[00:00:00] All right, well, coming in, Gabe Cordova, how are you doing, Gabe? I'm doing well. How are you, Ryan? Pumped up, excited to see you here today.
[00:00:08] It's been like it has been a while. I mean, just just living the dream of all these amazing speakers, giving some some knowledge bombs.
[00:00:15] Absolutely. It's been great. So. And you're one of them. So thank you for joining us. I really appreciate it.
[00:00:23] Gabe is for those of you who don't know Gabe, Gabe is the president of Fire Point. Is that still your role? It is, yes.
[00:00:29] Ok, so anyway, Gabe is going to talk to us about making accountability, your team's number one secret weapon.
[00:00:38] And I am pumped up to hear this Gabes.
[00:00:40] I'm going to let you start off and we'll just dove into questions as you go throughout.
[00:00:44] Yeah. I mean, and, you know, nothing's sexier and more exciting to talk about than accountability.
[00:00:51] Totally agree with that. You know, I agree with that.
[00:00:55] But, yeah, it's you know, and what's crazy about it is I think everybody knows that they need accountability. And I think, you know, you get two different perspectives, right. It's accountability from the team lead aspect. And you got accountability as the team members. And I know we're lifers. I don't think we can actually ask questions and see stuff. But you're listening to this. I want you to think about when have you ever had a personal trainer, if you wanted a personal trainer when it comes to just working out? And why have you had a real estate coach or thought about it? Right. It all comes back to accountability and and having somebody, if we can't do that ourselves, really inspect what we expect as we're going through our through our business.
[00:01:36] So one thing I like and that gave is positive accountability. Right. I mean, if you think of working out, you basically tell somebody, these are my goals. This is what I want to accomplish. I want to get to I want to get bigger or I want to lose weight or I want to whatever it is, it's going to make you that ultimate health fanatic. And it's the same thing in business. Do we in real estate, do we have our agents and help them achieve their goals or is it our goals we focus on? And as soon as it becomes their goals and positive accountability and just helping them get to what they want to accomplish completely changes the dynamic of all communication with that agent.
[00:02:17] One hundred percent and actually one of my notes and I love talking about it, is it's not even so much accountability. And I'd love, I think, team leaders and agents to have that mental shift that it's really not as much accountability. It is coaching and lifting it up. Right. So as a team lead, if I if I'm in the CRM and or I'm looking at my dashboards and Sisu, whatever it is and inspecting what I expect, it's everything that I'm seeing is coming from the approach of wanting to coach my team up. Right. We have a common goal. Sell more homes with less handholding, less time for that work life balance. So when I coming out to them versus like cracking the whip and beating them up, it's let's look at this as coaching and lifting up. Right. And I love using the gym analogy just because when you think about a trainer, whether you've had one or not, they're not really beating you up as much as they're encouraging one more wrap or hang in there. You've got this right. So I think we really need to look at it. And through coaching and positive reinforcement, you get accountability. And it's not just accountability that you're holding them to, but self accountability. And that's really where the magic, I think, starts working is when agents and team members, everybody has that common goal and they're holding each other accountable. Is it and I know I know I shot Zach over a forum around if I could share screen, but I wanted to show because you can you can share a screen.
[00:03:41] Go ahead. I'll turn it on here. For those of you who don't know, in addition to being president, CEO of Fire Point, Gabe actually runs a team as well or has a team.
[00:03:51] I'm not sure you run it on a daily basis, but so, I mean, he's speaking from experience here.
[00:03:57] So, yeah, I've been a agent team, lead broker. I mean, any and all of the above at different points for almost the last twenty years and really coming over to to help build and run by point this last year, that last year when I was really hands on, we did over eight hundred sales that year. And this is you know, this is a lot of stuff that we've implemented and even adjusted since then. So, you know, I love talking from a point of I get a guy's accountability is not a lot of this isn't easy. And if it was easy, everybody would be doing it and be in that top two, three percent or not. But we can simplify it, right. And give you steps. You don't have to reinvent that.
