Selling real estate is like an extremely strong contact sport. You need to go out there, talk to people, establish rapport, and build relationships with your contacts. And the more contacts you make, the better chance you have for a successful business.
For Gaurav Gambhir, making it in real estate proved to be more challenging. He was an immigrant who didn’t know many people at that time and English was his second language so he didn’t feel confident speaking in front of crowds.
Yet, he found a way to grow his clientele by managing people’s assets. He figured that if he can maintain a relationship with them, then he will be the top choice to get the opportunity once they decide to sell or rent their property.
Join Brian Charlesworth and Gaurav Gambhir, Co-Founder and Owner at The Condo Shop / TCS MGT / Rentphilly.com / Mega Realty / Go Commercial and Partner at Keller Williams Center City, as they talk about Gaurav’s journey from starting a small team of 4 agents up to now where he has 60 agents doing 1500 transactions and $365 million in volume.
Top Takeaways:
03:38 How Gaurav ended up in real estate
10:37 The competition you really need to worry about
12:35 Why would a team owner want to get into property management?
17:27 Gaurav’s plan to provide a “solution in a box”
21:45 Why you should always focus on providing a better experience to your clients
24:29 What does “serial entrepreneur” mean?
25:24 An overview of Gaurav’s team structure
27:27 Why Gaurav prefers to automate as much as he can
35:25 The importance of building an ISA team
39:25 The things you should focus on now to stay ahead of the curve
43:41 Why you shouldn’t look at teams as someone who takes things away
44:50 Why percentage means nothing
Get in touch with Gaurav Gambhir
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ggambhir/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ggambhir1
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ggambhir1/
About the guest:
Gaurav Gambhir comes from a family of entrepreneurs. He’s been doing support businesses on the side since he was 15 years old. So when he started working as an IT professional for a real estate company, he decided to try real estate during weekends to earn some extra money.
In 2007, he took a leap of faith, went into real estate full-time, and joined Keller-Williams as his first brokerage company. Eventually, he and a friend decided to start a new brokerage company and a property management division along with it. They were able to grow the company towards 70 agents in about 18 months.
Two years later, Gaurav had the opportunity to buy a company called the Condo Shop in Philadelphia. He then built TCS Group which services real estate investments, renovations, and property management.
Today. Gaurav is a partner and Operating Principle of Keller Williams Philadelphia. In total, he oversees 600+ agents and employees. His team is currently the ninth-largest Keller Williams team in the country.
Podcast Transcript:
Brian Charlesworth 0:35
Alright, hello, everyone. And welcome back to the Grit Podcast. I'm excited about our episode today. So I've got a little story to tell you. We were at KW his family reunion. She's I guess it's been two or three weeks ago now. And I had just left. Thankfully, I got invited to speak a few times there. And I had just left that day. And Zach, who heads up ourselves was in a breakout. And he took a picture of the screen. And he said You need to get each one of these individuals on your podcast. And one of them had already been on the podcast about a year and a half ago. And but the other three had not. So today, I'm here with Gaurav Gambhir. And he was one of the celebrities on that stage in that meeting. So anyway, he just I'll give you a high level overview of some of the things he's done. He started with a small team of four agents, he now has a team of 60 agents. He also owns a KW Market Center. So you're now in OP is my understanding. And he also has a large property management company and several other ancillary businesses. So for those of you in real estate like this is this is how you want to grow your business. I would pay close attention because we're going to look get a lot of great advice here today. Gaurav. Is there any anything else you would like to share? That I've left out here? Because I know that's a very quick summary on your amazing career here of 20 plus years in the real estate industry?
Gaurav Gambhir 2:15
No, that was a great introduction. And I'm really humbled to have that as well. Thanks for having me on the show. And I'll decide about, I'm privileged to be a father of an eight-year-old daughter, and that's my life that I've totally enjoy. So why would work comes great work-life balance as well.
Brian Charlesworth 2:27
Okay. So I want you to add to that maybe you could just tell us your story. I understand you're an immigrant. Tell us how did you end up in the US? And then how did you end up in real estate?
Gaurav Gambhir 2:45
I came to this country in 1997. Right after high school plan was to be the best computer programmer the world has ever seen. So I came to Drexel University in Philadelphia. And they have a great internship program. I wanted to do co-ops make enough money, go back to school pay for the education. I didn't come here with enough money for me to have education. So I wanted to pay while I was working. And I graduated in 2001 December, I had a job lined up with Unisys to be a software engineer. It was right after 911. So all the software engineering jobs were frozen, I got laid off before I started. And I had to find something to do. And picked up an opportunity in a company to be an IT professional, which was probably the lowest paying job at that time, but happened to be a real estate company. So I learned I coincidentally fell into real estate as an IT person in a company that did real estate. And I picked it up from there.
