Kevin Flaherty has been in the real estate business for 33 years. He was a solo agent for a very long time and used to build custom web pages for homes in the ’90s. When MLS listings went online, he was already ahead of the curve. He thought of ways to further improve web pages by adding plans and videos with narration.
He then ran a team under iPro Realty Ltd. Brokerage for the past 11 years where he was the overall number one top producer for 10 straight years. Here, he offered cutting-edge real estate marketing to help sell homes.
Today, Kevin Flaherty is a Real Estate Broker at eXp Realty where he continues to provide clients his decades of experience, advanced marketing technologies, and direct exposure to thousands of successful real estate transactions.
In this episode, we discussed his high-end marketing model, his views on what the ideal real estate team structure should look like, and all the things he loves about Sisu.
Top Takeaways:
02:17 How does Video-narrated 3D animated online showing work?
11:34 What motivated Kevin to make the move to eXp Realty
15:13 One of the biggest misconceptions about eXp
18:26 How Kevin structured his team
22:35 How to get agents to do the activities they should be doing
23:59 How technology makes the hiring process more efficient
28:37 How does a team owner get their agents to focus on selling real estate
31:12 Kevin’s advice on how to get an ISA team up and functioning successfully
34:01 Why Kevin highly recommends Sisu
35:02 What every top producer should know
35:43 The enormous mistake that led him to find Sisu
38:18 What Kevin loves about Sisu
To get in touch with Kevin Flaherty, go to www.flaherty.ca. You can also email him at kevin@flaherty.ca or call 226-916-0595.
Podcast Transcript:
Brian Charlesworth 0:34
Alrighty, Hello, everyone. And welcome back to another week and another episode of the Grit podcast. I'm Brian Charlesworth, your founder of Sisu and your host of the show, and today I have a special guest with me, I got to meet him for the first time just a few minutes ago, even though Kevin is a longtime customer, and an affiliate of Sisu. So Kevin Flaherty is on the show with me today. Kevin runs a team out of Canada. I know he's very influential up there just based on my experience what I've got to see the impact he's had on our business. So thank you for that, Kevin.
Kevin Flaherty 1:11
Thanks for having me, bro.
Brian Charlesworth 1:12
And from what I've seen, Kevin, you run your business quite a bit different than maybe most, maybe your typical team here. So I'm really excited to dig in today and learn more about that.
Kevin Flaherty 1:22
Sure.
Brian Charlesworth 1:23
Is there anything you want to add to that?
Kevin Flaherty 1:25
Well, yeah, it's certainly different. I don't know how much better it is certainly better for the consumer. I don't know a lot of realtors I've met you know, my model would be very easy to duplicate. But I haven't seen anybody actually do it yet. And I think it has to do with you know what you have left in your pocket at the end of the day. So my model is more about providing high-end marketing, which goes far beyond what you know, realtors typically think about as high-end marketing. So I have nine salaried staff. Three of those are ISAs. And the other ones are pretty much you know when I've met, but the other ones is they all work together. And they're all basically production-related. in providing more exposure, we do that through a variety of skill sets. For the most part in technologies, we produce something called a video narrated 3d animated online showing. And essentially what it is, is, we literally build, unlike these scan things that have all kinds of challenges, and we literally build each house, we list in a virtual environment that is so accurate, you could take a picture of our virtual environment, and it would pass as a picture of the house with no furniture. And
Brian Charlesworth 2:43
Is this a technology you developed?