[00:04:35] So if want to share your screen, you can hit share screen and feel free to share that application. If you have multiple monitors, maybe share your other monitor.
[00:04:47] Yep, we'll do. Here's what I want to share with you guys coming up. Here is when it comes to accountability, coach, whoever we want to call it. First thing is, I think I don't think you just have to set expectations. Right. So. I don't know if we know what our percentages between individual agents and teams are on here, but this goes out for all of you, right? If you're on your own, what I'm going to share. Look at this. Have somebody hold you accountable, even if it's yourself, your spouse. Right. If you're on a team, it's setting expectations. So I speak to a lot of the teams out there because there's just a majority of my experience is we can't just assume our team members are going to read our mind. We can't assume that they're going to remember everything that we talk about. So I think when you're hiring an onboarding, somebody, first of all, you have to have some sort of expectation.
[00:05:32] So what I want to do is reassuring to monitors. Let's see here.
[00:05:43] And there goes sorry, locked up on me there a second, all right.
[00:05:49] Can you see let's see, here you go, we've got your screen yet.
[00:05:55] All right, so we just append this to her. But I think a lot of teams and I emailed this, you guys, Brian.
[00:05:59] So if you guys want to share these out, feel free to link it out to everybody now. So thank you.
[00:06:05] Awesome. Yeah. So so is our agreement just setting expectations with everything? I mean, this goes through commissions, all of that. But what I want to focus on and we just append this to the contract and we we got a lot of this from other people. Don Corder did a lot of this and other agents. I know you just have Barry on. I mean, he's a genius. Everybody's willing to share this industry. So find something that's close and then just customize it. But what I recommend is really going through and setting expectations, especially when it's coming to that Leegin lead follow up, because it's typically during the expectation side where we are falling down, we're not doing it. So just literally put in here what you wanted to do in the CRM, what happens during distribution, especially those of us that have integrated everything with Sisu. We've made this very easy so they can go in and look at their numbers. But you definitely want to go through and have a conversation when they're on board. Right. Put this up. I have a copy of this in your meeting rooms and we're a lot we're virtual now, but make sure everybody has a copy of this so that when you're having those morning huddles, when you're doing things, you can just go through and say, hey, did we follow the lead follow procedures or not? Where did we fall fall apart? Did we follow the rule of three? Everything that is set up that we're expecting them to do, let's have visible.
[00:07:22] They can they can see the file. I love everybody just putting a hard copy of this and saving it, but it gives you something to go back to when you're having to talk to them about why why was this taken away or why do we have to reassign it? It's black and white. This is from day one. And then don't file it away. Reference back through what's going on during your weekly meetings, your comments, everything like that. Use this as a living document in your business to help coach everyone up. Does that make sense? You don't just file it away. Do you want to keep it going? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, yeah, and here's the thing, you know, if you're the team leader, know it, take that document that Brian, his team have shared out, make it your own and go through it. But that's the biggest thing I think is setting those expectations and knowing what you want them to do. And everybody is on the same page.
[00:08:18] Right? I think another area where people go wrong is and this is just a decision you have to make in your business plan, especially if you're running a team. Is everybody following the same procedures? And to me, it's a little bit different on setting those expectations and accountability. Really. Think about the journey of the client. I tell agents it's not our job. It's our buyers. It's our sellers. Right. And not to lead sources are the same. So you really have to understand when you're sitting down, you're setting up your accountability, your your follow up procedures. Sit down and think about where your business is coming from, how I'm going to hold my team accountable to follow up with somebody I met at Open House is different than somebody from Zillow versus Realtor dot com versus PPC or Facebook. Any of those, you really have to focus where are they in their journey, create that follow up cadence and then that's that living document. Are we holding everybody accountable or coaching them to that highest conversion for that particular lead source? When you're coaching it up and they're seeing that conversion, I promise you the accountability follows it. So hopefully that makes it makes sense to everybody.
[00:09:32] But I think your muted Brian.
[00:09:37] I keep having phone calls come in and when I need to meet that out, so anyway, for those of you asking, are there links, those are all posted. If you just look above in the comments, you'll see all of those links. So, Gabe, thanks for for sharing those out. And everybody, you have access to those in the comments.