Brian Charlesworth 3:45
So when you say it was a real estate company, was it a brokerage? Who was it? Where do
Gaurav Gambhir 3:51
They own industrial warehouses and commercial shopping centers. They were starting to strive to get to the residential world a little bit more. And I thought it would be great to make some extra money in the evenings and weekends. And we were paying other brokers one month fee for leasing the units. And I was the one who's going in handling the construction and TI and the lease thing and the keys and I said what why can I make some of this money? And my boss at that time said because you don't have a license. So what if I got a license? He said, As long as you do it after hours. I said sure I can work on the weekends. I said go for it. Will you pay for my school is sure. And I got my license. And I started making some money on the side in the evenings and the weekends. And I bought my first place using my license, save a lot of money. And I thought this is nice, you know and then all my friends as always and I became an expert with all my friends who are engineers and doctors who graduate from college and the IT professionals and then became the real estate professional expert for them.
Brian Charlesworth 4:54
How old were you at this time?
Gaurav Gambhir 4:56
Twenty-three. I got married very early in life. So we went over 20 years now.
Brian Charlesworth 5:02
Well, you know, if you still want to be the world's best software engineer, I would love to have you join us here at Sisu. So just keep that in mind that that's still open, like, you know, you can always go back to that if you choose, but
Gaurav Gambhir 5:20
Real estate is doing fine for me for now, if it changes.
Brian Charlesworth 5:23
I was gonna say, with the career you build, I don't see that one happening anymore. So, so you started and you were this. So you started selling real estate for this group? And then how did you? Like, how did you get into KW and then get into teams and that was right around when Gary wrote the MREA book. So I'm guessing that had an influence on you that as well,
Gaurav Gambhir 5:49
A little bit for sure. I was given some right after, when I was at my previous job, working full time. My goal, I've been very entrepreneurial, and come from a family of entrepreneurs, my dad, my uncle, my cousins have all owned businesses all their lives. So I had that entrepreneur bug in me. And I've always been doing support businesses on the side no matter what it is, since I've been probably 15 years old. At some point, I told myself, how do I build something for myself, instead of building it for something that somebody else, and then when I didn't have the funds, I didn't have the comfort level of leaving my job and becoming an entrepreneur. So I told myself, the day I make 50% of my money by being a dual career person, where I can have a full-time job. And I can have a second career of selling real estate. But the minute I make 50% of my money in selling real estate, I'm going to take a leap of faith in myself to have a comfort level for me to move on. I did that in 2007, I joined KW as my first brokerage company. And I remember that time I had about three transactions under my belt. And I wanted to open a property management company because it was very challenging to be because I had a full-time position, lead generation technology didn't exist as much. It was an extremely strong contact sport, where I had to be in front of people, which I don't have the time to do it. And I had a hesitation of me having English as a second language to go in front of a large crowd and talk about real estate. So I only talk to people that were close to me. So I said, Well, if we can go face to face front, people having a chance pronouncing my name, I'm an immigrant, I don't know many people, how can I go and get the clientele so I said, if I can go from the front or go from the back. And the way to go on the back is if I manage their asset. And I can maintain my relationship with them all the way around, when the time comes in for them to buy another investment property, or for them to sell this asset or rent this asset, I will be the natural person to get the opportunity. And I'd like since I had a computer science degree, I was very, very number oriented in my approach. So it's all about numbers for me. And I started my I went to my broker at that time. And I said, I think we don't have a property management. Here's a concept. You have a lot of agents. Let's talk about how to build a property management company. And he asked me a simple question, how much transactions have you done? It's a three sales and two rentals. And so you want to start a property management company is that yeah, so that makes no sense when you get more experienced, rightfully so if I was him, I would probably say the same thing. But I was just nuts at that time. And I want to do something right away. It was very aggressive. So I approached a friend of mine who's an appraiser. And I said, we're going to start a new brokerage company. And we're going to start a property management division along with it. I convinced him he believed in me, we started and I formed a company called Mega Realty, we grew the company to about 70 agents in about 18 months. And I had the opportunity two years later to buy a company called The Condo Shop in the city of Philadelphia, which I did sold my first company and became partners here. And then my journey began to continue being growing my organization from about four agents in Condo Shop, we built Rentphilly as another division for rentals, we will Black Label luxury. And now in the group of three divisions that we run, we are about 60 people in the country.
