[00:00:00] All right, everybody, we're going to kick this thing back off, I'll Brian Wilson on here shortly. I think we are twenty five speakers in today between track and track. So it's been awesome. We had a little mindset from Colton, just barely. And now we're going to hear a little more tactical stuff from Wilson. Listen, I'm going to bring you on.
[00:00:23] How's it going? Can you hear me all right? I hear you. How's it going? Thanks for having me.
[00:00:29] I've seen all day rocks. Well, reached out and we were talking about a couple of things you want to talk about. So a shift that you made in your business recently with with I mean, obviously, everything that's happening, right, covid. But maybe first introduce yourself a little bit. I'm sure we all love to hear a little more about you and your business and where you're coming from.
[00:00:59] Thanks for having me. First off, and my goal is to add as much value to your audience as possible. So a little bit about me. I've been in the real estate industry for nine years. I started building a team about five years ago, and ever since then, we're currently at seven agents to ISA's and actually six staff right now. The last two years, including this year, we've sold over one hundred million and each year about our price points, about one million per property. So at about one hundred plus in terms of transactions. So with that, our top two Legian has always been farming and open houses, and yet we haven't been able to execute on that just because of the environment that we're in. So we had to make some transitions in terms of our spend and track our differently. And our activities obviously have changed, too. So I'm excited to share and of course, any other questions that people might have.
[00:01:51] Yeah, everyone feel free. So so the Facebook comments link to our comments right here. If you have a specific question that you want to go into, nothing's off limits, I'm sure. Wilston, you're putting it out there, that you're an open book, but I'm sure you got a lot.
[00:02:06] I am. I definitely am more than happy to share. I've learned so much from other people, just like the guy. And before me, Kolten, I used to look at his videos when I started in the industry is probably one of the first people to have videos on YouTube. So shout out to Colten.
[00:02:21] That's awesome. Yeah. As I've said this before on the stream probably. But such a cool community around real estate that we got all these people from different markets tuning in. And if you want to go and learn what people are doing in other markets, you just duplicate it right there and you're in your own market and no one's mad at you for it. Right. It's kind of cool. Yeah. Um, so let's talk about the shift. I mean, what when you say your shift from from open houses and farming. It sure was a conscious thing, what I mean, when did it how would it just happen forcibly when it hit or what did that look like?
[00:03:03] Yeah, and just to share a little bit of background in in our area, we're referred to as a SWAT team in real estate just because of how close knit our agents and myself and my staff are. We meet every morning and it used to be in person and it wasn't a hard requirement. I can't force ten, nine, nine, nine employees to be in show up at a certain place. However, we did tie, obviously showing up and hitting certain standards. Who rewards such as getting lower hanging fruit leads from the business, more support, obviously different types of opportunity as long as you show up in the expectation that we have. So showing up was a big part of and still is a big part of what we do. And we still show up every day via Zoom. And of course we talk about our wins and gratitude and the things that we're encountering. I think what started changing was because so many of my agents, actually five out of six of them, not including myself, started from outside the industry. They were brand new agents that had no experience with real estate sales, maybe a little background in sales. But as we know, real estate sales is more about building relationships and is about selling property. I think as long as you earn the trust and you build a relationship with someone, you're able to be in a position to help them with purchase or obviously a listing.
[00:04:20] So from training these new agents to being out there, we used to have a requirement where each week you have to spend eight hours in your farm, whether you're knocking or you're flying and waving at people. That was part of our requirements. Eight hours of Legian that also included being at open houses. If you're going to be there from Sunday one to four, that's three hours of Legian and there's going to be certain metrics that you're going to have to hit, such as how many people walk in. And there's a ratio of how many people you're going to capture to contact information for quarterly does change. So what we have to double down on was the database that we built was where the people that we've met throughout the years. So fortunate enough because I've been farming for some years, obviously we have some sort of reputation and notoriety in our area where we started focusing much more on the digital space. So at the beginning of the year, I really made a conscious decision last year that I was going to hire a Duroc. And I'm sure you know what Drake is right.