Kevin Flaherty 2:46
Well, I wouldn't say we developed it, it's I mean, I got the skill sets on my team to build 3d environments of this nature and do it in a fairly quick way. So when I say that, I mean, we have very powerful computers, we actually have our own render farm to help keep the cost down. Because rendering in this level of detail is extremely taxing. We used to use big render farms, but it was literally cost-prohibitive to do that. So we built our own render farm. So we have the skill sets to produce these. And once we produce the virtual environment, we can then move around and it narrated, what I learned over the years is buying is kind of a two-step process, they walk into a home and they try to imagine all of the furniture out and themselves in kind of like the way they're going to get it when they show up on closing day turn the key, then they open the door, that's what they're gonna get. They try to imagine that during the showing, and a lot of people are not very good at it. In my experience, so the in my respectful opinion, and I know a lot of realtors will argue this the best way to show homes is vacant, the rooms are bigger, they seem better, it's more open, they can see what they're actually getting. And they can imagine themselves into the home as well. So what happens throughout the course of our video narrative 3d animated online showing is it shows the rooms all vacant first. Now through surveys and feedback, we learned that people do want to see an actual real image. So what happens is we go into the 3d model showing the room vacant so they really feel where they are in the home so we could fly into they know exactly where they are in the home. That's another thing about this concept, you really know where you are. Then we show it vacant and we transition into a real image so it actually just looks like the furniture just fades in and appears and that's actually the real image while narrating all of the home’s key features and benefits in that area. Which by the way narration with I walked into your home and I said you know Brian, tell me to walk me through like I'm a buyer and tell me everything that you know you've put into the home or what makes the home special Or you would want a buyer to know, you'd be walking around your home probably for half an hour telling me about all kinds of things. And then if we broke that conversation down, you discover that a lot of things that you said, you could be standing in the home, and you would still not know the features. So in other words, someone could come to your home, and they wouldn't know, I have our 40 insulation, and I paid $5,000 to have that done. You know, I own the hot water on-demand heater, where 95% of everything else is a rented hot water tank. Yeah. And that was a $5,000 feature. So you would find these things stacked up to the point where what I'm saying is without narration, all of the features and benefits of the home can't possibly be sold. Does that make sense?
Brian Charlesworth 5:49
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, I don't know anybody else doing it to this level. In fact, I'm trying to imagine right now, Kevin what, like, I want to picture this, like, how do I, where can I go to see this?
Kevin Flaherty 6:02
Well, you could go to flaherty.ca/sellers, please, if you're a realtor, please don't be hitting all of the forms and testing and, and texting my, you know, inside sales reps, you will get a callback, you will be you know, so please don't do that. But you can go to flaherty.ca/sellers. Or you can go to flaherty.ca. And click there's two buttons. One says buyer, once the sellers click on sellers, and you can see, there's actually a video backstage tour of my office, they interview each employee for about 15-20 seconds who explain exactly what they do, shows how it's all put together. And there's some samples there of what we produce as well. Yeah.
Brian Charlesworth 6:44
Okay. So is this a common thing up in Canada? Or is this just a Kevin thing?
Kevin Flaherty 6:49
It's just a Kevin thing. I coached internationally for four years, I've traveled to all kinds of conferences, I can't find anybody doing this.
Brian Charlesworth 6:58
And so maybe we can back up a little bit. I'd love for everybody to get a better understanding of who you are. with you being in Canada, I, my guess is we don't have as many listeners up there as we do here in the US. So I know you've had a big impact on the business up there. Maybe you can give us a little history, how long you've been in the business? How you got into this business, that kind of stuff.
Kevin Flaherty 7:21
Yeah, I've been in the business for 33 years. And I've run a team for I guess, the past 11 years. So I was a solo agent. For a long time. I used to build custom web pages for homes. I was into technology in the 90s. I was building custom web pages for homes and the nice they didn't do anything for me back then. But I was still building him. Just it was just a hobby. Yeah, well, I was a realtor and I was building it. And I had kind of a techie guy back. I would know if I call myself tech guy anymore. But back then I certainly was. I could build websites, everything when you know, I wasn't past the personal computer was only five years into the commonly into homes back then. So MLS was not even online, you couldn't search MLS listings online, and I was building custom web pages. They didn't do much. But then suddenly, when MLS came online, these custom web pages I was building start, I started getting business from it right away, I was ahead of the curve. And then what I did next was I thought, well, how can I improve the custom web page? So I started doing flat floor plans first, then I started so what I was always looking for a way to differentiate myself, my competitors. So I thought, well, what else can I put into the content of this custom webpage for the home. And the next thing that I put in was narration. So I had, well sorry, a video. And it was really just kind of slideshow, and it made it different effects where you kind of wouldn't know it was a slideshow, it wouldn't be as obvious anyways. So then I overlaid narration into this video. So I just kind of had video with pictures, and then narration and then it evolved to video of the home with narration then it evolved to, I want a virtual environment to move around. And so I just kind of kept layering it all on over the years. And then literally, for the last, you know, 11 years we were producing which back in the day was It's nothing, I guess, how to produce a logo. nobody's doing it. We started producing video narrative 3d animated online showings and they were very, very powerful. So what happened was overly brief. I was the overall number one top producer company for 10 straight years. I just left the company recently but
Brian Charlesworth 9:43
Which company was that?