Brian Charlesworth 9:12
So I love this story. You're, you're an immigrant into the US where are you from? Originally? India, from India, okay. Which India is known for having great technology, right? So you come to the US and people can't pronounce your name. And what I love is the Grit. And that's why this podcast is called Grit. Because when you decide like you decided already you were going to make this happen. You are going to be successful no matter what. It didn't matter what who told you no, it didn't matter how many times you got told this was impossible. You were gonna you're gonna make it happen. And I love this story because I think anybody has that opportunity. If they just have this same commitment to it that you had. And so, so anyway, it's a very unique approach the fact that you immediately started a property management company. And I mean, I'm guessing there are so many team owners out there today, my wife is a team owner, I wish we had a property management company, but we don't. So I'm like, tell us more about that. And Why would, why would I or not? Not me, but why would I, as a team owner, want to get into property management?
Gaurav Gambhir 10:33
You know, one thing I'll add, Ryan, as well as I think everybody has a good inside them. Everybody has repeat people feared themselves of succeeding because of the unknown factor. We think there's a competition outside with other people and other team members. It's not the outside competition you have to worry about is the inside competition, we have to really take care of, we're competing with ourselves only, that tells us you know, we use the word drunk monkey or, you know, you're your own big why, you know, that is all part of the competition that you have internally with yourself. And early on in life, I told myself, what's the worst that can happen? I, since I had an immigrant background, I came here with nothing, that's the worst that can happen is, I will end up with nothing. And I started with nothing, it is recent. Let's, let's give it a shot. So I think everyone should dig deeper and give yourself a push. I think we all have it internally, people who take the risk end up with the benefit, and they end up being talking about it, and the others are trying to get that motivation to give them the push to happen. So hopefully, this gives you a push that if I can do it, who has English as a second language, and I think in Hindi and I translate in English, if I can do it in this land of opportunities, you can too.
Brian Charlesworth 11:51
I love that you shared that because it's like you're not competing against anybody else. And it's true, you are competing against yourself. And it's that self-talk. And you talked, you talked about the why you have to have a big way to get over that self-talk inside of us that that's going on saying, you know, you can't do this, right? It's a mindset that is out of your head out of your way, it's the only thing stopping us is us. Right? The only thing stopping me is me if I can get myself out of the way, the opportunity is there to do whatever I want.
Gaurav Gambhir 12:28
100% So true. And well said, you asked me a question of why should we start a property management company? Yeah, I think we are, we are still in this age of technology. In a very relationship-based contact sport of real estate. What happens people are today with the money being cheap, for financing, creative financing opportunities for investments, a lot of talk around the bar model wealth building, people are now getting exposed to the opportunity of understanding the tax benefits of what can an asset do for you long term and helping you build passive income and wealth? I think I think that is a very helpful thing for a lot of people to do that. And that being said, in the last two or three years, a lot of wealth has been accumulated by the upper tier, who was in the sectors of making a lot more money and opportunities. During the COVID market, we save a lot of money because we weren't really traveling or spending a lot of money with the fear of what the unforeseen future may bring to us. So that created these savings that people are not investing in real estate. If people are doing that, we need to be at the forefront of being able to capture that relationship. And how do you stay in touch with them outside of the buying cycle, it's when they're holding the asset. So just stay in touch with them and help them manage the asset that they have spent their lifelong savings. And I think that creates a relationship for long term. Other opportunities they may bring to the table as well. So I do the activity, a product going from the back end to get the business. But now the business can be from the forefront. If you have property management, you have investors in your group, you have potential renters that are coming in the renters can be first time buyers, Property Management gives you passive income on a monthly basis as a cash register, you can create systems and processes use technology much better than before. Unfortunately, it's such a heavy compliant and labor-intensive opportunity that many people don't get into it. Or they can't really make money for larger till they get to a larger portfolio. And I think the number is somewhere around 800 to up to 1000 units. Unless you get there as a pure, individual large business. That was my goal. But even at five units, you can make the same amount of money if that's your goal to do it. But you don't have to do it yourself. You could team up with a property management company that offers the back-end support and you can be the face to the relationship as well. So if you look at property management in a different angle, you don't have to start a company for every single thing that you want to do. You can align your So with the right people who are doing it and hire their services for the backend, and be the face of the company, I think it's imperative everyone needs to be part of this relationship-building for lead generation and for future business.
Brian Charlesworth 15:14
So if I look at the industry as a whole, most, most team owners, they definitely have either started or have their eye on starting a mortgage in a title company. Many of those are happening through a JV, you're saying, in the case of this property management, you recommend the same thing, go find a JV partner, so you don't have to do all the heavy lifting, you can be the face front end, you can drive, you know, revenue to the business, and let somebody actually manage it for you.