[00:05:17] Zach, you need to elaborate a little bit for me. I got so Dirac is the nickname of Gary V's videographer, basically. Yeah.
[00:05:27] Basically, Duroc basically follows and films and edits pretty much everything at the beginning when Gary was building out his consulting business. So we made a conscious effort that if we're going to spend a little bit less time and and money on Leegin efforts that are hard copy male and or being face to face and spending time over the weekend, I should be spending more time creating content. I should be spending more time brainstorming how I could add value in digital space because I can't physically be present in my much as it used to be just because it's a little less acceptable. Right. Knocking on the door in this market is totally different from pre covid people would open. You have a conversation, you can't really do that anymore. So hiring that person really transform our business. I'm constantly thinking about what am I putting out on YouTube, on Instagram, on Facebook, and that's even evolving.
[00:06:21] And we just hired a creator for a business to really we have so much content that we haven't really pieced together for each respective platform that eventually we have this individual helping us package it and write the copy and getting to a point where we have a little bit more in terms of brand cohesion and what we represent and the pillars of our content. So those are some things that we've been working on. And I think the other thing to add to this is I'm still actively selling. I'm still going on listing appointments, so I'm still actively selling. I'm still a player in the game of real estate sales just as much as my agents are, because it's a conscious choice.
[00:07:01] I think getting back to basics and knowing what they're going through is important for me to coach them or mentor them. And at the same time, it's important for them to see that their lead is still doing what they're doing on a day to day basis. I don't want to be a hypocrite and ask them to do something and I don't do it myself. So maybe we'll get to a stage where I don't have to be in actively in sales, but that means I find a higher use of my time.
[00:07:23] So at a later time, all of that said, you actually hired a full time videographer then.
[00:07:31] That's right, hired a full time videographer. He's also pretty talented when it comes to editing content.
[00:07:37] Nice and so.
[00:07:39] I'm guessing you're just I mean, I know it's clicking for me, the whole directing, I mean, Gary V puts out contact, basically anything and everything right now is an open book. So is this is this recruiting content?
[00:07:53] Is it content for I don't even know if you're actively recruiting, but maybe there's some recruiting content. Maybe it's more focused, like what are the give me some examples maybe of content that you think having over the last.
[00:08:05] Yeah. So content. I think traditional real estate. You think about property shoots, you think about the end product of a property that you prep to hit the market. When we create content in real estate, it's more so about the journey of a property going from what it used to be to now it's show ready. So documenting that journey, contractors painting, Gardner putting mulch out there. We like to document and share with people what it is that we exactly do. A lot of consumers, they might see the end product, but they don't see to progress the process to get there. So parts of what we do is kind of like Gary, right? We don't see the day to day of every single agent out there. But what if we did? Right. I think people want to hear more about the stories, whether it's about a house, about a client or about us and what we do behind the scenes, because I think people are naturally curious and they want to consume information.
[00:08:58] And then honestly, there's nothing that I do differently than anyone else out there that's starting as a new agent other than I've applied myself for the last nine years of trial and error. And I had good mentors along the way. And of course, now it's as obviously demographics change. You know, most of the sellers in our area are baby boomers are older and those are our primary targets that postcards might work. But as the demographics change of home ownership of people purchasing property, how they find you, you want to be top of mind. Right? So how are we putting ourselves out there in different ways, but also in ways that we can add value to give perspective on what we do and how we can help these individuals. So our content is usually surrounded by and answering the question, does this actually add value? So whether it's just a simple market update or it's a progress shoot or more so we're focused right now on client testimonials, on featuring giving spotlights, on businesses that are local, that also serve our community, that have great mission and value statements that we want to spread the message of and of course, collaborate with them and share our audiences because we are trying this alone and not involving other people. It's kind of like team building, right? You can do it alone and you're only going to get so far because you have limitations on capacity and time. And I think there's so many ways that we could collaborate and create win win relationships, whether it's people on our team or whether it's sharing. If I hired a full time videographer, how can I maximize that time? And how can I have this individual expresses passion by shooting and editing content. And it's perfect for us to be aligned with the business owners that way, too. So I don't know if that answers your question for console.