Kevin Flaherty 9:45
So I was with a company called IProRealty. And I was the overall top producer they had just over when I was there just over 1800 realtors, so I produced more than anyone in the company from sale standpoint for 10 straight years. And that was done by offering the services that no one else would offer, basically, marketing matters. And so what happened there was like in a normal market, or at least in Ontario, a normal market, which we aren't have been in for a while now, houses would both more than 50% of the homes would not sell during the currency, the listing, the average sale, when it's sold, would be two months on the market. That was normal. That was just normal. And so it was very easy. There were a lot of sellers wanting something done other than posting it on MLS, and 10 years ago, that's pretty much all there was just a handful of pictures and posting it on MLS. So we were offering, you know, syndicated to over 57 locations online, the line showing inside sales agents marketing the home to our database, data mining, predictive analytics, machine learning, we kind of put it all together as a package and when this is what we do to market the home, and we just by getting more listings, we just was able to do a lot more business.
Brian Charlesworth 11:18
Yeah. Okay. So I do want to dive in and learn about your business. It sounds like you were at IPro. You made a move. How long ago?
Kevin Flaherty 11:27
Actually, four months ago?
Brian Charlesworth 11:30
Oh only four months ago, okay.
Kevin Flaherty 11:32
Yeah, yeah.
Brian Charlesworth 11:34
Yeah, I believe you're already eXp now. Right?
Kevin Flaherty 11:36
Yeah, that's right. Yep.
Brian Charlesworth 11:38
Okay. So like, what was the decision-making process to make a move, like, you've been there for over 10 years? top producer?
Kevin Flaherty 11:46
Yep. So the motivation for me was basically, realtors were the ones who do the heavy lifting in real estate, were the ones that work in evenings, work all weekends, put up with all the complaints about somebody left the lights on or didn't close the doors, and were like, we're doing the heavy lifting in real estate. We're also the ones that pay for everything. So whatever office you're with the bricks and mortar, the management, the, you know, staff, we're the ones paying for all that. And the eXp comes along with a very disruptive model, disruptive from a model standpoint and a technology standpoint, but basically, they offer back ownership in the company revenue share. So for people that produce a lot, it's a very attractive model, in that instead of building someone else's saleable asset, your bill building your own, and the thing about it as well is the things realtors need to be successful is, well, primarily two things, they need someone to train them that is being successful now in this marketplace, and when I say that, I mean, if you're not making $500,000 a year in real estate, you have no business, pretending to teach somebody else how to be successful in the business, in my respectful opinion, in E XP, they have things called like on agents who make more than $500,000 a year essentially, it's a little more complex than that. But basically, they're making that plus. And those people are the people who train in eXp, and they're rewarded to train back. And the other thing people need, so they need somebody that's doing it successfully now to train them. And that's cost-prohibitive, well, when it's people who are successful, don't want to train. And so if you quote, new purchase coaching or something like that, it gets really, really expensive, fast. The other thing they need that that companies, in my opinion, don't provide is, well, I don't know that all companies don't provide this one, but they need the tools as well. So I use high-end CRM, I have actually, there's only two, but basically, both of them, but there would normally be very cost prohibitive to someone unless they were already successful in real estate. So you need the tools, and you need the training. And both are cost-prohibitive to someone starting out. And without those two things, it's really, really hard to start you can do it. Like I mean, I was in it for a long, long time before I like I was in it for basically two decades figuring it out, before I started a team and started doing it at a high level. But it doesn't need to take that long. If you have someone who's highly successful doing it now. And you have the tools and eXp gives that free. In addition, now you get ownership in the company revenue share for people you bring in like over the years, I brought all kinds of people into my companies and I mean, I didn't get rewarded for that unless they were maybe on my team and I was producing but I bring people into the company and you should recognize You're with a company, you should be passionate about it, you should recommend your company to anybody, but you don't get rewarded for that any eXp you do. And they have a disruptive technology being a cloud-based brokerage with a cloud-based environment. And one of the big misconceptions is you don't get an office, well, actually he eXp with the eXp, you actually get more office space and better office space than what agents probably have right now in more options. So that's a big misconception. But they have a cloud based model, that they have a technology called ver Bella. And it's a 3d environment where you can go into campus, go in and listen to lectures, but then go talk at somebody at the water cooler. So it's very immersive and with your avatar and that you can even walk into offices and look and see who's sitting at their desk and sit in and go in and talk to them if they're actually there. It's really like a campus. And this technology makes collaboration, really, really powerful. And unlike, you know, other brokerages that are independently owned and operated, the eXp is one big brokerage so I can connect with someone we're in. Last time I checked your 15 different countries, but we keep expanding. And so you end up with collaboration worldwide, essentially, in this environment, which is great for exposure and marketing phones as well. And learning. So disruptive model disruptive technology ownership in the company, lots of different layers as to why I made that move.
