It can be tough to move on from being a top-producing real estate agent to becoming a team owner or business leader. After all, you've likely found a formula for success that works for you, and stepping out of production can feel like a risk.
Yet, when you’re in production, it’s easy to get bogged down with the day-to-day transactions that you get sidetracked in achieving your goals for the team.
As a leader, you need to step back, look at the big picture, and stay laser-focused on your long-term vision and objectives. And to scale your real estate business and take it to the next level, you need to surround yourself with the right people and have the right systems in place.
Brian Charlesworth joins Andrew Lewis, Founder, Owner, and CEO of Performance Real Estate, as he shares tips on how to make the transition from being in production to scaling your own team, his take on where the market is headed, where his team is at, what his vision is for his business.
Top Takeaways:
(03:54) How to surround yourself with the right people
(12:17) Why agents should consider looking into opportunities that will allow them to level up
(18:38) Who are the people you need to hire today
(19:30) Andrew’s take on the current market conditions
(24:30) Why the future of real estate is real estate teams
(28:36) Why this market is giving teams a massively unfair advantage over solo agents
(30:30) The two things every real estate team must have in their business
(31:04) Why tracking your numbers is crucial
(33:10) Andrew’s last words of advice
Connect with Andrew Lewis
Website: https://performanceregroup.com/
Email: andrew@performanceregroup.com
Phone: (951) 237-0292
About the guest:
Andrew Lewis graduated from DeVry University with a Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration and Small Business Entrepreneurship. Prior to entering the real estate world, He was a pharmaceutical sales representative for a Fortune 500 company. He also spent several years as a professional race car driver, racing in the upper divisions of NASCAR.
Andrew’s previous work experience allowed him to develop top-level customer service, innovative marketing techniques, and superior negotiating skills. These qualities help ensure his clients receive the best possible deals and the highest level of service and communication.
Today, Andrew Lewis is a top-producing Realtor® specializing in the sale of new and existing homes within Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego Counties. He is also the Founder, Owner, and CEO of Performance Real Estate, the number one Digital Real Estate Group in Temecula Valley.
Episode Transcript:
Brian Charlesworth 00:34
Alright, hello, everyone. And welcome back to the Grit Podcast. I'm Brian Charlesworth. I'm the founder of Sisu. And I'm your host of the show. And today, we actually have a show that is going to be like this is something that so many of you should listen to, because you are in this same world of being a team owner that is wanting to scale and get your business to that next level. But at the same time, you're still in production. And you're figuring out how to move forward. And today, I'm here with Andrew Lewis and I got to meet Andrew right after he became a Sisu. Customer. We were actually interviewed to gather in the Tom Ferry blueprint so that we could show what kind of impact Sisu had on really streamlining and automating his business. So I got to know Andrew a little bit then. But, Andrew, thanks for joining us on the show today. Andrew is the founder, owner and CEO of Performance Real Estate, which is a real estate team. You want to tell us about your team today. Andrew, I want this to come from you.
Andrew Lewis 01:39
Yeah, yeah. Thanks. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. So yeah, for Performance Real Estate, we're a small team at this point and have been trying to find our way here for about five years. And today as it stands, the team is myself two agents in production underneath me on the buyer side, we've got a full time admin, and a full time inside sales agent currently, along with an outsource transaction coordinator. So last year, we did 93 deals with just two agents in production and headed towards a goal of 130 this year.
Brian Charlesworth 02:12
Okay, awesome. So you did about 100, and you want to do 130? So my first question to you is, why not? 200? Yeah, most real estate teams are doubling their business every year right now, I can tell you this as a Sisu owner, I see. I know, our average customer grows their business at 107%. Year over year. So why not? 200?
Andrew Lewis 02:40
Yeah, for us, we changed up our business model a little bit here over the last several months. Again, it was just myself and another agent in production. And we're trying out a model that was bringing people on salary wise and in allowing them to help us on the showing partner side just to leverage our time, and allow us both to be in as much production as possible over the last several months in meeting with a lot of other teams. And you know that we've gone back towards the traditional team model of bringing on buyer's agents and helping them grow and empower them to grow their business. And so but yeah, with the showing partner model that we have there, it was for us it was you know, we kind of reached our ceiling of what two agents with someone opening doors for us could handle it felt like it. So we were conservative with the goal there. But now going, Hey, we're gonna move towards this more traditional model. I don't see why we couldn't quickly double or even go beyond that.
