for you guys, is it training, is it the structure and hierarchy of how your brokerage is the foundation of it? What are some of those factors?
[00:05:14] It's certainly a combo of the less self. I mean, it starts with that mentality, right? That is our mindset that we do not make decisions that are going to allow us to help create efficiencies and allow our agents to get to get to that thirty transactions per year. But I think the biggest factors for me is who's on your bus. Right? So it's picking the right people and then and then arming them. So training. Absolutely. Furthermore, supporting them in their business. I think one of the biggest mistakes is made in real estate is, hey, you join my team. Best of luck. Like, here's a bunch of tools and stuff you can work with and let's see how you do like that. Just doesn't do it for me. Like you need to you need to set goals for your people. And furthermore, they need to set goals for themselves. But you don't measure against those goals and be accountable to those goals and move the needle based on how that's going on at least a monthly basis basis, if not more. So those are my keys to how you get that done.
[00:06:20] Yeah, I think a lot of team solo agents alone and teams of four in very small organizations, they struggle to get that kind of monthly performance data even. Right. You start talking, OK, I want daily performance data so I can coach on a daily basis. Right. And that's obviously maybe talk a little bit here about the old system. You guys had the move to Sisu because I think that could be really valuable to talk about.
[00:06:46] Absolutely. I'll start with you. Got to you can change anything that you don't measure. So if you're not measuring it, you might be really good or you might be an awesome realtor and you're awesome at transacting and helping people buy and sell. But you ultimately want to become a business owner, not just an agent. So you have to measure your key performance indicators to get to there. And we always have. And quite frankly, in 2009, there wasn't four billion dollars in tax money coming into the industry. But we knew we wanted to measure things. So we started we built a simple system. Well, I say simple. That was pretty complex, actually, and incredible when we broke it was a system that measured all the data in and pumped out our eyes on a monthly, it was actually real time. It would update every 15 minutes to let agents know where they were at and then we would coscia our agents different levels of coaching, whether it was an actual coach, team leader beyond myself would coach them at different times, whether it be quarterly, monthly or on a weekly basis to let them know where they're at, their goals, do their goals need adjusted, what can they change to give to their goals, all that stuff.
[00:08:05] So fast forward to about a year ago, Zagazig, that's when you and I started talking. It was like, OK, I've got this old antiquated system. I can't move it fast. I can't measure the new things that I want to measure. I'm going to have to spend probably hundreds of thousands of dollars in development to get it to where I want it. And I've got this product right here off the shelf that does all that for you. Furthermore, I've got a development team. Tell me what you want to measure or measure it. And that's where we are today. And honestly, my CEO, I been in touch and real estate for 20 plus years and he said Sisu is the best thing since Netflix and the team before that start business. We're so much forward. We were really forward thinking and forward measuring before, but it set a whole new level was Sisu and we were moving faster than we ever have at one hundred and eighty agents, at fourteen different teams that we're doing things that, quite frankly, I didn't know if they were possible. And that seems to fighting a system that aligns with our goals and helps us measure what we want to measure quickly.
[00:09:18] Yeah, I think it's interesting, you know, growing from wherever you were at two thousand nine to basically world domination here in twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty one. Right. But that took probably hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in analytics and numbers and KPIs, because that's what takes you from a good salesperson to a business owner and really an entrepreneur is really knowing those numbers. And it paid off. Right. Put Sisu out of the equation. The old system worked and it paid off and it gave you guys a lot of what you needed to do to grow. Am I wrong?
[00:09:57] No, you're absolutely right. You're talking about data collection. And making sure your data is good is one thing because you can't measure against past half measures. You can't take data that isn't good. So it's all about how are you collecting your data? And then furthermore, how are you going to display it? How are you going to show it? How are you going to coast to it and use it leveraging to make sure your team is better?
[00:10:22] And and that in itself to hundreds of thousand employees, developers, people that write code, all that stuff.
[00:10:34] And I can leverage Sisu, save thousands of dollars and do it better than I was doing it. So to see that twenty, nineteen, twenty twenty has been a pretty good year, even with everything we've dealt with, it would be an understatement.
[00:10:47] Yeah, I love it man. So so going back to this, you have a pretty impressive per agent production already right. In twenty, twenty to thirty, thirty eight thirty per license with what are you probably two hundred agents somewhere around there. Or more maybe. Yeah. In the ballpark. What, what's the game plan there. I mean maybe you're still putting that together but is it, is it scale and more of what you're doing or do you have something or some place you want to get maybe with your systems.
