[00:00:00] We're back on I'm going to bring Jim in short on here shortly, if it's anything like the conversations that I've had with Jim and Shawn in the past, it's going to be absolutely mind blowing. So I will bring them on here. Jim, Shawn, what's up, guys? Hey, well, is that I'm stoked to have you upset that both of you, because I want to get a sense of a for the for either of you or we'll have plenty to talk about here. How you guys then give us a little update on what you've been up to recently.
[00:00:35] Well, hey, thanks. Yeah. Thanks for having us. We're glad to be here, by the way. I love. I was just sharing the the link at Sisu gret. Whatever.
[00:00:43] I love that Sisu great means it's the finish the closer it's a finish word. And the closest translation for Sisu is grit or determination.
[00:00:52] So I do is finished. I didn't know that. So that's awesome.
[00:00:55] Yeah. I read the book. Angela Duckworth. She talks about that. The closest way to describe grit is it's like a finish, almost like a cultural thing, like a stoic kind of determination. So, OK, cool factor.
[00:01:14] Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks for having us. Yeah. So you and I have talked over the years and and kind of kind of the latest is and what I think we've been talking with you and Frank and Brian about is how Jim Gray and I, my business partner Jim there are using that using Sisu now at our new company. So we were at a we were at a different brokerage, a franchise brokerage, or now with a brokerage called Realty. And so we made that switch to realty in February here of twenty twenty. Right during the whole shutdown. And what should we do with covid and all that kind of stuff. And so now here we are kind of full circle with with really leveraging Sisu into performance for business partners all across the United States. And we just launched our nationwide challenges, which we can talk more about. And so, Jim, Jim and a number of us from our former brokerage and other brokerages have been on this on this journey. And we're glad to have you as a part of it. So thanks. Thanks for having us, Jim. Anything you would add to that? No, man.
[00:02:25] I mean, Sisu for us anyway is sort of that magical ingredient that helps us. So it's kind of like ground zero, right? So it helps us. It helps us all decide what we're talking about. So we're always talking about the same thing. Right, as it pertains to to production. So know in our experience, the integration that that that's always critical. We have the terms defined. We've quantified the terms, and then we can have we can have a conversation around that. I'd like to create Sisu just for my my 20 year old daughter, because I think that would be good. Maybe our arguments would be more productive. And the goal, the actual what we can turn that into something. Maybe that's maybe that's that's the next iteration.
[00:03:19] Well, and Zach, for so for anybody who's watching this live or recorded. Right. So kind of the reference just for for relevancy is last year, Jim and I owned the company. Jim was the director of lead generation for the company. We were the number 13 largest Williams team in the world. No, no. Thirty one across all brokerages. And we did about five million GCI. So five million in gross commission income on one hundred and seventy one million in volume for four hundred and sixty four units. So that's kind of some relevancy in terms of this stuff. What we were doing, we were the first franchised real estate team in the history of the United States, and so we dealt with agents and teams again and again and again. We were also maps, coaches that are at our previous brokerage and we love our previous brokerage. By the way, Jim and I were professionally trained coaches helping real estate agents. My velvet rope was fifty million in volume or higher. OK, so I only coached teams and what Jim is referencing or coaching agents, coaching teams and what we love about. You've got a goal.
[00:04:32] You've got an actual and most people hey, if you're on goal, great. What caused that success and how do you repeat it? Or if you're not on goal, how are you going to, as we say in the coaching business, close the gap? Like, what are you going to do to close the gap? And so it's this scoreboard architecture that Sisu has that as a business owner or a leader of a sales team or even to. An agent be more self regulated and self managed. That's what we love about Sisu is it provides the scoreboard, right? It provides a scoreboard of how you're actually doing. And most of us could use this and other parts of our life as well. But especially you guys are the first ones to really build a legit scoreboard in real estate. So we're we're loving it. So that's kind of the context for those who don't know us, is we've been doing this for a long time and we we kind of have seen this again and again, what leads to success? And it's a lot of the stuff that Sisu is tracking. So thank you for that.