Brian Charlesworth 16:30
Awesome. So I've got to admit, this is the first time I've ever done a podcast interview with somebody in their boat. So
Kevin Flaherty 16:38
Yeah, yeah. I'm on vacation
Brian Charlesworth 16:40
Tell me about your boat. I'm dying to hear what lake are you on? Or where are you? But I get so lucky to get a podcast interview. You boat wherever you are.
Kevin Flaherty 16:51
Yeah, so I'm in Georgian Bay. I've stopped in at this town because it has good internet connection for one. It's called Killarney. It's at the north end of Georgian Bay. Georgian Bay is, well, I actually the Marina imat in Georgian Bay, which is at the south end is actually known as the world's largest freshwater Marina. This is in my while I here is not just my opinion, because I'm here. But I hear it's some of the best voting in the world. Like we have areas we can go into that. Well, you've heard 1000 Islands near Ottawa, yet, this is called 30,000 Islands, and you literally boat into 30,000 Islands. And it's just codes everywhere. And it's and it's massive one of the parks called massasauga Provincial Park. So it's just countless codes with nobody in them or around them. And there's not even cottagers, because it's a Provincial Park. It's just massive. So it's fabulous boating, we see bear swimming in the water and great fishing. And that's pretty cool.
Brian Charlesworth 17:52
That's awesome. Well, so how long are you on your boat? Is this like, are you on vacation right now? or?
Kevin Flaherty 17:58
Yeah, so we're on for five weeks. And I'm kind of working. I kind of know where the internet's decent. So I am working from the boat, but I have a team. So I mean, my team's looking after stuff while I'm gone. And yeah, okay.
Brian Charlesworth 18:12
Awesome. So congratulations, because I think it's amazing. The fact that you run a team, you're on your boat for five weeks, doing what you want to do. And I guess that's the benefits of having a team, right?
Kevin Flaherty 18:25
Yes. Yeah.
Brian Charlesworth 18:26
Let's talk about your team for a minute. Kevin, tell me about like, what what is the structure of it? I believe you have people on salary sales agents, is that right?
Kevin Flaherty 18:35
So the structure is basically I have production staff and all they do is you know, production and or administration. Then I have inside sales agents. These are realtors that are on salary, they don't step foot out of the office. And their entire job is they work shift work seven days a week, night and day is to convert leads that we have coming in. So instant response. And their job is to book appointments for what we call OSAs, or outside agents, outside sales agents on the team. So on my team, basically, it's structured like this, if you're a realtor on my team, if you're not signing up a contract, or showing a house, negotiating agreement, a purchase and sale you're not doing it so the team generates the leads, they convert the leads into appointments, they give the appointments to the realtors and the realtors are supposed to do their job. The concept is, in my opinion, the real estate market is kind of broken because and the failure rates really high. And it's really simple. It's understanding. If you were to look at if you did a time study on a on a single agent, realtor, and you followed him around for a month you would conclude I would put it and I've done informal surveys but between 70 and 80% of their time that they're spending at work is doing something that is not selling house It's it's not doing the activity that actually they get paid for. And the activities that they're doing, are trying to figure out marketing. They're trying to figure out graphics, they're trying to figure out video, they're trying to figure out websites, they're trying to figure out all kinds of things that they have no qualifications. Well, in some cases, you get realtors that do have qualifications in certain areas. But basically, in order to market properly, for example, you know, you can have a degree in marketing, but you don't know how to come up with a graphic, you don't know anything about video, you don't know anything about rendering 3d animation websites. So how do you in order to generate leads properly, you've got to have skill sets and all these different areas, and put it all together to start effectively generating leads? And then when you're spending all your time figuring that out, which is, you know, mind melt, they're probably gonna fall down because they don't have expertise in certain areas. But let's say they can get there and start generating leads. Now they have to service the lead service the client they got, and while they go service plant they got they can't be focusing on the marketing, or another big piece of it is they can't be focusing on nurturing the leads that come in. So there's a study done by MIT the query, lead generation MIT study, it'll come up. And basically what it says is, it wasn't specific to real estate, but it says, if you don't get back to a lead, and the first five minutes, the chances of converting that lead drop off exponentially, it's like 80%, of your chance of converting that lead is gone. And I actually don't even show it to my sales, because essentially, if you looked at it, you'd go well, there's no sense getting back to legs, I didn't call them the first five minutes. That's how powerful it is. So if an individual realtor can be successful, generating some sort of leads, and a lot of them find a lot of challenge in that and they end up buying leads and things like that, which is a horrible thing to do, then they just can't get back to it in time because they're focused on doing other things. And then once they experience a moderate level of success, it takes away time that they were putting into if they were generating lead and responding to lead in time they got business when they got business, they couldn't do that anymore. So they end up with this oscillating feast, famine, roller coaster scenario, trying to function themselves. It's when you put people in to fill these holes that things start leveling out that feast famine rollercoaster if that makes sense.