[00:09:56] Yeah. And I just actually got a message on Facebook. Rule of three real quick is just a follow up procedure we've done for years. I've also provided legal I'll show you really quick also on on that one. But that is really it. Just this book we follow and we literally give you step by step process in here. But basically what it is, it's the contact. And I think Barry was just talking about their follow up. And I don't want to screw up what he said, but it really is that first 10 days are really important. It's similar to that. We go a little bit different again, find what works for you. But it's three times a day for three days, three times a week for three weeks, three times a month for three months. Michael Jackson and I have talked about this for years. It's a great way to stay in front of them. And we break it down, really what it is, and day by day for you guys. So again, we've also shared that with Brian and his team so that you guys can put that to work for you. So it is all about then tracking those. What's great is that a lot of touches, a lot of it is automated, but you're focusing on those first three to ten days, whatever it is, and then track those numbers, track those results. This is what I love about what you guys do, is because all of that automatically filters in to the dashboards and the follow up cadence is that that you guys have that that you want.
[00:11:18] Awesome. So.
[00:11:22] We've talked you've talked a lot about accountability with agents and lead follow up. What other what other areas are important for you guys with with accountability and positive accountability?
[00:11:37] Yeah, I think it's a big area where we fall down. And I don't even think this is unique to real estate, but is we talk about accountability. First of all, I want to get away from that. It's negative. It does not have to be disciplined. It does not have to be negative. So other areas when it comes to accountability is celebrate those wins. Right. You need to have a way as a team, you guys are announcing the wins, whether it's pending contracts, new deals coming in because of it's always about following. Did you follow the follow up procedures? Did you not do that? Did you not do that? That gets old. And again, that's what brings in that negativity when it comes to accountability. But you need to be able to do something. Just got knocked off that dog, knocked something over in the other room. Oh, well, crash live webinars. So anyway, so so focus on those wins as well, because otherwise it's it's always going to come back to that negative side. So one of those things to do, we want to keep your screens. But when it comes to accountability, we're talking a lot about phone calls. I know you've got people as far as don't be afraid of these. We've got to make the phone calls, share those, share those with everybody. If you guys have got scripting, whatever it is in your team, huddles and everything, don't just make it about the list, everything.
[00:12:59] Let's have some interaction. Let's listen to phone calls. Your technology should be recording all of your phone calls for you. Get in there and let me listen to those calls. And we're talking the good with the ones that need coaching and improvement. So so it's not just about how many touches and looking at that. But let's listen. How did somebody overcome objection? How did somebody not overcome it? All this is built into your your tools and systems. So so just utilize that leverage it and share it with the team and make it make it visible. Here's the other thing, too, is I think teams feel not just the checklist, but what's going on. So your dashboards and for those who haven't seen them, if you have one to share, but you should have these dashboards up from Sisu on the board. What is everybody doing? How many calls? What is our goal or are we trying to get to have those visible, have them? If you're doing zoom meetings right now and you're not in person, that's fine. Have that pulled up and have that shared while you're talking. It doesn't have to be. You have these big screens like we have right now, have up all the numbers, the stats. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Right. We can have a great team meeting in the morning just like this. What is it? What is our close-by and where are we at? Are we on pace? Right.
[00:14:11] You can break this down for a company. You can break this down by agent, share that visibility with everybody because weather agents don't like to lose. Agents are competitive. So when you can go through this, it's not just talking about it. Literally show your dashboards what you guys are doing. I mean, and you guys have packaged this beautifully, right. So everybody can easily see what's going on at my own pace. Am I not a case? Where do we need to need to step in? And then again, what starts happening without even trying is our fun accountability that we're all dreading and don't really want to do turns into really we're just checking in and everybody is coaching and lifting each other up. So, so, so other areas of focus in share share the wins and successes through the means that we're using. Right. So Barrigan, right before we came on and talked about air, land and sea, we're heading it from all areas, the same thing. But don't hide that right. If you're doing postcards and we have a great success, show what happened, show you there's a great phone call where somebody overcame an objection of they already have an agent signed by his rep and they they won them over. They said an appointment, whatever it is, play those, share those. Right. Don't keep everything hidden behind the scenes because you think accountability just has to be one on one. Share all of that.