Brian Charlesworth 03:34
Okay, I agree with you. Yeah. So just so you guys know. So Andrew, and I talked about this before the podcast and today, like, Andrew is not here to say how amazing he is, which, you know, we all want to talk about how amazing we are. And I'm not saying you can't say how amazing you are. But so many of us, we're into a shifting market right now, right? And so many of you guys are in that point of your business, where you're still in production. You want to get out of production. Hopefully, that's your goal to get out of production, because there's so many opportunities beyond that you can't really scale your business as long as you're in production. So how do you surround yourself with the right people? Like these are the things we want to dive into today? Because it's such a critical time. And like, anyways, I'm going to ask some hard questions, and Andrew has agreed to let me do that. So I hope you guys don't feel I'm beating up on Andrew, I think the world of Andrew and I have 100% confidence, he's just going to crush it in the coming years. And you know, he just made a significant change in his business where there were two team owners and now there's one team owner. So Andrew, how does that make you think about your business differently?
Andrew Lewis 04:51
Yeah, I mean that so that was an interesting change. And you know, we met together and felt like that was best to move our business forward and, and let us each focus on the string because we have, so that actually went really well. And it doesn't always in this business. But that went really well. But now just feeling that weight, right, it's now 100% On my shoulders like succeed or fail. And I felt like that was maybe a comfort that I had previously, it was like, Hey, we're in this together, if something were to go wrong, like, it's, you know, it's between us. But now I just feel that you know, that tremendous weight, but also an excitement to go build things out and make things the way that we want to do it, and just to grow the business.
Brian Charlesworth 05:27
So you guys can feel I don't know if you're watching or listening. But if you're watching and listening, you can definitely feel the sense of just like a weight lifted off Andrew's shoulders, he now feels like he can spread his wings and fly. And like, he's got that excitement that he probably hasn't felt for the last year. So is that true? Am I describing that correctly?
Andrew Lewis 05:50
Yeah, I think through the process, I think as a business owner, your journey, you learned so much about yourself. Same with having kids or being married or whatever, you're just learning so much about yourself throughout the process. And for me, I think as a business owner, I really learned I want things my way I want to, I'm much more of a driver than I thought originally going, Hey, I want to implement these systems. This is the way we're going. We need to follow this. And so together it was kind of you know, it wasn't meshing in that sense. And so now I'm really excited to go, Hey, let's build this out, put the systems and processes into place 100%, follow the plan and go execute on it. So excited in that sense that, you know, I just have the freedom to make all those decisions real quick. And it's not. I feel like it was a much slower process, right. And any company that has a board of directors or anything like that, when you try to make moves, it's a slower process. And so now just to go, it's fully put on me, yes, there's pressure. But now I have that ability to just make changes and make them happen quickly and implement things like the transition and for how we're doing our team.
Brian Charlesworth 06:50
Yeah, so that's exciting. So Andrew, I'm giving you permission to ask me anything you want during this interview as well. I've told Andrew in you know, in running Sisu I've worked with and coached dozens of team owners and helped them get to doing over 1000 transactions a year. And so anyway, this is just a fun conversation between us to really just probably some of the stuff a lot of you guys are asking yourselves right now. Okay, here's where my business is at. So Andrew just brought on his first few agents, because he's been the Rainmaker. He's been in production. And he's just brought on his first few agents to his team. And now what's next? He already has two admins. Is that what I heard you say? So you have two admins and two,
Andrew Lewis 07:37
admin transaction coordinator, and then inside sales.
Brian Charlesworth 07:41
Okay, so you have an ISA, you have an admin, and you have a TC? Yep. So admin being an ops manager?
Andrew Lewis 07:51
Hybrid currently, so looking to bring somebody in that would be a little bit more over the ops side of things.