[00:10:39] Yeah, and content. It's it's a it's a long, hard game. It's a marathon. Right. I mean, are you seeing since you brought this videographer on, what kind of results are you seeing? Are you actually getting leads from it? Are you building that following like how's it been? How's the journey back so far?
[00:10:56] Yeah, we're still trying to figure it out because our way of thinking has been kind of like sending a post or not being selected audience and just blanketing it and having a value proposition or reason for someone to reach out. So, of course, we're in the beginning as we hired this videographer, any content that he created, we posted on social. Yet we have to become a little bit more strategic.
[00:11:18] Do we create a different channel for different purposes? Do we brand slightly differently if the purpose of the video is for coaching, for example, versus targeted to a buyer seller? So we're still in a process of figuring it out. I think the key take away that other people should take is you don't need to hire a videographer, just use your phone and film content and put it out there and make adjustments as you go. And the results that we're getting is is good. I mean, so much of social is friends and family. They want to see you doing well. I mean, you could be the pillar of positivity for your community, which is your friends and your relatives that you're connected with on Facebook by putting good news out there. I mean, how much negative how much negative stuff are we seeing out there right now? Right. So I want to be known as a person that will show that I'm applying myself in a difficult time. I do not have control of external factors of covid of fires here in California or of the election. Yet no matter if the Lakers win or lose or if the fire goes to more places, it's super unfortunate. But I still have to take care of myself. No matter who is going to be the president. I still have to show up for myself, my family, my friends, and be hopefully someone that could make a difference in my community. And that's that's the fundamentals of how we operate. People still want to pursue their goals, buying and selling, and of course, people want to grow their businesses, so.
[00:12:40] So a lot of what we're talking about is I'm assuming you and your you're growing your team's brand, but are you coaching and are your agents, I'm assuming, also focused on their own content and what they're putting out and maybe you've been able to apply some of that to them as well.
[00:12:58] Yeah. So just to give you some more feedback on that, the the theme of our team for my sales agents is how can I make sure that myself, if I have a luxury on the team, they should have the luxury to, otherwise I would be a hypocrite. Secondly is the luxuries that we get are because it helps us increase our dollar per hour. So I only want my agents to focus on a high dollar producing task, because if you're doing anything else, it doesn't make sense for me to hire all of these people, including my videographer. So it's important for our staff to be able to take things off our plate so we can be productive. And going to your point, we want to get to a point where we can help with their social management, because if more people than ever are reaching out via social friends and relatives or growing your following, if that's important to you, people are going to. Now, in the past, people might call off a postcard and say, hey, I got your postcard and it looks like you do a lot of work here. I'm thinking about selling nowadays. You get your postcard, you're going to research you online and they're going to find you. How findable are you? How is your social proof? Do you have any testimonials? How is your presentation online? Because they're already vetting you out before you even get the phone call. So it's important how we show up online. It's important for us to be findable. And I want all my agents to be seen and of course, to have good values and to be seen as good people doing quality work.
[00:14:19] And if I have the luxury, such as a videographer shooting content for me, my team members should have it to shift gears here a little bit for mentioned at the beginning, the call that you guys run the SWAT team model.
[00:14:33] And I've been here. There's a SWAT team SEAL team. I don't know. I I've just been hearing a little bit more about it lately, and I'd love to hear what that is to you and what this model means for you guys.
[00:14:43] Yeah, I'm fortunate to have a really good mentor and a model. A lot of my business off have been Kenney up in Bellingham, Washington, and I followed him ever since I really started growing my team. So a lot of the things that he's taught me obviously have applied. And the most important thing about our team is probably going to be the retention we haven't recruited for the past year and a half because I wanted to make sure I'm adding value to the agents I do have on my team. So I'm very happy to say that pretty much all my agents should be close to at least six figures, not including myself. So all six of the other agents are going to be close, if not at six figures or above, and my top agents making multiples of six figures.