[00:15:29] The calls, the the when you send a mass email something, somebody gets a great Openreach. Sure. That what is happening, share with the team and then share the results on that dashboard is money. And there are so many teams that I've spoken to when I've asked them, do you have this up in every one of your stand up models and all like, well, no, the company won. Really. I just look at as the team leader tell no share that that needs to be visible to everybody. That should be part of the culture that you're fostering is the fact that we don't have anything to hide. You're right. You're building your team the right way. There's enough lead, enough opportunity, everything to go around, share what's going on, and they start seeing that success. Think when you're looking at that every single day, you don't have any surprises. How does Suzy have ten times the contracts of Bob and so on? If you're watching it every day, you don't really all of a sudden realize. The huge gap, you're seeing them slowly pull away and there could be focus on that, right? The team can be right behind everybody else. What can we do? Dove in. Is that the calls of the emails? It just need to make it visible to the entire team. Share that. Don't hide it to yourself, and then just show it one on one when when somebody is falling behind.
[00:16:43] So my opinion of this, and I actually still hold a few agents accountable on my my wife's team, but my opinion of this game is you should never have a team meeting or you should never have a one on one, which you should have every week, but you should never have a one on one where you don't have their dashboards in front of them. You don't you need to have their conversion ratios. You need to know their numbers. By having that, you're having an intelligent decision about where they can strengthen their skills. You don't have that. You're really managing emotion. One on one becomes about all about why they aren't having success. And it usually ends up diving into some of their personal issues, which is not something you ever want to do as a team leader.
[00:17:31] I'm going to add to that, though. So on that one want to have the dashboard's, want to make sure people are hearing, though I personally and everybody does it differently, that one on one doesn't just also have to be that agent's dashboard. Hopefully you're fostering a culture to where somebody's struggling and. We know this right is somebody struggling if some of the metrics are more likely, they're probably not just putting in the phone call somebody else's. It's a numbers game. We see it over and over and over. So when you're showing you're not just talking to something that's not achievable, show somebody on the team who's doing it. And another great tool, again, this comes down to culture on your team. But as a team, when it comes to accountability, it shouldn't just be me all day long. Harping, harping, harping. You can go to some of your rock stars. And again, it comes down to culture, but go to one of your top agents and ask them, hey, you know, next week, you know, I've had four or five one on ones with Brian and he's just he's just not getting up there and we've done it. Would you mind doing a couple of the one on ones? I'd love for him to be able to talk to you.
[00:18:32] And what's going to let them also talk to their peers? You should have some of your top agents and help them, whether it's a better split or whatever that is or percentage of that agents, if they increase the leverage your team on on that ability, it's not just you that affect everybody. So if it was my top agent and Brian, you're struggling a little bit. We've had a couple of long ones. I've seen some effort. They're bringing that top agent. Let them do one or two of the of the one on ones. And I'll tell the top agent, hey, you helped get Brian up. I'm going to give you 10 percent of the company's dollar on those. But let them also talk to agents who are doing it because it's it's a nice change, first of all. But it's also really nice for the agent to talk to. The agent who's actually doing it is talking to them, not from somebody who's maybe more behind the desk and not in the business as much as that other person. So so leverage that team as well. And some of those one on ones, it doesn't always have to be.
[00:19:29] You gave us such a great point is to make sure that you are not always the person holding someone accountable. And the way to do that, there are several ways to do it.
[00:19:40] Gabe just talked about one, bring another agent and maybe have them be a mentor, maybe give them five percent of their first five transactions or whatever. There's there's opportunities there. In addition to that, there are opportunities to.