Brian Charlesworth 07:56
Okay. So he has two, let's just say admin staff, one ISA, to generate leads and to agents. So it's definitely a challenging place to be as a business owner to have as many admin as salespeople. Right, because the reality is, if you have the right systems in place, which I know you have great systems in place, because you use Sisu. If you have the right systems in place, you should be able to have like, you should be able to scale the 20 agents with pretty much the admin team you have other than it sounds like you may need to bring in the right ops manager. And so right, so let's talk about the who and not the how right now. Yep, who we surround ourselves with is such an important thing. And I was telling Andrew, I finished a book today called the compound effects highly recommended, I enjoyed it. It's a pretty casual reading, but it brings out a lot of great points. But he talks about something in there that we all know, like, we've heard it a million times, we are pretty much who the top five people we surround ourselves with are right. That's who we are. So who are we surrounding ourselves with? We need to ask that about our friends. We also need to ask about the people we bring into our business. And we need to bring in we talked about the integrator right as well, the visionary and the integrator, you guys have probably all read that book. I know most people in real estate have. But Andrew is a visionary who can be an integrator. That's what I am actually, that being said, for me to have. That's what Frank is in my life, Frank Felice, he is my integrator, not having him in the business would make me constantly focus on doing daily tasks that don't let me focus on what I'm good at. So right now Is that a role you're trying to fill? You just, I mean, you just had a business partner. And now you're like, Okay, I'm this visionary, and I'm doing the integration. You know, I'm the integrator, what exactly are you looking for? Who do you want to? Who do you want to surround yourself with today? Yeah.
Andrew Lewis 10:15
So I mean, obviously, the huge piece is to surround yourself with the right people in the business that are where I want to go. And so I'm excited just to continue to develop those relationships. I have them honestly. And that was a big change. We changed brokerages this year. And I went from a small, independent local brokerage to national brokerage and went from being the big fish, right, like the top team at our brokerage to realistically, when you look at the scope of things nationwide, like we're nowhere near the top, right, and so that just expanded those horizons for me, and I'm super excited to be in an ecosystem that lets me pick the brains of people that are doing the 800 900,000 deals a year that we're headed towards. And so, yeah, there's that huge component of having to surround myself with the right people. And then on the integrator side, you know, that's, again, I feel like I've been gifted in both. And maybe that's an arrogant thing to say there is going like, I feel like I run a little bit of both. But I feel like I've been forced into the integrator role. Because you know, if you don't have one, you are one. And so I just Yeah, I feel bogged down in the day to day of what we have to do in the business. And I've got a great admin that I can pass a ton of stuff off to. But I really need somebody that can oversee the day to day operations, and allow me to be out there surrounding myself with other agents, being able to go out and visit others and be a part of their team meetings and learn and grow. And right now, I'm, I'm having to do so much in the business that I don't have the time to go do that. Yes. Okay.
Brian Charlesworth 11:39
So you made that change this year to where you shifted you into a different brokerage. You were like the top dog in your brokerage, doing 100 deals a year. And then you moved now to, you're at Real, right? So, you made the move to Real and now you're collaborating with all these team leaders that are doing, you know, call it 800-1000 transactions a year. And you're like, Whoa, how do I become that? Right? So you've already done something good, which is you've put yourself in circles with these people that are playing at a higher level. So that's an amazing thing. So congratulations. Yeah.
Andrew Lewis 12:17
So I would say to anybody that's, you know, this, they need to consider making a change to a brokerage like that, like I had the sweetest deal where we were, and to make the transition to a new brokerage that just provided me with an exponential opportunity. As far as tapping into agents that are where I want to be. That's been amazing. So if there's anybody that's like, on the fence on what to do there, hey, I've got a really sweet deal, flat fee brokerage here, like looking into something that allows you to level up because being the top dog is your brokerage, everyone's coming to you for advice, like you're not necessarily growing? And unless you're really good at surrounding yourself with other people, that can be difficult, especially when you're the top dog there.