[00:11:21] Yeah. It's funny right. Because twenty, twenty two is just around the corner. So I'll start with the team first. Right. We've been developing and building this team, but I'd say we're kind of in I'll use a baseball analogy since it's the playoffs. But we're in this, we're kind of in spring training mode. We need to really lock in because I know I'm not here to argue with real estate. Business model is best, but we're I don't care about how many people I have in the seats. I care about having the right people in the seats. So it's all about cooling the herd and getting this super high performance team dialed in and holding them accountable to measures. We have a minimum standards in place. If you don't do ten transactions at a Z in a calendar year, you don't say we find a better home for you. So I'd say it's dialing in that team first.
[00:12:11] And then one would think that those numbers, certain things happen, right? Year over year, you hit your numbers consistently. You actually grow with the brokerage, right?
[00:12:20] Absolutely. I mean, if you can find somebody, that means your minimum standard. What I found and what you will find if you measure it is that they will they will grow progressively and some of them will grow from 10 to 30 in one year. But the natural progression is 10, 15, 20. Twenty five, obviously not in in that exact amount. But you find somebody that can do the job and can hit that minimum standard and good things happen.
[00:12:48] Very cool.
[00:12:50] So when you talk about team and putting the right people in place, there's there's agents, there's agents who become team leaders and there's administrative staff as well like yourself. You're obviously part of that. What I mean, what should people be looking at there as far as maybe the agent side and the admin side?
[00:13:08] Yeah, I mean, you yeah. I'm going to use a trigger word in culture. And it's so tough because here we are. We have a culture and we have our our core values on our wall, the digital cultural culture actually live. Do you make decisions by your culture? And a lot of the times people say a culture and performance performance is part of our culture. High performance is a part of our culture. So as we're measuring agents on their KPIs, we're measuring every single person. Now, I have my own KPIs that I have to answer to to really be clear about where you want to go and what you want to do if you haven't read it. Jim Collins, who go and get some degree in billable hours in your in your back pocket and and then really understand who you want to be and how you're going to get there and then measure towards that so you can move the needle. Those are the really key components. And then if I come back to real estate and come back to all of these technology just thrown at us and what you do and just decide to use and not use and so on and so forth, like what questions you always want to answer for me is how do I create more time for my agents to be in sales? Internet Leegin is a really important part of our business.
[00:14:32] For example, I leverage ISA's so my agents are now transacting, not prospecting. They're going to frustrate their sphere, but I have a whole system in place to help them prostrate their sphere, to leverage them to have more sales time, because the only way we're going to move the needle is to allow them more time. How can I cut down the time they spend from under contract to closing with transaction management? How can I spend the time for prospecting with an estate team or leveraging a technology that helps with the team? How can I give them real time goals and help them measure to that and make that efficient? So it's not something that they think about. It's there as a tool. They can have a the tip of their fingers and look at whenever they need it.
[00:15:18] Sisu, there are so many examples of how you do this one in business and it's literally how do I save hours? How do I say minutes to help when I have an elite team in place? It's only going to help them sell more real estate. It's paradoxical to them because they're going to do it more efficiently and feel like they're working less when they're actually doing more production.
[00:15:42] I love it already that any team leader or director of Ops or you name it when you're on the administrative side of things, that's I think in a lot of ways the biggest value you can add for for your team.
[00:15:56] Yeah, I mean, I'll knock on wood, but retention is not an issue for us right now and really hasn't been historically. And because we that is perceived as value and it is value and they'll never leave you if you are creating all these efficiencies for them.
[00:16:15] And furthermore, it's invaluable to them from what you charge them standpoint. So it's a win win and it's it's definitely a two fer.
[00:16:27] A couple other things. Just just No. One, easy in the way they operate. Maybe talk a little bit about what you measure with your agents because you have kind of a unique set of KPIs that you actually measure that I think have played into your success for sure.
[00:16:47] So obviously, transactions and volume are paramount. We also we measure average commission on what you can get a raise. Don't put yourself if you're not a discount broker, don't play that game like earn your commission move. You move the needle on your commissions, give yourself an automatic raise.
[00:17:10] Even if I as an agent, I'm worried about either my split or I'm worried about the amalgamation I'm getting. Well, are you going to focus? Because there are ways that that can be their scripts you can use there to make sure you get that full commission?