[00:05:38] I think it would be valuable and thanks for showing us out. I think it'd be really valuable to hear from each of you. If I'm an agent, I get on or if I'm a team, I get on a coaching call with either of you. What's that coaching call going to look like? Is there like a structure or how how do you structure your coach? And I'd love to hear that because you're both doing cause. Right. So I'd love to hear from both of you because I'm sure it's a little different.
[00:06:00] Yeah. Jim, you want to tackle that?
[00:06:02] Yeah. So so the thing about the thing about the even people who enter coaching, it's it's always about people, generally speaking, don't don't work for money. Right. They they work for money to fund a lifestyle. Right. Or to fund whatever their vision of perfect life is. Right. And so understanding that that is true, the coaching call always follows essentially a bit of a path. Right. So we always discuss what was the goal for last week and then what was the reality. Right. And then we just we we interrogate was there a gap is there is. And there generally can be commonly. Can we interrogate what happened? Right. This is where a precise sort of measuring methodology becomes super important. So it's always like, all right, we said we were going to do this. Did we do it? No. OK, what happened? OK, so understanding that this happened to get to where we said we were going to be by this time next week, now what needs to happen? Right. So we're talking about what was the goal? What was the actual now? What is the what's the plan and the way forward? Right. Here's what's interesting, too, about that. Then the next question is, do you have everything that you need to execute this plan so that next week, not only do we hit the weekly goal, but we're we're on target for the year to date goal. And then we the thing I always as a coach, try to do this because what we're working for is the down payment on that house that you want to you want to buy by September.
[00:07:52] By October. By February. Right, Fred. And I can tell you that and I've been in this position because I've been coached and Benoff all right. I've had clients that I, I feel strongly about that I've coached in our off goal. And it gets this place where you can you can have a loving conversation about, look, man, we've got to start deciding what's going to change either either we've got to change our activities or we've got to change the goal. And either of those is fine. Right. But what I love about this particular conversation is the person being coached has the opportunity to take one hundred percent responsibility for themselves. Right. And technologies like Sisu and others just having that. It's like that neutral third party that says these are the immutable facts. Now, let's let's have a discussion around around that. So those are I would say that that's generally where the where the coaching call goes to. By the way, the converse is also true. You know, if we're ahead of goal, then we can we can begin to readjust the goal again. Hey, maybe we've undershot, right? What if we put more pressure on this activity or this system? How how far beyond goal do you think that could take us and speculate around that, adjust the dials and then go right back at it? So, I mean, that's that's that's kind of how I do it. John, how do I know you do something similar?
[00:09:30] Yeah. All the top coaches in the world, in any industry. Right. They kind of follow these basic fundamentals. So we have a there's a lot of truisms around this stuff that you want to kind of lay the foundation for. Zach, I know you and Brian have really laid the groundwork on this on a lot of like the reasons behind using a product like Sisu. I mean, you could use any product, right? We we had built out our own proprietary spreadsheet. System for hundreds of thousands of dollars before we use Sisu. OK, and and even the improvements, by the way, that you've made on it, it helps because you had numbers, right? OK, so numbers is the language of business. And we know what you track can be improved. So if I'm getting on a coaching call with somebody and I learn this from being in Gary Keller's private mastermind for five years and being coached by Tony to sell one of the premier performance productivity coaches in real estate in the world, he was my personal coach for three and a half years, and I'm very, very proud to have gone through that crucible. So what? So here's what we know. The very first thing I'm going to get to on a coaching call is, OK, where are you at? Right. Give me your numbers. Don't tell me a story.
[00:10:54] Don't tell me what happened this week and how the dog ate your homework and the cat died and 20 other things that came up because as a coach, I know the number one way I'm going to serve this person. And this would be for business owners, team owners and brokers, whoever, or like what we're doing now across the United States. The conversation is where you at? OK, and then what are you going to do to stay on goal or to Jim's point, do we need to set the goal higher? Like sometimes people need some they need a healthy amount of tension. That's that healthy amount of tension is normally where growth occurs. And so as a coach, I'm always doing that. This would be the same. You know, we really get this, Zach. This really makes a lot of sense to anybody you talk to who's ever played a been coached by somebody in a sport or ever taken piano lessons or whatever, like we get it in all these other areas of life. I have a PowerPoint that I used on our nationwide rollout where I talk about Apple Watch. Right. And closing the rings on your Apple Watch or your Fitbit or whatever. Like we totally get it in these other areas of our life that. Well, yeah, of course you want to know go versus actual and what are my commitments to close the gap.