Brian Charlesworth 12:56
Yeah, so most people I've talked to, meaning 1000s of team owners, we have about 3000 teams in Sisu now, just over 3000 teams. So I mean, I've spent a lot of time with a lot of team owners, and most people don't feel like they get a tremendous amount of value from their brokerage, right. So, make sure you're somewhere where you're getting whatever value you need. So you've talked about needing this integrator, so I can tell you I'm gonna share some experiences from my household, which my wife runs a real estate team, Spring, that's actually how I got into the business. That's how I solve the problems that need to be solved with Sisu. Two years ago, she was at about 300 transactions a year, right to maybe 250, somewhere than 250 to 300. And she brought, she was kind of where you are, she was still in production. She had super long hours, she was not able to focus on building a title company. She was not able to focus on building a mortgage company. She was not able to focus on building a coaching company, all of which she has now. Right. So it's a really tough place to be which she always calls it the messy middle. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So I'm sure so many of you guys talking or listening to this right now can relate to this messy middle. So I'm sharing this with you just because I think this is crucial information that I want you guys to all know. Not only you Andrew but everybody. But she decided she needed to bring two people into her life. Right. And one was called a sales director because she was sick of managing salespeople and like that's not what she wanted to do with your day every day. She loves her team. She loves the people on our team, but she doesn't want to be the one holding them accountable every day. So how many of you find yourselves there? Are you there, Andrew?
Andrew Lewis 14:59
Oh yeah, yeah. absolutely okay.
Brian Charlesworth 15:03
Two agents, she had, I want to say she had 15 agents at the time, I believe. Yeah. Yeah. So one of the things that is a tough question for you, right is how many people can you hire? Until you have, maybe you need to go out and get your team to over 10 agents. So you can then afford to pay the right people to come into your world? Right. So that's, that's a question. I mean, have you thought about that? How do you feel about that?
Andrew Lewis 15:39
Yeah, no, that's I mean, that's that's the big thing is recognizing right, you're looking for an integrator that's going to that's going to come in and essentially run the day to day operations of the business, that person is not a $40,000 a year salary, that person is on a much higher compensation level. And you know, whether that's a big base and some commission, or bonuses, or whatever that might be so recognizing, like, hey, we need to pay this person really well. Because they're gonna come in skilled, I'm not necessarily looking to bring somebody in to teach them all of it. But yeah, I recognize that the goal is to have a couple more agents coming on here at the end of this month, with two more coming on and then looking to get the team to 10 is my goal by the end of the year.
Brian Charlesworth 16:19
Okay, so you just pointed out, you're looking for an ops leader, you're not looking for a sales leader, you will probably take on the sales leadership role for quite some time still,
Andrew Lewis 16:27
yes, yeah, I think I can make it if the day to day ops were off my plate.
Brian Charlesworth 16:31
Okay, so it's the day to day option looking for. So she brought in Justin to manage that side of her business. And then she brought in somebody named Sarah, who used to actually work with Frank Klesitz over at Vyral marketing. And Frank gave Spring permission to bring Sara in, who had done a tremendous amount of work with VAs and building large VAs teams and just didn't build a real estate team, but happened to be the right operations person to really allow Spring to scale all of her businesses. So it seems like that's more of the role you're looking for today. Yeah. So here's one thing that has been an eye opener for me, as I've looked at a lot of teams across the country, so many people look for transaction coordinators to be that person. What I've found, the most successful people find is they find people from outside the industry that are really good in that role to now come into the industry. In Spring's case, both of those leaders she brought in as her who's in our business are both from outside of the real estate industry. What are your thoughts on that?
Andrew Lewis 17:48
Yeah, I mean, I think if, right, so we as a team, like we've had admin, that was also our transaction coordinator that we also would have loved to move into the upside. And it just looked to your point, it just didn't work. You know, they were bogged down by the day to day and max out a certain number of transactions. And so we tried that a couple of times and realized that that didn't work. So yeah, I absolutely see, you know, there's, you know, unless somebody happens to be ops manager somewhere else and looking for a different opportunity, that yeah, it would be wise to seek somebody out that's coming from a different business that even brings in a fresh perspective. I'm not against that at all.