[00:19:55] Do things like create challenges among your team and have half your team compete against the other half? Well, the minute you do that, you have everybody on each of those teams holding each other accountable because nobody wants to lose. And so rather than everything coming from game, holding his team accountable, he's got agents pushing each other and holding them accountable. And so I just there's so many ways to do that. But that culture of accountability should flow not just between you and your agent, but among the entire organization.
[00:20:27] One hundred percent. Because when you have that culture that's happening, they realize by lifting, I'm going to keep using you as a struggling agent. Right. By lifting Brian up and getting Brian doing the same or at least close to that fuels the ability for additional leads or maybe more of those more expensive leads that come in that convert faster. You have to have this mix. But everybody realizes that by building up the team and getting more sales, it benefits everybody. So it's not even just that that extra percentage that that other age is going to get. It's also bettering everything, because as the team leader, we're paying for all of our tools, Sisu, all that stuff so so that we can have gamification. And that was a two points of communication was one of them. And you guys do a great job of this. And when you're dividing up your team to do that, we're have seen it really, really successful is divvy it up to where you either seniority or by BioProduction. So you have a mix of new experience, high producers, producers, because they help lift each other up. Right. And it really brings it brings it in. And you guys do a great job of displaying gamification.
[00:21:33] So did you guys have any personal experiences with your team, Gabe, on cells, contests that have just taken things over the top for you?
[00:21:41] Yeah, we're changing up a little bit. How I think we're going to go forward just with us as industry changes and they're not together as much on the call nights and things like that. So we have great, great results when we've done trips to Mexico. Right. To sell so much in volume or of the company generated business, we'll take you to Mexico, things like that. So we're kind of rethinking how we're going to do that in the state that we're living now. But it's always been something exciting to look forward to. And I think you don't have to go that grand start small, right? It can be drinks. We could be happy hour or whatever it is. I mean, it can be know we'll pay for Disney Plus and Postmus for mother's fun. Things you can do right now, especially if you're growing and scaling up.
[00:22:28] Yeah, I've seen it really doesn't matter as much what the reward is, as much as getting a competition going. And I recommend doing them frequently monthly maybe where every month you have a new competition so that you have no atmosphere.
[00:22:46] No. How do you get people? We talk about these quarterly years in real estate and the reason you want to do this quarterly year is so you can start strong and you can end the quarter strong.
[00:22:58] It's the same thing with with your month.
[00:23:00] How do you get so you start the month strong and end the month strong. And this will make a significant difference in your ability to do that if you'll run these on a monthly basis.
[00:23:09] Yeah, so I think it's twofold on that. I think you're right. There's monthly, quarterly and then annual. Right. Are going to have people joining your team that come in and they need to find like they have a fighting chance. Right. So you have these shorter, smaller contests that you go through quarterly and then and then your annual ones. You always want somebody to feel like they've got a chance. If you just do an annual, you can get six months in and it's like, oh, well, there's no way I'm going to catch this person. There's no way I'm going to hit this if it's an individual major one. So it kind of gives up. So those those shorter goals or shorter steps use those to get to the end when it comes to those contests. Right. So just make sure that you've thought it through that the the monthly challenges that then go into quarterly, when you add those together, it makes that annual contest achievable and actually makes it easier to come up with it. And the other thing on that, too, is include your team. I keep coming back. It doesn't have to be you coming up with a contest. The ideas include the team helped them set the bar as well. Right. Because it's also a lot easier to hold somebody accountable to their own numbers. And if you're an agent on a team, plug your ears right now to give them a second. Speaking of the team, let's include your team on this. They will set the bar higher for themselves probably than you. Right. And it's so much easier to hold somebody accountable or coach them up to their own expectations and numbers than yours. So that really, really helps a lot.
[00:24:37] Yeah, I think that is really the key with positive accountability. If you.
[00:24:43] It's not about your numbers as a team owner, it's not about displaying your team dashboard. It's about figuring out what the agent wants, the same way you figure out what your client wants. Figure out what your agent wants and do everything you can to get them there. And was there anything to get them there?
[00:25:03] If you don't understand their numbers, if you don't understand their weaknesses, you don't understand their conversion ratios, you've got to know their activities and know where they're failing and where they're having successes.