Gaurav Gambhir 15:50
100% and I have a lot of friends in the KW industry that we are discussing right now how my company has TCS management, part of TCS group can create that opportunity of a solution in a box, where the partner of ours can be the foot on the ground, who's creating the relationship and getting the investors and they can place them in a joint venture that we can create. Let us handle all the backend of compliance accounting, follow-ups, utilities, lease preparation, anything that is admin, we can handle on the back end, and the face and the foot. The boots on the ground can be that partner, which is you know, most people are willing to sales business enjoy that part.
Brian Charlesworth 16:32
Okay, so. So if I'm, if I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that you guys are actually building this national joint venture company. So no matter where you are, if you're listening to this podcast, and you want to start this property management company, somebody should reach out to you. And you would joint venture with them is that is that
Gaurav Gambhir 16:53
I would love to have the conversation because I can we have figured out in the last 10 years, we have made more mistakes than we hope other people have to make to get to the point where we are. And we can provide that solution in a box for you.
Brian Charlesworth 17:08
Oh, good. I'm going to have Spring give you a call. Okay, so that's that's great to know. So you have this group you just mentioned TCS group. What else do you guys do there? That's a holding company that has a bunch of different businesses and it sounds like tell us more about that.
Gaurav Gambhir 17:25
So our first company was The Condo Shop and TCS came from the most creative way The Condo Shop became TCS and that was our world keep The Condo Shop was a world. We grew out of the condominium world by providing affordable rentals in the city of Philadelphia. We are a vertical city and a lot of high rises. Regarding the rental market, we exclusively represent close to about 18,000 units and we do over 1000 leases a year. Rentphilly came by to offer the solution to rentals in the city. Then we got into a luxury market. So Black Label was a luxury trademark in the country to be able to offer those services. I ended up buying a market center which is a brokerage company at Keller Williams as a franchise. And that helped us expand into a new title company, an insurance company, a transaction management company, a media company, we had the property management company. We found it we started a fund to help our investors buy assets. So TCS Anika Homes came about, our multifamily and condominium management company came about called Madison Park. And then we just started growing more and more into but interestingly, every company came by because of a need and a want. And we were creating it with a unique product not knowing how the future would look like. So at one point, we look back and say people don't understand that all these are part of one umbrella. So TCS group is our answer that we want to continue not providing these solutions that we had created, how can we put everything and as many things as possible in a box and go in and try to implement that in other cities, ourselves or with other partners to find a solution for both of us at the same time. So TCS group is is the new company, that umbrella company that we are announcing very soon. And most of our marketing is gonna happen under that brand.
Brian Charlesworth 19:23
Okay, so a lot of people, when they start thinking about building all these businesses, like you're a true entrepreneur like you said, your family, your family has that instilled in you. So a lot of people when they think about doing that, they always think they have to do it themselves. My guess is you have somebody running each of these businesses.
Gaurav Gambhir 19:43
I don't have a single company that I don't have at least one partner.
Brian Charlesworth 19:47
Yes. Okay. And that partner in that company is probably that's 100% of their focus?
Gaurav Gambhir 19:55
Majority of the time each person has taken their one thing and dedicated to that company. As I realized my one thing couldn't be any one of them. I found a person that could make their one thing that company.
Brian Charlesworth 20:09
Yeah. I mean, you're the Rainmaker. Right? That's the beautiful thing about real estate, somebody in real estate, if how many transactions are you guys doing on your 60 Agent team right now?
Gaurav Gambhir 20:21
1544 transactions and 365 million last year.
Brian Charlesworth 20:25
I'm sorry, 1500, you said?
Gaurav Gambhir 20:27
1500 transactions, and 365 million in
Brian Charlesworth 20:31
Okay, 365 million in volume. So 1500 transactions, that's a lot of transactions. So think about if you have 1500 transactions, first of all, congratulations. Like that's, that's a huge feat in its own right. And now you've said, Hey, I've got 1500 transactions, I can do a lot more than just make money from real estate, I can put all these other businesses together and provide for these guys. And not only do you make more money, but you actually control their experience, which I mean, that's what that's really the end game, right? Controlling the experience all the way through.
Gaurav Gambhir 21:11
Same thing with Apple model. You know, a long time ago, Apple decided that nobody could sell their product as well as Apple could so they opened the retail shops. And then said, you know, nobody can provide the experience so we're going to have our own employees provide the support and service. I think that's what really defined what Apple is, you know if I made my first Apple when I broke the phone by dropping it, I took it to the Apple store and they said no questions asked, we'll replace the screen for you. Like I became a customer for life. Because that is
Brian Charlesworth 21:41
You and me both.