[00:15:24] So I'm very happy about that because being a team lead, it's not just about myself anymore. The brand might be me, the team, they might be me. But it's because rebranding is difficult and rebranding is like starting over. So I think generally speaking, for me, it's allowing giving the platform for my agents to be able to produce.
[00:15:45] So I was swiping on my computer and it took me out happy and probably back. But yes, yeah, that's I get that part. OK, so SWAT team model, it's a smaller team admin heavy. Is that the gist of it or.
[00:16:02] Yeah. So the theme is increasing dollar per hour. The theme is taking the things off the plates of our agents that they shouldn't be doing. So, for example, I share with you a little bit about how it works. I'm listing agent on the team. Let's say I get a call from a seller today. I pick it up. I booked the appointment, a calendar, invite my listing manager. She preps everything for me and let's say it's tomorrow. I show up tomorrow to the office. I pick up the package. I go and close. Let's say I get it signed, I give it back to her. Anything from vendors, from preparation, from the time lines, from documenting the progress of the property, staging, cleaning, the photography, everything is coordinated by her. And then once it's on the market, nowadays, we use calendars for obviously scheduling and 30 minute increments. And she's the one that's asking for feedback. Once we get an offer, I show back up and I negotiate. Once it gets in escarole, I hand it off to my client here and our escrow manager. That person is the one that communicates with the client, with title, with the lender, with anyone that's involved until close. Next time I touched a file, I say congratulations. I'm so happy to work with our team. And I hope that you had a great experience. We're going to send a survey out. So I guess, Zach, from what you heard, how much how much time did I spend with the seller?
[00:17:17] I mean, it doesn't sound like a whole lot or it's not like all the time you spent was with the seller, right?
[00:17:25] Yes. And the way that was best presented to me. I'm going to share is it's kind of like a doctor's office.
[00:17:33] If your doctor was signing you in as a receptionist, was taking your vitals and and asking you to the questions as a nurse and was also the doctor diagnosing and prescribing and collecting payment from you, you probably ask yourself if my doctor can afford his staff members. What's he doing wrong? Mm hmm. Right. So real estate should be seen the same way as an individual agent. I can only execute on so much whether you scale a team to multiple members or at least you have an admin that takes care of obviously the things in the back end. I think in some way or fashion, in order for you to scale and to deliver predictable results, you're going to need some specialties within your business. So that's what it looks like for, at least in my viewpoint, a proper team. And that way allows me in the last two years to as we've close over one hundred million plus every year, I take two months off. One month is an accumulation of me traveling for education, and another month is me taking vacation with my family. And so I'm working 10 months out of a year. Of course, this year I haven't been able to travel, so I've spent a little more time on my business, which is not a problem. But if I'm working 10 months in a year, I have leverage in my life. I don't work. I haven't worked. I've worked in the last thirty six months, three buyers, one of them being myself, and the other two I showed one property and got a contract. So I don't work buyers in my team anymore. And that's a luxury that I've earned. Right. It's nothing like, oh, I've grown a team to a certain point where I feel like I don't want to work it so I don't work.
[00:19:06] It's more so I get to the point where my legion is focused on listings and if I can spend most of my time with sellers, I want to do that, or I spend more time coaching and mentoring my agents. I want to do that. So I think it starts with taking inventory of what your strengths are and then focusing on it. And hopefully you can get to a point where you have leverage in your life so you can operate at a higher level so you can take time off when you want to. Because most agents, if you're operating solo, when you take time off or when there's a family emergency, as you commit no time, your business is going to fall. And that's what we call, what, the roller coaster of real estate. Right. You work hard and hard and hardly generally fall. We get to the point. You've got a couple of escrows. Start babysitting your escrows. You're not VIGENIN anymore and you start the whole cycle over again. So that's a power of a team, at least how I see it on the buy side. It's similar. There's certain things that my buyer agents don't touch and that's how we justify the splits that we do have. So I'm fully transparent. It works right. And we've been doing it for the last five years, growing the team and I have relatively high retention on the team. Every single agent's been here for at least a year and a half, just only because we haven't recruited anyone recently.