Brian Charlesworth 18:21
Yeah, so. So you've already had that challenge, you've already had a TC that you wanted to move into that role. And the TC was so focused on being a TC, they couldn't get above the TC. And so what we find is sometimes that TC is probably a great TC. Keep them as a TC, right. But the people we surround ourselves with, sometimes they're the right people to get us to a certain level. And for you, it's 100 transactions, right? And now for you to get to 300 transactions, 500 transactions, who needs to be in your world to get you to that level? And that's where you really need to start thinking right? Those are the people you need to hire today. Yeah, because you don't hire them. Like, once you're there, you hire them to get there. Right. Yeah. So. So I think you see this, I think, you know, this, and I just want to bring this awareness to all of you team leaders out there who are in this, this market as it's changing. So I want to get your take on the market today. Because I think the take is different depending on the size of your business. So I really want to get your take. And are you a broker or agent, do you know, so tell me your take on the market today, Andrew?
Andrew Lewis 19:33
Yeah, I mean, we're in an interesting shifting market, as everybody knows. So things that have shifted quickly, like there, it just really feels like there was a button hit. And we went from 30 offers on every property down to, you know, three or four and, you know, even some listings having to sit a little bit longer than that. And so things have shifted, but it's for me, I'm excited for it because we came out of this crazy market where it was impossible for a buyer in our area unless you had to to $300,000 in your bank account where you could put down a 20% or more down payments and cover a gigantic appraisal gap, and you just couldn't compete. And so it was kind of luck of the draw, right? Like leads would come in, and you're like, hey, this guy wants to buy, but can he even compete currently in this market? No. And so we are having to kind of put some stuff off to the side and, you know, opportunity that was there. But unless they came in with that kind of cash, they just didn't have a chance. And so I'm excited now to see this shift coming up, that makes it a little bit more feasible for buyers. Because then those buyers that are coming in raising their hands, saying, Hey, I'm a FHA buyer with three and a half percent down or in our area of VA military zero down buyer, they never had a shot before. And now that they do, and so I'm excited for it. I know, there's a lot of agents that are screaming, the sky is falling in, oh my goodness, but it's going to be better on the listing side, because we have an opportunity to actually show off our marketing skills. And what we will do to get a home sold because honestly, anybody could have put a home up for sale on the MLS and had 10 offers on the first day, a couple months ago. And so on the listing side, we get to show off what we actually do on our systems and processes, and they and they're going to appreciate them more. And on the buyer side, it just opens up a ton more opportunities for buyers that, again, they're not, they don't have 2 - $300,000 in their bank accounts, and they're looking to buy their first home. And now it's feasible to actually go in and get them something. So I'm super excited for where the market is heading. Shifting a bit, you know, our area is surrounded by price points that are 30% Higher. So we still have an influx of people coming into our area. And it's kind of keeping our business going. We've seen an increase in inventory, but still coming off the market pretty quickly.
Brian Charlesworth 21:38
Okay, so you said you have agents running around saying the sky is falling. Give us more detail about that. One of the key things that I hear when you say that is you said agents. Who are these agents?
Andrew Lewis 21:52
Yeah, not on our team, thankfully. So I mean, that's our goal is to make sure that, you know, they're educated enough in keeping up with, you know, keeping her matters and things like that, in all the data that we have available to us. It shows us, you know that things are still going to move forward. We just have to get more creative on the listing and the buy side. But yeah, I'm just, agents in our area. We just hosted a mastermind last week with about 25 local agents in our area. And we brought that topic up, right. That was the first thing that came up. It was like, hey, what do you guys want to talk about? And it went straight to the market and to hear the negative mindsets of where we're going in misinformation, right. Like, we're not headed towards the 2008 housing market crash. We don't have that kind of inventory. The buyer demand is still there. And we just have high interest rates right now like that, that's our biggest battle.
Brian Charlesworth 22:42
They're high. They're high compared to where they were two years ago. Yep. But it wasn't that long ago that I remember refinancing at 6%. Yep. Right. So. So like that world was not that far away. The interest rates today are actually still really good interest rates.