Gaurav Gambhir 21:42
So we started thinking about how do we provide in real estate, a one-stop shop? An experience for everybody, so every time we were sending a client to, to a title company, and they would say something is different about our company, whatever we can do this ourselves and provide a better service. And then also, in one transaction, there are many ways of making a financial benefit that you can divide smaller portions, but you can make equal or more money by having the whole bandwidth of the process from start to end. And that's where we started plugging in, even in our internal property management company. The first time we sat down about five, four years ago and said, how much money we pay for painting for all the units that we managed to the outside company. And we came up with a number I think, like 600,000, or something. And so even if you made 15% profit by managing the people, or hiring somebody in the house, and controlling the experience, where you can send someone to do touch-ups for free, provide people who show back up again $1,000 business, well then we said how much for plumbers and electricians? And how will you start going through the process? Like, it's not just about property management, there's a repair and maintenance portion of it. So SNA renovations came into existence. So you can look at your whole portfolio today and say, Where can I add value? Where can I have a better experience that automatically create opportunities for you.
Brian Charlesworth 23:22
I think that's why you've been so successful, because you're focused, obviously, the money is important to you, but you're focused on providing a better experience to your clients. And if that's your focus, it's going to drive you to come up with better solutions. Whereas if your focus is just the money, you're not doing it for the right reason, you're probably not going to provide the same experience for your clients.
Gaurav Gambhir 23:44
And I hope that that that stays with our team as well. You know that the focus needs to stay. And that's part of community and culture that you want to build and the vision you want to give to your team members. This is what we want to achieve money and success will come as a byproduct. Someone asked me a long time ago, you know, are you doing this for money? And for a second, it is like going back five or 10 years? And I said yes, I am doing this for money as well and said, What am I doing this only for money? Right? Well, the answer is no. I am not. And I say well, what are you looking for? And at that point, I don't know. I like doing it. Yeah. And so what why do you like doing it took me a while to figure it out. And I heard someone say this on some podcasts or a book I read I forget where it was, what is a serial entrepreneur mean? And the answer to that, that I thought to myself was a serial entrepreneur is someone who looks at a problem and tries to make it better. And once you try to make it a bit better, you try to make it even more better. And then once you get to that point, then you try to make it optimize even further out. And then through the whole process, you find another problem and you try to solve that problem. So your brain always works on how do I make everything better. But you know, in real life sometimes there's a challenge between, a thin line between being annoying and In case your team members and you're trying to make everything better, and you have a good balance where not everything is to better, but every opportunity has a potential of getting better. So that's what I think a serial entrepreneur is. And I take enjoyment. That's my fun part.
Brian Charlesworth 25:15
Yeah. So something that's I'm everyone here can relate to, can you give me just like a high-level overview of your real estate team, just the team, and what your structure looks like, like, who are the people on that team, because so many people in your shoes, they think they have to do everything, and I'm trying to get this, like somebody like you, you haven't figured out of how to build and scale businesses. So I'd love for you to just start with a real estate team and tell us about your structure, your organization, and who are the who's in your business, that means so much to the success.
Gaurav Gambhir 25:56
Absolutely. And that has been a struggle and admission and goal for myself that I don't want have a job title. And I think I'm almost there at this point. I don't have to be in one place for anyone reason where I need to perform a job duty today. And I take and I'm very grateful for that opportunity. So I'll talk about my real estate team, my real estate team is divided into three divisions. It's a condo, I have a partner there. And we have one transaction manager with one virtual assistant who's helping them. We have one marketing director, one marketing specialist, and a VA supporting them. We have one ISA, we have one marketing transaction, and then there's a Director of Operations. Really tight ship and then we have two people who provide what a sales will mentorship program, lead sales and the lead by a selling agent and lead buyer's agent. That's a tight close group for the counter shop rental, one virtual assistant who helps process all the paperwork on the back end, and a director of operations, our luxury division two partners, who are the rainmakers and supporting the team, and one marketing specialist and an assistant. Altogether, maybe about 9, 10 people or 10 employees at this point. And we're trying to bring in more virtual assistants, and trying to automate as much as we can.
Brian Charlesworth 27:21
Yeah, so I love that you brought up automation. Automation is something I'm very passionate about. Tell us when you say we, we love to automate as much as we can, what does that mean?