[00:12:08] But when it comes to real estate, somehow it's like like it's like gravity doesn't apply. And, you know, I'm just going to wing it every day and I'm going to show up and things are going to happen, I'm pretty sure. And and it just doesn't work that way. Those of us who have been in real estate know that that's that that is that's la la la land. That doesn't that's not real world. That's HDTV world. That doesn't happen that way. So that's why we need a we need a tool where you're going to consistently be tracking you. And really on a daily basis, you get in a daily habit of tracking your leading indicators because because real estate is a lot like farming. Right? Like you're planting the seed, planting the seeds. There's so there's so much time delay between your your reward for the leading KPIs that you do on your business, your contacts, appointments, stuff like that. So if you're not tracking that on the front end, one or two things is probably going to happen. Right. You're you're either going to be well, as we say, you're either going to feel too good or too bad about where you are. Right. Like you're going like, oh, I'm sure this is all going to work out when really, you know, you are making five conversations a day and you should have been making twenty or you're going to feel way worse than you should.
[00:13:23] I mean, I've had people who are like I have a guy right now. He's like, oh my gosh, I'm behind goal. And it's like, OK, you have nineteen pending. This is just this is just an agent on a team is nineteen pending goal for the year. Sell seventy three houses now Jim on his own sold fifty seven houses his first year. Right. Jim Wright. There's a fifty seven. You've got a guy on the who's who. I was watching this. Jim sold fifty seven houses first year on his own in a town he hadn't lived in for decades. So it can be done. But most, most people there, if you don't even know where you're at, you're going to feel too good or too bad about where you are. So we want to before we want to get real to get right. And you can't get real if you're not tracking the numbers. I mean, if if we went and I'm very passionate about this, you can tell if we went to a baseball game and there was no scoreboard and it was professional baseball. Yeah. I'd be like I mean, don't tell me those are professionals as professionals. Keep score.
[00:14:21] Yeah. Yes. Keep score on that on that particular point. Right. So everybody who's listening in this is this. You can do it, you can do a bit of a gut check right now. You know, your real estate business. Is it like a pickup game of basketball or is it the NBA finals? How do you keep score? Because trust me, guys, playing pickup, does the score really matter? Is anything at stake? Right. If the and the answer is no, not really. Usually it's just a bunch of old people trying to have a good time and just doing a little exercise in NBA basketball. Millions of dollars are on the line. Hundreds of millions. So the precision with which they measure and track. Right, so you get the comparison. So no judgment there.
[00:15:13] I mean, no judgment. Right. Some people only need to sell two or three houses a year in real estate and they're good. And we get that most most of the most people, though, they actually have they actually have bigger dreams for themselves and their best life. We Jemini actually, Jim, created it. It's called the best life funding worksheet. And it's it's adding up like your living expenses, all of your obligations and your dreams and quantifying that. And coming up with a number we have found most people actually have a bigger financial number than what they originally thought it was.
[00:15:48] You have that gym or is that classified? I got it. I got it. Do you want us to do want to share it? I mean, is it going to take a decade to dig it up? It'll take me probably take me too long to figure it out for here now. Yeah.
[00:16:01] It's it's not much more than what you have. You've got all those production that gold creator for production. And it's kind of like, OK, do I need to next year, right here comes twenty, twenty one. By the way, we're already in twenty, twenty one. For those who didn't know, this is a 90 day business. So we're already at January 7th. Do you need to make one hundred thousand or do you need to make one hundred and fifty thousand. And most people are way off on what the actual number is. And then what happens is they don't do the activities that will get them to the real number.