[00:20:10] So I want to thank our world has no accountability, that type stuff.
[00:20:20] How is that? How do you guys run that today? How do you do your accountability? How do you create this culture on your team?
[00:20:27] Culture is first showing up every day for yourself. So and of course for your team members, because when you don't show up, that's that's showing that you're not committed to yourself and your team members. So it's it's just like if I missed the day, which I don't, you can call me out. You know, I like to be treated that way because I like to be called out when I'm not doing something right in your eyes. I want you to communicate that if there's a lack of communication in terms of how we believe the expectations of our team should be operated individually, a person by person, we're going to have issues later on. As people say, there's going to be resentment that's built right. If I don't have a, let's say, Zachery on my team and we don't talk for two weeks yet, you've been asking for help and you don't know how to ask because I'm not approachable. Eventually to get to a point where it's going to blow up, you're going to say, well, we'll see, you don't help me anyway.
[00:21:16] So I'm leaving your team. So the consistency in the meetings is very important. One on ones with my agents once the week is very important.
[00:21:23] So one on one once a week in team meetings as well.
[00:21:27] Weekly one to ones once, once a week, team meetings once a week, a huddles pretty much every day. We have a break down Wednesdays. That's my coaching days. So that's when I'm kind of not doing real estate sales. And then to answer your question regarding stats, we we track our stats. So every day our minimum requirement on a team is thirty five or twenty five. Contacts and contacts nowadays could be a back and forth text message, a phone call that's alive or let's say communication via email or message anywhere. Right. We want to track that.
[00:21:59] And it's done and it's visual. And you document the names and everyone's able to see at the same time. And that's translated obviously to a currently another spreadsheet. So I'm sure we have things that we could improve upon that for visual, right? I think we can.
[00:22:16] The fight a little bit more for sure, yeah, I was going to ask this, so this huddle, this daily, you guys do a daily huddle now. Was that something you implemented already had in place? Because I know a lot of teams implementing it. Just covid. Right. Was it something already having.
[00:22:34] Yep, great question, I remember the days when I didn't have my team where I showed up to the office by myself. In an office of over one hundred eighty agents and there was only the front desk lady and maybe one or two handful of agents that showed up, so I took the whole training room as if it was my conference room. And I made calls every day for a long time until I started building my team. Sort of habit of the huddle was already built before I had my team, and hence why it's so important still for me to this day. I mean, I have 14 other people on a team sales and ops, yet I still find it's very important for me to show up every day, be visible for my people and also be visible for myself. Otherwise I would be cheating myself. Right. It's kind of like if you know who admired it is if you're if if your life is like a movie, yet you couldn't hear the volume. There is no sound. If someone was watching your activities, would they be proud it if it was a family member or would they be disappointed if no one was watching you? The hardest part in our businesses, if you're a solo operator and no one's watching you, what are you doing? Yeah, if you're not wasting time, right, for me, I don't want to waste time blasting thing I want to be associated with is being mediocre. I want to be able to push myself. And I have no regrets. Know everyone operates differently, but that's that's what I want for myself.
[00:24:01] I love it. And so in these huddles, do you have like a structure of how you run these huddles time like like what does what does a huddle look like for each day?
[00:24:10] Yeah, the first 30 minutes is going to be the gratitude. So I'm grateful that the sun shining today and it's not as smoky. I'm grateful. I'm having a call of Zach and with Sisu and super grateful for the opportunity to share.