Gaurav Gambhir 27:32
I'll give you an example. So we, you know, you start a company, a great company, because you found a need, where you could plug in and provide a solution. And you saw that it can be used at a larger scale. In our world product rental as an example, we have, at any given time close to about 500 active listings on the rentals, an agent is trying to schedule them, that scheduling appointment has to not go through Showing Time to the building management, the leasing team looks at it, they may or may not be able to accommodate that showing request. If there's a change, they'll send it back and cancel it. And that information has to be sent back to the other agent and the whole coordination has to happen in between. That is a very large, extensive portion of our business for rentals. I think most probably that's the reason why many will say it's not worth my time, at the same time. So we took all those things, we hired a company-created proprietary software, and our Director of Operations and our partner in the rental division were spearheading it. And at this point, from the time someone makes a request, everything in between, till the point it goes back to the original agent with any changes or time changes or cancellation. Or if a unit is available or not available. Everything happens through a bot. And it's automated, nobody touches it. That has freed up a huge, huge portion of we probably needed three full-time people to schedule it. That was huge savings and faster.
Brian Charlesworth 28:59
So that's saved you three, three people in your organization can now focus on other things because they're not having to do that is that properly stated?
Gaurav Gambhir 29:10
Very fair. And the experience got much better from the agent who was requesting it, who I should get phone calls on all the time. Gaurav, it is impossible and painful to show on a few listings because the minute I've asked for a change, it has to go through five different people, five different processes, somebody is calling me, and texting me. And now they love showing up on listings.
Brian Charlesworth 29:34
Yeah, such a great example. I was in a meeting at Family Reunion. It was an off-site put on by Leverage, which is a ops coaching company. And Seth Campbell, I don't do you know him. So Seth came in and he was the keynote and he was talking about and I'm only bringing this up because you're talking about automations but I love the way he said he basically said, any place that you have to enter something in more than one place, so any place, there's duplicate entry, you can create an automation that would solve that, which, each time you do that, you know, you're saving 10s of hours 20s, you know, 20 however many hours a month, right? I mean, could be hundreds of hours, just depending So, or he also said, anytime you're having to put something into a spreadsheet, like, can you eliminate that spreadsheet? And so I love the way he said it because obviously, that's a big focus of ours at Sisu is eliminating all these duplicate entries in all these spreadsheets. And, and just the way he said it, though, was, it was just like, wow, yeah, if you just look at it that simple, like, what would this one automation be? If I list out all these areas, just an example, I like to use this, if you could just automate that email? Congratulations, we're under contract that goes out to seven different people. How much time does that save your TC?
Gaurav Gambhir 31:04
Our transaction manager has folio. And that came in because of the same reason you draft a script that you sent for every transaction? And you just use that? And then you start seeing that, you know, first, you must you create the draft, you can use it again, and again, it's like a template, then you say, Well, how can I save more time for that person not even go and create. So you can create automation, where if you enter in one spot, here's a new transaction, it can trigger different responses and act and tasks automatically. And the emails in the follow us which are pretty generic, that can just go out automatically, certain shooting of the task. And I think we find fun in doing it. And it also saves us, in order to adding more resources every single time you add on 400 transactions because I get this question asked a lot. But it's 1500 transactions, how many do you have? Because the mindset works in large transactions, large support. Not necessarily true. Yeah. Then the fun part is, how do you do more with less?
Brian Charlesworth 32:08
Yes, we share, we share in that so you found ways to do it, like Folio, Sisu, just so you guys know, like this is what we do, where your intake forms. And any key data you put in there can fire automation, which fires a Trello-like task list, and automated emails and all that kind of stuff. And like, figure a way to do that, right. Sisu is one way you could do that figure out no matter what you do, if it's not Sisu, figure out a way to do that because it's going to change your business. Like you can't scale. I had a team owner come up to me in the mid-year last year, and he was doing 150 transactions a year before he got to 500 last year, mid-year. And he said, Brian, I can't scale like, I can't do this. Like you need to help me figure out how to how to get to 800 or 1000 transactions with my existing team. And we were able to do that. But it like you said, it's fun to figure out how to not hire people to scale but to build systems to scale and automations.
Gaurav Gambhir 33:13
And I think that's why when I grabbed this, our whole team is working right now to understand, you know how we can use this value from Sisu. And we, you know, we are not active or not active users of Sisu yet, but I think more and more we read about it, and we understand it and target a lot more people about it, our whole thing was super excited because we were very limited in our approach to sending an automated email. But when you add some AI and task to task to it, your whole process and checklist changes. Yes. And that is a whole different level of automation and growth that we can have. So thank you for, you know, for spending your time a team's time in building some amazing opportunities and software that and solutions. We are excited to approach to product to look at this and see how we can help grow our business.