Brian Charlesworth 22:33
Yeah, definitely. So one of the things you talked about was these agents are spending 70% of their time not doing the activities they should be doing? How do you get them to do the activities they should be doing?
Kevin Flaherty 22:44
Well, I mean, if you're an individual agent, you're gonna have a hard time doing that. Yeah, like on my team, they don't aren't expected to do anything other than the activities that generate the money as an individual agent. How do you do that? Well, the eXp fills in a lot of holes into the broken model. In my respectful opinion, like I said, you have to have high-quality training and support. Like he even has tech support people that you can go to, you get the high-end training, instead of trying to figure it out yourself, you get a high-end training, you get given a tool. And if you have high-end tools, like most people will never discover why the CRM that costs 12,000 us a year or more that you got to sign a contract for, they'll never discover how powerful they are and the features like it does. There's a lot of automation built into that I still have staff doing it. But I still have a lot of automation built into that. If you don't have that everything is more work. So you've got to get the training, the tools, the support, to start leveling things out. And when you have that you can start relying more on the technology. That's still a challenge. But if you have some training and support, like, people don't know, secrets to even hiring, I can tell you if you're going to build a team, you need to know some well I can give you one, I'll give you a tip. I used to run an ad, get all kinds of people to apply. You get hundreds of applications that tell you nothing. And then you start doing interviews, and you start interviewing dozens of people. And you just basically ended up hiring a fresh and by the way, you can get into an interview and realize, Hey, you know what, I'm not hiring this person. But now it's like, how do I get out of this interview that I got to spend half an hour and be polite in. So it takes a lot of time to cover to find the gold nuggets in all of these applications. The best thing to do is there are technologies out there that are one way interviews and part of the application process is to take one answer 10 questions in a video format and you can go in and look Get the questions at a time best for you. And what it actually does is it allows you to interview you can interview 100 people, and you can do it very quickly, without and you'll find the gold nuggets in all those applications because you can you can do it more effectively if that
Brian Charlesworth 25:18
What is the technology you're using to do that?
Kevin Flaherty 25:31
Well, I use Sparkhire. But there's other programs out there that do the same thing. And with Sparkhire we formulate 10 questions, you put it into the applications, you're running an ad, you just go here, go here to apply, they can upload their right, I got a landing page, they upload the resume, and then they get the interview. But you could just if you don't know how to do that, you could just put the link right on the application or wherever you're running the ad and say go here and answer 10 questions. And that's your interview. And you will get through a lot more people that way. And you'll make a better hire that way. So if you get people coaching you telling you things like this, like I wish somebody had been coaching me and told me that I learned it from a buddy who's a CEO of a large company, but you discover it over time. But if you have somebody that's being successful now in real estate, they probably know how to build a team, they probably know how to be successful obviously. And that's something else the XP realty does, it creates an alignment with realtors, because they have a revenue share product that so my I'm successful if they're successful, so we don't have that in real estate. And the broken model is all I'll say, if you're in a company, even if your own company and the realtor sitting right to your right. That's your competitor. If you ask that realtor question, Hey, man, this stop sign Should I turn right or left? And he told you to go right to probably go left? And that's the answer, right? Because he's not going to tell you his intimate secrets on how to be successful because your competitor, NXP, there's an alignment created where everyone’s success builds their own success. And people that partner with me and eXp helped me to mentor them, they're going to be a lot more successful. Because I've already been down the road, I've already gone down all the wrong roads I've learned at all, and I'm doing it fairly well. So I probably have a pretty good idea of how to tell them to hire, whether it be hired or worried leads or how to convert the leads the appointment or getting higher quality leads different ads, I'm going to be able to help them with that. And I'm actually motivated to do it. Because the better they do, the better it is. And it covers this new. Most people will see it as just another brokerage. But it will come out soon enough that it's not just another brokerage because it's increasing geometrically, it's they had 20,000 realtors at the beginning of 2020. At the end of 2020. They had 40,000 realtors, I'd haven't heard the second-quarter results yet, but in the first quarter 2021, they got another 10,000 realtors, so they're on track in 2021 to double on top of their double. They're attracting realtors at a pace I don't believe is ever been seen before. And if someone's interested in that, then they can get in touch with me. And I'll tell them more about it. Okay,
Brian Charlesworth 28:25
So let's bounce back over to your team for a minute. Kevin. You were talking about agents spending time doing things they're not supposed to do? You answered that question for solo agents. But what about team owners? Like how does a team owner get their agents to do focus on the things that are generating or selling real estate? Right generating leads?