Andrew Lewis 23:00
Yep. Yep. And we've shifted the conversation with our buyers to have you know, it's not necessarily because they're going to throw that objection at about the interest rates. And we've just shifted it to okay, what monthly payment are you comfortable with? And great. Oh, did you know you could afford a $500,000 house with that? And here's, here's the properties. And just kind of going past that because everybody's in their ear talking to them. And I think that what we found agents was everyone's talking their buyers and sellers ear right now about how it's a terrible time to buy. And oh, my goodness, your agent should have had 32 offers on your property already by now. Because the neighbor games
Brian Charlesworth 23:34
Who's saying this?
Andrew Lewis 23:38
These I mean, that's those are, those are friends and family of the buyers that you're working with. And so that was a topic that we came up with in our mastermind have going, you know, they're going relatively to the 3% interest rates we had, but people were telling that so we're having to, you know, be the source of information for our buyers and sellers right now that, you know, preach against what they're hearing.
Brian Charlesworth 23:57
Okay, so in this mastermind you guys had and which I hats off to you for having this mastermind. I think it's amazing. Did you know how many of those people were agents because you keep saying agents, how many of them were team leaders?
Andrew Lewis 24:10
That was all agents. So I would have been the only team leader there in the room. And then there was one other solo agent that has a really good enough production level, I think we were the voice of reason when it came to talking about what the market was looking like but
Brian Charlesworth 24:23
Okay, so I want to bring that out. And I do this. I think this is a very important observation. I am a big believer that the future of real estate is real estate teams. I built my entire company based on that fact. So that being said, this is starting to play out in the market today and I think you just proved this to me. So thank you for sharing that valuable information. But if you bring 25 solo agents into a room who are solo agents, just you know, in whatever brokerage these guys are going to be naysayers. They are saying that because you know what their business is shrinking today. They are not thriving. If you go to any of my 3000 teams at Sisu, and I'll just use the one closest to me as an example. It's the one in my house. My wife, she had her best two months ever, she put 81 homes under contract last month, 81 homes, you know, that's over 1000 a year. Right? That's, that's a team that did just under 500. Last year, pacing right now, to do 1000s this year? So what does that tell you, Andrew, as a business owner, like where you need to be? And why do you think there's a difference between the way these team owners see it? Which do you like? You just said you were the voice of reason with those 25? Agents? Yeah. What's the difference between you as a team leader? And all of these agents?
Andrew Lewis 26:00
Yeah, well, I mean, I think we're able to look at the data that we have, we've got the volume of transactions, right. So that's where an individual agent that does their one to 10 deals a year, doesn't don't really have the data set that we do. So I mean, we're 100 deals a year, that's okay, we're selling for a week, right. So at least we're seeing and able to speak to Oh, and somebody brought Oh, they're getting creative with financing. Now all sorts of bad loans are being done out there. And I was like, I haven't seen anything come through other than a conventional loan lately. So I haven't seen that I don't know what you're seeing. I mean, I'm not seeing bank statement loans come through on our side of things that we need to be worried about. So I mean, we've got that data set to be able to look at that. And that can work, we're not relying on every single deal, and hanging on to the outcome of that deal. Because there is a volume play there.
Brian Charlesworth 26:52
Yeah. Now imagine even being a larger team owner, Andrew, where you actually had your own mortgage company, think of your perspective, then versus what mortgage companies are doing, versus the solo agent, how many negative thoughts can they have in their brains, about all the bad stuff going on right now, which basically, what they're telling themselves is they're getting out of this business, like, they won't last, they won't be here. This is the time, this is my opinion, I've been saying this is going to happen for the last three years. But the solo agent will disappear with the exception of the solo agent, that is a high listing, high producing listing agent that knows how to go out and get their expireds because expireds are going to come back and those agents are going to thrive. But that solo agent that expects to get friends and family deals, and they will not be in the business, they will be gone.