Brian Charlesworth 34:02
I didn't even know you were looking at it. But I'm excited to hear that. Just know you can reach out to me personally anytime. So as you guys go through that. So tell us about your model. You've mentioned ISA and I wanted to talk about ISAs. Because two years ago, everybody in this industry, I mean, I speak you know, we have 1000s of teams on our platform now. So and I spent a lot of time with our team leaders. And I've had several of them on my podcast or We've had events where I've interviewed them. And you know everyone was talking of a couple of years ago about hey, I'm trying to figure out this is a thing. Or I'm going to figure out this is a thing I'm going you know what was their big change that they were going to do last year, they're going to hire an ISA or maybe more. And so now everybody's kind of in that world. Almost everybody has an ISA now. And now it's figuring out, okay, how can I get that ISA to make it to where I'm closing 10, another an additional 10 transactions an additional 20 transactions a month. And now I'm going to expand that up to three or four I assays. And I'm going to get it to where I'm doing another 50 transactions a month, whatever that is. And so I'd love to hear from you like because you're like this creator of all these businesses, I'd love to hear from you your perspective of the importance number one of building an ISA and then I'd love to hear your experience of where you guys are at in that journey.
Gaurav Gambhir 35:34
So we are part of the same bandwagon of trying to figure out where the with new kid on the block for the ISA opportunity, I think we got into it a little bit late. But that'll be late, very late than never. And the I and the concept was something that I think we were, you know, many times you try to dodge a solution because you are in denial that will actually exist. And purely because it takes a lot of work in building a new process or a company. So I say is a complete new process that goes into your sales and changes everything or forces you to change everything, and you want to give a push back and try to avoid it till everybody else was on and it's like, oh my god, maybe I'm missing something. So I think we were somewhere similar to that situation. And benefit that I see as take sort of as an example. Zillow had the maximum number of eyes on their website, this they create the maximum number of lead generation in the year, send it out to people, or agents who are either buying it or just getting it and Zillow did not have any way or understanding of who those clients were because 95 of other services currently over 95% of people did not register on Zillow. They just clicked the Enable being sent for somebody else had they had eyes, but no control. And there was no experience Besides, I'm going to let you search them for that. Then they realized, well, agents may or may not be providing the same level of service, or closing or converting the leads, and how do we know which ones are helping convert the leads, they had an IC department in between. And once they started doing that, they realize it's so much more valuable, then we can just hire a local salesperson in every market is a big brokerage company. And then they realize, well, if I can give it to those people or other agent industry, I can create Google flex and charge a 35% referral fee give or take depending on the market. So that was an evolution of houses looking about. And you as a team, you started looking as well, that makes sense. Because when I give it to my agents in the company, if we are not using a CRM that forces the agent to use a CRM, and that's a challenge sometimes, because people in your team may give you pushback not to use it. We don't know what they said, We don't know when they're meeting, all those things is very local level of the agent who's in our team. And if the agent is not performing the job at the highest level, or if the agent ends up leaving or moving on or decides not to in business, you are only as good as an agent. But you cannot provide an Apple service or Apple model. If you're very local individual agent-based or performance-based, you have to bring it back to a place where everyone is forced to use it and understand it. How do you do that? Instead of teaching 60 people to spend time on non-income-producing activities where you can maximize their results and our results. You bring that back in the house where one person to the point of contact the everything close to that bottle. And you're not the bottleneck, that's where you have more ISAs to that to that bottom hole, where you understand what's happening, you can hold your agents accountable. And then if they drop the ball, you can pick up where they left off. So you're not at the mercy of the agent or team member for the expertise you are building your own trust is when the team and company does. So I think it's pretty simple and easy to follow is easily scalable. You can add multiple people by adding more lead sources as well. And helps agents make more money.
Brian Charlesworth 39:04
Yeah, okay. Thanks for sharing that. Are you? Are you a Zillow Flex team?
Gaurav Gambhir 39:09
We are, we are.
Brian Charlesworth 39:10
Okay. Okay, I figured you were based on your description of Zillow. So you've been in real estate for a long time. Now, you obviously have a great business mind. I'd love to hear. And we only have a few minutes here. But I'd love to hear where you see the real estate industry going. And as, as a business owner in real estate, what are the things you should be focused on right now so that you can stay ahead of the curve and stay in the game? Because it's changing, right?