[00:25:14] One hundred percent if you just go into it and like here, here are my goals as the team leader. What I want to get everybody to makes it really hard. Right. Get to know your team members. This becomes a culture, somewhat of a family and get to know their why. All right. So if you're a team leader listening to this right now, look at the members on your team. Do you know whom? Do you understand why they're doing this? What is their wife or getting up and hitting that? Not to hurt your ego, but it's not to make you the team leader or they may know and love you. But that's not there. Why? That's not what's filling their bucket every single day. Right. So you understand that why that helps you then understand them and then coach them up to their numbers. Don't overthink this and make this all about OK. I've just got to be a hard ass and crack the whip and beat people up every day. That is the wrong approach to accountability. Coach them up. Coach members is they're setting.
[00:26:08] I'm so glad you brought up the why. I think most of us now know who Simon Sinek is. Really got us all to be aware of the why maybe ten years ago.
[00:26:18] Start with. Start with why.
[00:26:20] Start with why. I want to add to that, though, because. Understanding where your age, what your agents, why is there's more to that, it's not just why are you doing this? It might be for my family. It may be to prove a point. It may be whatever it is, but understand not only their why, but where it is they want to be in one year, in two years and three years. And if you can make your role helping them get there, which is what I love, is when people help build teams within their team because you may have someone who wants to go build a team, they don't necessarily want to have that one hundred thousand dollar expense every month. So if they can leverage some of your expenses and build a team or they just have different overrides, that's a win win for both of you. So find out what it is they want to accomplish and help them get there. That is your number one thing as a leader, really.
[00:27:16] I love that you brought that up because I think everybody, if they're really honest with themselves, one of their biggest fears about building a team is, well, I'm going to teach somebody how to do this. Who is my competition that they're going to leave me or you talking about a team leader, like the turnover on my team is terrible and I've been there. I'll be the first to admit that it sucked. You would just build a bill to build them. And it seemed like your rock stars were leaving. And I believe that was my fault. We didn't understand enough that that's OK. But let's let's if you build the right environment and force them to grow, hopefully they're building that still within your umbrella. Right. You can still manage to bring that all together and build them up in. Let's be honest with each other, it's going to happen, right, if you're going to have some on your team, they're going to they're going to leave you at some point. And I would say, look at it this way. If you built somebody up and they were able to do that, you guys really had a great journey together. Now they're able to do this on their own if it happens, which I hope it doesn't. But it's going to we are still bettering our industry, right? We are building people up. I think you always want to leave people better than you found them. So. So the fear of people leaving your team, either whether through accountability or them being successful. Don't let that hold you back. Build the right culture of coaching accountability through coaching. You have a massive team of successful people who don't want to take on the responsibility of the liability of all the expenses and everything that we're doing and and just know that you're bettering everybody's lives through the through that process of coaching accountability.
[00:28:51] Great. Ricky Kane just made a comment. It's also good for team members to openly share their ways with the team. And Ricky, I think that's a great point.
[00:29:00] One of the reasons that that's so important is a lot of team members don't have a Y, and if they can see and experience somebody else's Y, sometimes that will allow them to discover their own. Because discovering a Y if you don't have a Y, then it's really tough to be successful at anything.
[00:29:20] I agree. We did a whole exercise and I got to wrap it up here. We did a whole exercise for everybody. It was almost like a vision board type thing, but they basically put their Y and things in their own words on it. We just put that up in our in our conference room. And I know a lot of people don't have space right now. We're going in. But again, those are things you can share in your huddles, take turns, sharing people's why is why they're there.
[00:29:39] Awesome. Gabe, thank you so much for joining us today. Always love spending time with you. It's been so great having you at the summit today. If you guys have any questions for Gabe, feel free to drop them in here. There's a lot of chat going on here. Also, we have Greg Harrelson joining us here in just a minute. He's not in here for just quite yet. So give us just a minute. We'll take maybe a two minute break until Greg gets back. And we'll see you all then. Thanks a lot.
[00:30:09] Appreciate it.