Kevin Flaherty 28:46
Okay, yeah. So that was fairly easy. So the answer is, they have to create a system where they're not expected to do anything other than that. So they're not expected to put up a sign put on a lockbox generate their own leads, they're not expected to talk to leads or, you know, work on converting leads, they're not expected to take pictures, all they do is service clients and everything else is done for them. that frees up an agent's time to focus on servicing the client, which the client ends up doing a lot better because the agent has nothing to do other than focus on them. And well, and one of the big things is, you know, people say, you know, I want to start a team and I just, you know, well, you have to be able to generate enough leads. If you're in production, fill up your own cup, and overflow it, fill up another cup. And until you can fill up all of those cups with enough business to support it. It'll never support it, people get frustrated and leave. So you have to know how to generate leads. You have to know how to train people to convert them which means you have to learn how to convert them yourself and If you can do that, it's really quite simple. If you're the guy with the appointments, to the point where you have so many appointments, you can't go on them. And even if you could go on them, you can't service the client, because you've got so many clients, if you're it sounds overly simple, but that's hard to accomplish. And the way you accomplish it is you have to generate leads, and you have to convert them be the guy with the appointments and realtors will come work for you because and they don't expect that that's what realtors actually want. They just want to do the activities that make the money, they don't want to get bogged down in all the technology, they're not even qualified to do the stuff that they're trying to do. Which is why it's so frustrating for them to figure all this stuff out. And the more automation, you can build into that process as a team leader, the better you're going to do. I know that sounds overly simplistic and obvious, but that's what it really comes down to.
Brian Charlesworth 30:57
So you talked about generating leads, you mentioned you have three ISAs most teams are now realizing I think they need to be generating leads a lot of these teams didn't have ISAs a year ago, two years ago, how long have you had your eye as a team? And what advice would you have for really getting an ISA team up and functioning successfully? Like who should they be calling? How do you manage that kind of stuff?
Kevin Flaherty 31:23
Alright, so basically, I started out with one ISA. And I remember, when I had one ISA, I had, I think either four or five realtors at that time. And in a span of one week without those realtors talking to each other. At least that's what they said. They all the realtors came to me and said, we cannot take any more appointments, we've got so many appointments, so many clients sign that we can't take any more. I don't give us any more postcards, I can't service what I've got. And what that meant was I needed more agents. But when you plug in more agents, then you don't have enough appointments anymore. So then I got a second dissect. And you get a second I say and now you're starting to run thin on agents again. And so you plug in more agents, and it just kind of grew itself to three is as I got a dozen realtors three, I say I got 22 on the team in total. But basically, I didn't really even plan to make it grow. I didn't have that vision like I'm supposed to have and other people you know, successful people have the vision I just kind of plugged the holes. Oh, no, I don't have enough is of power. Oh, I don't have enough leads now. Oh, I don't have enough agents now. And I just kind of kept plugging the holes. And when I kept plugging the holes, it just kind of grew its own life and kept getting bigger. Yeah. But how do you get there? I would I would, what you need is someone who's doing it now. It has a team now that has asase that appears to be doing it successfully, or is doing it successfully. And get that because that person will know how to tell you what to do. And that is how with the eXp, like, if you partner with me and eXp, then I'm going to show you all of that if you want to build a team, I'm gonna ask you what you want and show you how to accomplish what you want. But if you want to build a team, then obviously have the knowledge to do that. So you get somebody who's done it already. Who's being successful today, not somebody who has been successful in the past, somebody who is successful today, get that person to show you and the reality is they're not going to be motivated to do that. Unless you pay a lot of money. Or you align any eXp in a scenario where your success is their success.