Gaurav Gambhir 39:39
It has already changed from the time and I started and I'm sure it's going to continue changing as well. I think it's going to and I'm privileged, not making a plugin for KW, but I'm privileged to be a member of the top 100 teams in the country and Gary Keller's mastermind. So he's is someone that I look up to for his vision and for his education and training on the mindset that he helps us get better and pushes the limit. So I see, and I hear the top 100 200 teams in the country, how they're thinking what they're working on. And the answer is coming out again and again to be the same. It is aged are still going to be needed. A lot of stuff is going to be used by technology. Clients are going to use us for our fiduciary duty primarily for what is needed to help them do the transaction, not open doors. So we have to start getting out of the mindset of is not showing the property that's valuable. That is one of my smallest jobs, what I need to focus on the other value proposition, can I help them find a painter? Can I help them move into the place better? Can I have the Comcast taken care of when their moving in our. How about a dog walker? Do they like the three restaurants they live in? Can I help them figure out the local monthly pass for the train transportation, anything else that goes along in title insurance, home inspection, home warranty, I had to focus on the whole experience. And if I can manage that, nobody can beat that. No technology can take that away from my personal interaction with the individual. And that's your client for life. So I think every agent in my mind should start focusing on that every team leader needs to start focusing on how they can provide that value to your team so that they can succeed the highest level. And if you are able to offer every all of those things, you don't really have to suppress your commission, you can add value and charge the same or charge more, if you don't, the clients will push down on you to pay you less because you're not providing the same value anymore.
Brian Charlesworth 41:41
Gaurav, it's, it's so funny, like everything you say, it's totally in line with my vision here. So I would recommend that everybody, rewind this and listen to that last 60 seconds again, because that is your differentiator now, and just a little, you know, this is definitely not a Sisu show. But Sisu is actually rolling out a client portal right now to empower you to do all of those things, and have the Domino's Pizza Tracker app type thing where you can communicate with your clients on where they're at in that journey of getting to closed. So anyway, thank you for sharing that there are a lot of ways to get there. And, you know, we're just here focused on empowering teams to really dominate the future this industry because my belief is teams are the future of the industry, the brokerage traditional brokerage will be a team in the future.
Gaurav Gambhir 42:45
Our market center is taking the same approach. Yeah, productivity coaching team in a market center, at this point is the sixth largest group in the market center.
Brian Charlesworth 42:53
Yes, just another example. I also believe that you know, you have those solo agents that are like Mike Ferry agents that know how to produce leads, I think they're going to be okay for a while, although it's they're going to have a hard time competing at the service level when you have people like you doing all these ancillary things that that they're never going to be able to do that. But a brand new agent coming into the industry, in my opinion, even today, will not survive if they're not on a team. Because there's just so much value that that is coming from people like you just taking the experience for the consumer for the client to a whole new level. So anyway,
Gaurav Gambhir 43:38
If I may add one last thing, right. Don't look at teams, as someone who takes things away from you. Look at a team as a platform where you can build your own brand. Nobody wants to build the iOS and then build another Apple, they can sell apps on the Apple platform or the iOS platform or the Android platform and be very, very successful. You don't have to think of this as a team take something away from you. I can get I can be if an agent joins our team, we tell them, the first pitch you make is I am the I'm a member of the ninth-largest Keller Williams team in the country, we do over 1500 transactions with $365 million worth of volume. I bring a lot of experience behind me. And here's nine people that can serve me and my clients and is what I bring to the table on my first listing presentation. You cannot have that as an individual agent. It's not a bad idea to do it if you want it to. But don't look at this as someone who's gonna take something away. It's what you bring to the table. People look at the percentage or the commission structure is the opportunity lost that you don't count on because there are three more transactions. You've got a one which you didn't get that changes everything.
Brian Charlesworth 44:49
Percentage means nothing. Income means everything. So look at the income you can make by joining a team don't look at the percentage split because that doesn't matter. It's About you and be a brand new agent come in and join a team and make hundreds of 1000s of dollars a year. And that's incredible.
Gaurav Gambhir 45:06
Absolutely. That's what my favorite book, one of my favorites is Profit First. There's a great book and it's changed my perspective on how I look at things. It's not the ego on the volume. It's the profit that you make at the end of the year on your team. If you're not, what are the volume do for you? Nothing?
Brian Charlesworth 45:20
Yes. Okay. Well said, Gaurav. It's been great getting to know you today. Thank you so much for joining me on the show. If I didn't have another commitment in one minute, I would actually go deeper with you because this is a lot of fun. But thank you so much looking really looking forward to getting to know you and spending more time with you. So thanks for joining us on the show today and we'll stay in touch okay.
Gaurav Gambhir 45:43
My pleasure. And my way to kind of get in contact with me will be Gaurav G-a-u-r-a-v @thecondoshops.com. Thanks for having me.
Brian Charlesworth 45:51
Again, you guys reach out. He's got a lot of ancillary businesses feel free to reach out and partner that may be your solution to jumping into the different businesses, many different businesses that Gaurav has built. So thanks again, Gaurav.
Gaurav Gambhir 46:08
I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks a lot.