[00:16:33] They do the activities that get them to a number that they just kind of guesstimated. And that's just the difference between amateurs and professionals. So it look at in in in the United States today, if you want to make more than one hundred thousand dollars in a profession, you have to show up like a professional making that kind making like one hundred and two hundred and three hundred thousand. And real estate does not happen by accident. One of my coaches used to say, look, Shun, anybody can trip across two or three deals a year, right?
[00:17:07] You've got your aunt who buys the house. You've got somebody at an open house who buys a house and then like one other person, one referral from a friend from college or whatever. And that's OK. And there's like there's no there's no good or bad with this. Right. This is just like what you need to fund your perfect life, your best life. If you're going to play that game, though, look how the people who make that kind of money, look how they show up. Zack, if you look at an attorney or a dentist or a doctor or a surgeon, somebody who's making one to five hundred thousand a year, they are very purposeful about how they do that. It might be that the hospital tells them you need to perform one hundred and three heart surgeries. Right. Whatever it is they know and they know where they're standing. Right. They know. OK, I'm at fifty heart surgeries halfway through the year. I'm doing good. So in real estate, the question is maybe are you treating your business with the respect that that other professionals would treat their business? And so that's that's just where we have found you to be very helpful in that, you know, it's in the palm of your hand. It's on your computer. You get a reminder to enter your daily activities, which I love. We used to send out a text message.
[00:18:21] I know. I remember thought, well, yeah, just that our spreadsheets and remember to enter your notes in your spreadsheet when you get home, right? Yeah. Now, now there's like no excuse like that. Sometimes that's a coach's job is to is to call you out on your boss because you know nobody else will. Right. Like if you have a coach or a business partner, that's part of their job is accountability. Yeah, right. And so I call people and say, hey, there's no reason you can't enter your numbers into Sisu. So, you know, we don't have to worry about that. It's not like it's hard to find the app on your phone. Do you know how to open maps on your phone? OK, great. Then you can enter your numbers on your phone. Yeah. And and most people will go for people who own teams. This is helpful. Most people are going to go and hide where you're not willing to go as a leader or a coach for them. So if you don't if you don't call them out on conversations or you don't call them out on appointments or goal versus actual, they won't bring it up. Yeah, right. And it's the conversations. It's the awareness that that tracking your numbers spurs it. What it boils to the surface. That's where the magic happens. And it's really. Yeah.
[00:19:41] Our CEO, he actually still he coaches a handful of agents because he uses since, you know, kind of how we can improve our product. Right. What he's found is when the model you're talking about getting the call first thing you talk about, let's get right to it where you have versus what's your goal? Now you're going to have a much more productive conversation because it's very easy to get lost, you've got a 30 minute coaching call and how easy is it to burn half of that coaching call talking about how your home was? Twenty five under appraisal. Right. And and now you're screwed. And and. Oh, my gosh. And it's this big emotional spiral where next thing coaching calls over and you talk numbers have numbers to talk about in the first place. Right.
[00:20:27] So I can tell you that on the coaching side and for the team leaders on the call, again, having a standardized way to to to measure and track your agent's business, you basically said it. But it is very common that the agents actually you can tell when it's really working for them because they take possession of of the of the coaching conversation. They they know what their numbers are. They already know what you're going to say. Right. They already they'll go right to the gap that many times they'll walk in with a plan. You can tell when as a coach or a team leader, you're you're gaining skill and traction with your agents when in that conversation they do more talking than you do. And it revolves around the key metrics that you've established with them. Right. And it truly is a loving act. It took me some time personally to figure this out, but it is a loving act to disallow the story. Just yeah, we say what happened and what's your plan? And that's it. Why? Because, Mr. Agent, I am as invested in you getting that house for your wife and your kid as you are. I'm not going I care about you enough to not allow you to get off track on the story. Right. So the under appraisal, the flat tire, all these things, of course, they happen. And yet your dream remains this fixed object that we are both unreasonably committed to getting to right now. It's an amazing moment where you you'll see an agent walk in and go hear my numbers. This, this, this, this. I'm going to do this. Ten minutes over. Out you go.