[00:17:22] Yeah, absolutely. We're a tier structure. So our agents are anywhere. They're on a tier of 60 40 all the way up to 80, 20. How do you get to your next tier, whatever you are and how are you going to get to that next level? And it's all predicated upon their volume. So those are measured in conjunction, but that's a really important measurement for them. And then we have partners. So it's important in any broker owners out there right now, this should speak volumes to them because this is cool. This is a low this is a low margin business. So how do you create better margins? Well, when you are a high producing team, which I think most of Sisu users are, in my experience, people that are using Sisu are good at selling real estate.
[00:18:12] How can you create other revenue streams? How do you create a more revenue stream title revenue stream insurance revenue stream rentals, a revenue stream and then help your agents?
[00:18:28] Because all that stuff will feed the animal and allow you to do more for your agents. You create more efficiencies and then measure that how how you got it. You have a mortgage partner. But how how what's your conversion ratio with them or how many buyside deals are they getting the mortgage on? Really be real with yourself and Challenger agents and yourself to move the needle on that and get more get more cash so that you can add more fuel to the fire and do more things. That's another thing we measure now. I'm going to jump over to my sister's. I can see which ones I'm missing as far as real. CPI's obviously buy sell mix. That's a huge one. And we don't have buyer's agent Specialisterne listing specialists. All of our agents can do their own. But that's something that we really measure. And I'm just going to pull up the dashboard. Hopefully I figure I'll pick one that I know is doing really well. So. So, Dan, a little background on Dan. Dan is not only he's a team leader, he's a coach within the organization. And he he performs with his own personal business. So he's got a lot going on. And so really important person for me to create efficiencies for my days are a little off.
[00:19:55] But this is good enough because I can see one hundred contracts are huge. But you can see some of the things we really measure of on Open House is that goes without saying in person real estate reviews you. I firmly believe this business is all about drawing your database. So I want to know how many people are in a database. And I set the bar at two hundred being the bare minimum. But I see you have your database. How many personal? I look at real estate agents as well as a financial planner. They are. You are helping people with their real estate portfolio. So one thing we always do is real estate reviews to how these are drivers. And all it is, is an assessment of somebody's portfolio one time here. But these these are gold. If I had one tool that I would pay for my agents that's being seized, some of the things we measure here, they're not out of the realm of things that you guys measure. Some of them are personal. Are you doing your affirmations or are you doing your gratitudes dann's a little behind. I know he's been he's done like 10 transactions for the last two months or so, and that's what this is measuring.
[00:21:00] So it might not look great for him, but that's the type of things that we know how the agents get to where they want to be. Those are copies, all of it.
[00:21:13] And on the partner site is so cool that you guys do, too, because it just gives you more room to play. It gives you more room to to you whether that's offering splits or whether that's just, you know, maybe you're negative on links, but because you're capturing mortgage, you're actually positive on it, you know what I'm saying?
[00:21:31] So it completely changes the metrics on these sources, because if you're in mortgage as well and you you own part of that, I'll just say the economics are fruitful and it really changes and how you can leverage your money to get more leads into your system and build databases even more.
[00:21:53] Call Doug, appreciate you hopping on anything else you want to leave us with before before we hop off and hop on our next guest.
[00:22:01] If you're not using Sisu already use it because you need to measure your business to sulick for it to truly be a business. Guys, I'm an open book. You can find me on a com if you have any questions Sisu related or otherwise, I'm happy to talk to you about it. I love this stuff. I'm passionate about it. But you use this system, it will change your business. And I know this is a shameless plug, but it's true. You guys have helped us.
[00:22:30] I'm not even paying you for that.
[00:22:32] But we haven't done one hundred fifty million dollars haul. AT&T and Sisu is a direct reason why we're way past that hole and back on track to our original business plan. At the beginning of the year, we literally digitally rolled that thing up and threw it in the trash. Why do you find it? Because we're back on track and that wouldn't have been possible without Sisu.
[00:22:59] So you guys set goals, measure against them, use this system to help your team get better and know what their goals are and where they're at against them and what they need to change to get there.
[00:23:13] Say and thanks for hopping on, love seeing that billion with a B on your dashboards. And we'll we're going to take a quick two or three minute break here and then we'll bring Mike Novak on who is well, there's been a lot of hype around this presentation he did a little while back about the showing partner model. We're going to go deep in that. Give us just a few minutes and we'll be live back here on the stream thanks to.