[00:24:22] I'm grateful. I actually have clothes. I have a microphone I can use. I have a computer that works of air to breathe. We start with gratitude. Everyone starts there. Then we talk about our wins. It's sometimes hard to find wins when there's so much negativity. But if we have a focused time where we can talk about my win is the past client that reached out that's touring single families now. So my assumption is he's thinking about moving up. That's my win. Might not be a transaction right now, but it's going to maybe lead to one. And it shows that he trusts me enough. The first transaction that they were happy enough to reach back out to ask questions, that's a win. And everyone goes around and sure is a win. And eventually we review stats. If there are scripts that we need to go play, if there's certain things that we need to talk about, if there's things that my agents are seeing in the market, we'll have a discussion about it. If we have a guest speaker, if there's a new video that we shot that we want feedback on, we typically talk about that at the second half of our huddle.
[00:25:22] Laughs Yeah, I've been hearing a lot, especially now that we're in this virtual environment. A lot of people not going into office, if you can.
[00:25:32] And I got people that maybe don't run as long of a huddle. Fifteen minutes. If you can just get everyone on the phone for fifteen minutes. Cameras on. Meaning I've got motivation to get up and actually put some clothes on in the morning because I got to show up to this huddle just fifteen minutes long.
[00:25:46] I've that can be massively game changing and just everyone's mindset. I love that you mix in the gratitude and the positivity, right.
[00:25:56] It absolutely is, yeah. If you don't mind me sharing one thing, it's kind of like nowadays, I'm sure people, if they're having dinners, is usually with family. And the frequency it's Huddle's is kind of like this. You're spending so much time with your work family that you should be in tune with the desires or goals and their struggles. It's kind of like if you have a family dinner once a week, you should show up and you should be attentive, right? You should have your phone away. You should have your screen on. Right. You want to be engaging, right? You want to learn about what your parents have been up to during it. You want to show that you care. Right? So if if our obligation for a huddle and our work and business life is at or equal to the commitment that you give to your own family and your close friends, that's when you know that you're truly committed to your success and your people success. You're showing up in a way that hopefully you should otherwise. Maybe it's opposite, right? Imagine family dinners where sometimes the kids are always on their phones and you're not engaged and you're just there and it's like, you know, your family spent so much time to cook you and be able to afford the dinner on the table, yet you're not grateful for it. You just overlook it one day. It's going to it's going to be gone. Right. So take advantage of the moment right now, whether you're on a team, you're by yourself.
[00:27:17] At least you have the opportunity to prospect and wake up in the morning. Right. There's so many things that could go wrong and you can never predict it. So and there's other people who are less fortunate and it's unfortunate. And that's a power perspective. Just take care of yourself and do the best you can.
[00:27:34] Absolutely. Everyone, as as we win this up, make sure if you have any questions, drop them there in the comments. We would love to take some questions here. Well, I think we covered what we wanted to cover, right? Yeah. Just a shift. Right. Everyone's shifting. And I think it sounds like your shift has been very positive.
[00:27:58] Anything else you want to leave us with me now? I think I'm going back to the last part of, I think, what Colton was saying in. If I remember correctly, it's amazing you were saying actually at the beginning of this call that the Asian communities is amazing and I can't agree more. You'd be surprised that most people are willing to help. You just have to ask. Right? Just like I'm sure if you if you got a hold of Zak, he wouldn't wouldn't be happy to help you.
[00:28:32] So all the all the agents and all the people that you've seen on these presentations just reach out if you resonate or you connect at all. If you want to ask a question, we're all here to help.
[00:28:42] So I did get one question. Well, send your huddle. You're doing what you do my now.
[00:28:50] Yeah, we're doing them on Zoome. Some people come into the office and of course we have PPY in order for us to make sure that everyone is safe. OK.
[00:29:01] All right man. Well I think that's good for now. Thanks for the questions. We will wrap this one up. We got Jim Gray and Shawn Glass here next. So, Wilson, you totally rocked it, man. Thanks for hopping on. We'll take it. Thanks for having me there. And we'll we'll go to the next one.
[00:29:19] Perfect. Thanks for having me. Thank you.