Brian Charlesworth 33:52
Okay, so Kevin, you. You are I've been told now our top affiliate, many you've referred more people to see Sue than anybody else.
Kevin Flaherty 34:03
I didn't know that actually.
Brian Charlesworth 34:06
Yeah. Frank just share that with me. So I want to thank you for that, personally.
Kevin Flaherty 34:11
Thanks for the opportunity.
Brian Charlesworth 34:13
Like, how have you done that? Like, and why have you done that?
Kevin Flaherty 34:17
Well, first of all, let me just say, in all the little things in building a team, one of the things like I traveled North America, at least two times a year, going to real estate conferences, trying to look for new ways to bring more value to the consumers and how to build my team and do things more effectively. Part of that was getting to know the top producers I knew some of the top realtors in North America. Basically, they make me look like a rookie. And I would look at what they were doing and I discovered common denominators between all of the top producers and I just love coffee. Success. That's how I got where I am. One of the things I noticed is, every top producer knows his numbers. He knows his math, if you ask them what his conversion rate was, I mean, converting a lead from a lead to an appointment from an appointment, to showing up to the appointment from showing up to the appointment to signing the contract, to signing the contract to selling them a home. And closing it. They would know all of the percentages of what their conversion rates were, they would know how many leads they generated, they know where their their sources were, what generated those, all of that information was critical. And and by the way, this was a mistake I made for a long time I ignored it because I didn't want to get into the I didn't I just kind of eyeballed it, and when I need this, and I need that. And it was an enormous, enormous mistake. In fact, I can tell you, when I decided I have to fix this is I was kind of just busy plugging all the holes. And I discovered, and I didn't see it, a realtor on my team had gone out and gotten a pizza franchise and wasn't even working. Because remember, we do everything for them. But their conversion rates suck. They weren't like, and I wasn't even aware of it. For months before I picked up on it was months, before I picked up on what was happening. Like I mean, and I didn't see it, I went okay, that's it. Like, I gotta know what's happening with every appointment, whose conversion rates are bad. And my the model of the ISAs I have is you get compensated you get a salary, but you also my ISAs are licensed so they get a commission based on their productivity. Well, the model is I don't tell them who to give the appointments to in the team, they'll naturally give it to wherever their bread's buttered the most. And if I don't interfere with it, it doesn't matter. realtors, my team can bring the flowers every day, it won't matter. If their conversion rate is low, they'll give it to the best agents first. Yeah. And so I realized I had to do this. So there was no product out there. I ended up with an actually, there was something you could buy this Excel sheet that had 80,000 formulas in the background. And no mobile app, no nothing. And it was complex. And I had help. And I created a system, I actually built my own mobile app, and I don't build apps. That's what I mean. It's like it was crazy. So I built this mobile app, to tie into this Excel sheet to track the things I needed to track to know where my holes were and where I needed to improve. And I struggled with that clap was clunky. My biggest problem was getting people to use the app because it was clunky, I, I had a hard time staying on them about even if you just track what we decided to track every day. Oh my god, you knew everything about your business and at all times. And it doesn't take long. Well, when I discovered Sisu, it was like this. I'm not saying this because I'm an affiliate or anything. It was like discovering gold. It was the Excel sheet and the app Made Simple in a nice system where you could help your agents and I would know individuals I could put up like on the screen behind you I could display and on my is a board whose conversion rate was the highest, which really motivated my agents to focus on their conversion rate. And I would know where to focus, where my challenges were, where to train what to train on, based on the data that I was getting back. And it literally the app is so easy to use. I actually in one of my office meetings, I challenged somebody that I could enter my statistics for the day in less than 60 seconds and approved it in the office meeting. I'm calling you like, this is 60 seconds, right? I said I know I had a bad rap. I know I had a clunky system. Listen, this is easy. All I need is 60 seconds a day. And here's another thing, because it's set up so nice. I would meet my realtors and say what do you want to call like they know every realtor wants to sell, you know, tons of homes there and that's okay. What do you want to accomplish? What are your goals and in order to accomplish the goals, we could reverse engineer exactly how much work they need to do and where they need to focus? And we could track things and it would include even things like you know your health. I want to work out this many times a day. So we would get together and establish Where do you want to be? What do you need to do to get there and we would set up cc Those items for that person. And that accountability, it and literally you don't have to type in the internet, you just like hit plus, as you know, I did this many hours today I spoke to this many people I did, you know