[00:22:12] It's a it's pretty it's a professional conversation. I love. There's a book, Steven Pressfield. It's called The War The War of Art. And it talks about the difference between a professional and an amateur. And it talks about how when a when an amateur golfer shows up to the golf course, they probably keep their score for half of the half of the round by halfway through. It's so emotionally like herding them that they stop keeping track of it. They're breaking their clubs. They're doing all the stuff. Well, a professional goes out there and it's just boom. These are the numbers. I totally laid an egg on the last hole, but it's on to the next one. And we're going to figure out how to overcome this because I have to because this isn't something I'm just doing because I want to do it. This is my job and I'm a professional. We're going to go out there and nail it. Right. And when you are week in, week out focused on the numbers like that, that's what you get to is a professional conversation. Let's make it happen. Not emotional like this is why it didn't happen, right?
[00:23:14] Yeah. And we say bounced between care and candor, a leader or a coach. So it is good to have some care. Hey, I get it. These things are happening in your life. covid is going on sickness, illness, all of life. That's still happening. There are a whole person. And then there's Candar as well. And some sometimes we're if we're not careful, we can be guilty of this. Zach, we're Dannica Koska said this. If you're not careful, you can love somebody right out of the business, which is are we getting real with them? And because you know what? Their spouses isn't going to call them out on it, make it work. If we're to one in real estate and our spouse is doing something else, when I go and have dinner with with my wife, my wife isn't going to say, OK, did you hit your goal on conversations today? No, she wants to be my wife, not my real estate coach. Right. So so we've got to have this balance of care and candor, not all care. And by the way, not all candor.
[00:24:13] Those of us who are hired is we can be like we can like unload on somebody. And that's not that's not good either. We want to get to this. What Jim is describing, and this is kind of the culture or the environment that can happen is a self regulated, self managed, self actualized individual who, yeah, they they're open to coaching. They're humble enough. They set their ego aside and they can say, yeah, here's my numbers. And I didn't take enough listings this month and here's my plan on how to do that. And those calls only need to take eight or ten minutes. We don't need to we don't need to spend thirty minutes on a call unless you want to talk about something else. We just don't need to because they they know what they need to do and everybody is. Roadblocks, right? And if I'm a coach, I'm going to always push to say, hey, great, you know, your goal was three listing's taken, you hit three, listing's taken. I think you can do five. A coach always believes more in you than what you currently believe you're capable of. I have a I have a great coach and mentor, Zach, a business part, a business partner. His name is Devin Doherty. And, you know, that can go in a different direction, which is how can you do the same amount of income and half as much time? So there's always spectrum here for effectiveness, efficiency, dollar per hour. If you show me that you took five listings in a month and you were working 50 hours a week. I can say, well, we could take ten, ten listings a month and 50 hours a week, or what if we did five listings a month and we did it in only twenty five hours a week? How would you how would you do that? And this is all because we can keep score. We have a reliable way to track and measure our progress, whatever it is, lead source. I mean average sales.
[00:26:04] We could just bump average sales price like could we go from three hundred thousand six hundred four average commission percentage, which is not enough. I think this might open up a can of worms here.
[00:26:18] Jim, I know you got all kinds of stuff around. Lead source conversion, lead source tracking. You've given talks at Vilaboa that I've heard people raving about is horse conversion. How do you tackle that whole animal of tracking and converting lead sources?
[00:26:37] Yeah, that is that's a that's a great question. So there are there's a number of ways to to think about that. So I'll give I'll give a treetop answer and then I'll kind of take it down a little bit. Right. So the first thing to remember is we all own a business. Right. So my my recommendation always is to treat it like a business. Right. And here's the other here's the other sort of precept here is that especially in this age of covid and kind of what code will create going forward is my experience that we as agents now are underestimating the number of leads we need to be interacting with to create the number of close's that we want to close. OK, so that's so those two things are very important. Now when it comes to lead sources. I'm going to say this about lead sources. Now you're going to I don't know, you might cancel me. I'm just getting ready. Get ready to cancel. Here's I want to I want to encourage you on something. I'm going to say something. All these sources are good.