showed this many homes, like you can literally just hit the plus button, it adds in their stats for the day. And now their accountability is so like if you went into other real estate offices, you would not find the manager knows exactly what they want to accomplish define the plan for them in a trackable system. And the manager knows exactly where each and every individual is in their plan. And by the way, if they start going off track, you need to Hey, I need to talk to you if somebody is on track with what they need to do to accomplish their goals. And that's great. And you know that, but you wouldn't see that level? Like it's a great recruiting tool, because I can basically say, is your company doing this for you right now? Yeah. And the answer's no, they don't even have their own plan and on track, much less their manager designed the plan and made accountability gotta buy in and knows if they're off, like, knows if they're off that day. And it's easy in cses software. So it really was like finding gold. And it helped us so much that I would just naturally tell agents that I would bump into about it. So like my company had 1800 real I don't even know how many realtors my company but you know, at every award ceremony when you're number one in the company, again, you know, a circle kind of forms around you. And then people want to know, how do you do that? Well, one of the answers is, you need to know what you want to accomplish. And you need to have a plan to get there and you need a system that you know where you are in that plan every day, at any time. And that seasick so it would literally be one of the first things I would say to establish goals, make a plan to get there, and then have a trackable system. And if you have accountability built into it, that's even better. Because you can do that with your product, as you know. And I guess I just when a lot of realtors would ask me how do I get there? And the first thing is you need a plan you need the system. And so people I guess followed it and went and bought a Sisu platform and we're in it's I mean, it's not cost prohibitive. I mean it was Yeah, it's very low cost to have that kind of information. And quite frankly, it is a common denominator. The top realtors all know it exactly. And they were all having the same struggles that I was having. Great. We know we need this information. We have two problems one, I do not at least I'm not wired to want to get into the math and like it was the last thing I did. It wasn't till it was biting me in the ass. And I have to fix this. I don't have I'm just kind of eyeballing this saying it was a shit show. And then when I did it, and I really did it because the top realtors all had this in common. It was hard to ignore. Then I went and was biting me and I knew it. And then I finally did it. And now quite frankly, once I did it, I really started seeing the value of it afterward.
Brian Charlesworth 43:22
Yeah. Good. I'm glad. I'm glad it's had an impact for you. Question. Have you seen the new ISA report since you have three ISAs?
I have not might be because I've been out of the office for a while but.
A few weeks ago, go check it out. It may. I'm not sure how you guys are tracking your ISA stuff. But as long as you are doing it the way that system is built to do it, you'll automatically have those reports where you can see how many leads were given to each agent. And then what they've done with them. Did they go out and they got 10 appointments set for them? How many of those did they meet? How many of those did they sign? How many of those did they
Kevin Flaherty 43:59
Well, I can I could see that before the report you're talking about? I haven't seen the actual report. But I could see all that in any event. There you go. So that'd be cool. That'd be cool. See,
Brian Charlesworth 44:11
Now it's all on one page for you rather than each dashboard.
Kevin Flaherty 44:17
Cool. Oh, it's good. I pretty much would look in I'd look at them individually. But yeah, I'd love to see that one.
Brian Charlesworth 44:25
Check that out. So anyway, we're about out of time. So I just want to thank you for being on today. Before we wrap up. I have one more question. And then I want you to tell people to get a hold of you. But okay, really like you travel the world. You're in your boat traveling 30,000 Islands right now. Where's your favorite place in this world? Where's the place that everyone should go check out that you just love?
Kevin Flaherty 44:48
Wow. Now where's my favorite place in the world to go? That's a really good question. We've been to a lot of really cool places. One of the coolest places it depends on kind of what you want to wait, you know, vacation-wise, but we love hot springs, Arizona, that was just the coolest little town. It's hard to describe in a short period of time but hot springs, Arizona, and I love the Bahamas.
Brian Charlesworth 45:15
Okay, great. Yeah. Well, Kevin, thank you again for being on the show. Last thing, how do people get ahold of you if they want to learn more
Kevin Flaherty 45:22
Sure. So you can go to flaherty.ca and get my contact information there. You can call me at 226-916-0595. That's 226-916-0595. My email is kevin@flaherty.ca. You can email me. You can call me and be happy to chat with you.
Brian Charlesworth 45:49
Okay, everyone, Kevin Flaherty, thank you for joining the show today. Everyone, if you will give us a review. We'd get more of these top team leaders in the show to really share with you how they're actually leading and growing their business and making a difference in their agents life. So, Kevin, appreciate it. Great getting to know you today. Thank you.
Kevin Flaherty 46:09
Thanks.