[00:27:54] Tell me more, what do you mean by that?
[00:27:57] What I mean to say is that the effectiveness of the lead source is directly proportional to the skill of the agent. This is my long experience over literally hundreds of thousands of leads and hundreds of agents that all lead sources can be good. What determines the quality of a lead? Generally speaking, is the skill level of an agent. Here's what I mean. For every agent that tells me Zillow sucks, there's an agent that tells me Zillow is amazing. For every agent that tells me Facebook leads, they're they're just terrible. There's an agent that tells me they're awesome.
[00:28:43] And here's what I have observed about the differences between those two agents generally. And this is where friends, you can do a gut check on this. The agents that love these lead sources. What I have found is they are highly practiced on their front end scripts, their objection handlers and the way they strategically maneuver a lead to set an appointment. So they have a very, very methodologically sound approach to that lead. OK, so I just want to. So if you take away nothing from that thing, I want you to know is when you get up tomorrow morning and you've got people to call, you might want to just simply tip your head back and say to the universe, every single one of these people is home. They're happy and they want to list with me. All right. That's number one. And number two is different. Lead sources ideally should be tracked separately because the follow up requirements may be different.
[00:29:52] As an example, Facebook leads generally have a longer maturation period. Right. Then these are people that you you discover them far earlier in the buying process for the selling process, which means you have a longer follow up requirement to get them to close, whereas generally Zillow leads. Right. Are going to be further at the at the far end of the funnel. OK, and so it may take less follow, but I want to I want you to kind of mollis around friends. A five percent conversion on an Internet generated lead is pretty good. So what that means is if one hundred leads come in, you may discard ninety five to get to the five agents who are committed professional. They stand on stages, people write songs about them. They're the people that are OK to hear No. Ninety five times because they're digging for those five. Yes. Yeah. So I mean I know that that's I hope that was sort of the answer.
[00:30:51] You might have said, look, I knew I'd get something good out of you there, Jim.
[00:30:55] I think the best salespeople have an extremely high locus of control, meaning they believe they can influence just about anything, whether or not they actually can. They believe they can. And I think if you wake up with that mindset of, hey, these lead sources can be great and I'm going to make them great, I'm not learning how to make them great, but that's it right there. That mindset that is way more powerful than what lead sources are in my next follow up queue. Yeah, yeah.
[00:31:21] Exacta to that point of skill level. And this is due to the numbers tracking. So some people might find this interesting. And I'd actually like to compare notes here with a lot of your other Sisu users. We're seeing the the the the most effective agents, probably highest skill level. Also lead source is a part of that. They're getting between thirty to forty conversations to a closing. OK, now on the other side of the spectrum, a newbie agent. If you look over there first six months, it could be two or three hundred conversations to a closing. OK, so a really easy way for people to chunk this down is let's say you're at one hundred conversations to a closing and your average commission is seven thousand dollars. Just take seven thousand into the one hundred conversations and you're basically at 70 dollars per conversation. That's nice. Now, that only happens when you ring the bell on one hundred conversations consistently week after week after week for at least 90 days. Yeah. And so this is the power that it can give us. It can it can reinvigorate you in your career where you can say, OK, that conversation was just worth 70 bucks or 50 bucks or one hundred and eighty bucks. And that's what we need in this business, is where we start to view those no's as a win. Right. And you can do that when you track the numbers. You can see it across the team. You guys probably at Sisu have some big number that I'd really love to see. Right.
[00:33:02] Let's let's run the numbers. Yeah. All right, guys. Well, we're we're just we're out we're actually a little over time. So we're going to we're going to move on to our next session. But I appreciate both of you hopping on a lot of good stuff.
[00:33:20] I think team leaders, brokers can take this into their next coaching meeting. Right. And and make it a little more no space to make it a little more professional and get more results out of it. So thanks, guys. We'll let you go here and let's let's reconnect. Jim, I got some new reports and Sisu.
[00:33:35] I got to show you, man. Thanks, guys. OK, thanks.