Andrew Lewis 27:48
So that's one thing I'm incredibly excited about about the transition we've just made is this is going to be a great market to bring agents on board to show them the value of that team. Because again, you know, we just came from being fat and happy for the last two years of where your friends and family called you and said, Hey, I want to move and you accidentally got them 50,000 over asking price for their house and found them another house to buy and it just those are going to dry up pretty quickly. And so people are gonna need to be skilled, like to your point, they're going to be skilled to get that business, you're going forward. And buyers and sellers are going to look for the top producing teams in their areas, because they're, they're not going to trust their uncle that has a real estate license anymore, because the market has shifted, and they're probably gonna come to us after they've already tried with him. But we're gonna end up getting that business in the long run.
Brian Charlesworth 28:35
Yeah, and we all know those power listing agents are skilled. But if you're a new buyer's agent coming into this world today, and you just hang your license at a brokerage, your chance of success, I mean, it was 10%. In the, you know, within five years, 90% of those agents are gone, right? That's the history of real estate, I would say it's going to change to where within one year 90% of those agents will be gone. Because if they're not on a team, where they're getting leads, where they're getting leadership, where they're getting skills, where they're getting support, where they're getting an admin, where they're getting systems, they will not survive, they will not be there. Right, so, so it's a truly truly interesting time. It's a truly interesting market that we're in right now. Yeah, so this is just I share this believing that more than ever, I guess teams have a massively unfair advantage. And that's pretty much why Sisu exists is to give you an even larger advantage. So let's talk about your technologies that you use in your systems in your world. What are you guys using as far as your systems go?
Andrew Lewis 29:53
Yeah, so we're Follow up Boss, Ylopo, Sisu those are the The Big Three players in what we've got right now. So kind of seems to be a popular combination amongst a lot of agents out there currently.
Brian Charlesworth 30:07
Yes, so Follow up Boss, definitely top CRM top team CRM platform. Most people that have Follow up Boss have Ylopo and we work a lot with both of those companies, as CEC is kind of that third platform. And I would say two things. And this, I'm obviously biased on this, but the two things that every real estate team absolutely must have in their business is an amazing CRM and Sisu. If you do those two things, you will have the operating systems that you need to run your business, you also need an E signature, a signature platform. So yeah, so if you don't already have those things, make sure you go check those things out. And I'm not just saying that, because I'm the CEO and founder of Sisu. I'm saying that because I believe that for you to be in existence in the next three years in this business, you are absolutely going to have to have that.
Andrew Lewis 31:03
And I tell people that all the time, too, we were in all sorts of mastermind groups, and all of that as well. And the topic of Sisu comes up because I do love it, I use it for the numbers tracking, we're fully integrated on the task management side of things. So every escrow gets run 100% through there. But I've preached that all the time to people is number one, if you're an agent, you need to track your numbers, especially in this market, you're gonna make 100 phone calls and talk to 10 people, and they're just going to tell you go pound sand, I'm not buying anything right now. Right? But if you can have the data set behind that to go, Hey, but if I talk to you, maybe 200 people will get me in appointments. It's so much more encouraging to work through those difficult days of the 10 people that told you no, because you know, you're just another step closer towards getting that yes, yeah.
Brian Charlesworth 31:49
And backing into your goals, right, let's just say your goal is to make 200,000 a year, that's double what most agents want to make. But let's just say you want to make 200,000 a year, at 200,000 a year, if you can back into that and know exactly. Okay, what does that really mean? How many conversations a day do I have to be in? How many appointments a week do I have to go on? Right, in order to put the proper number of people under contract and to get the right number of listings or buyers signed. So super, super important. Make sure you guys know that even if you do it in a spreadsheet, it'll be very painful to do it in a spreadsheet, because I did that. And that's why I built Sisu. But even if you do it in a spreadsheet, it's going to be a lot better than not doing it. So. So make sure you know that great. Well, I know because I felt it from you today, even before we started this podcast, we're pretty much out of time. But I know that you are going to like crush the next two years super excited for you. Congratulations just on being in a position now where you feel like you can actually spread your wings and fly because that just that alone gives you an amazing opportunity to just go after this world. And take whatever you deserve right now. So Andrew, any last words of advice? Any questions for me, anything else you want to hit on? Before we wrap up?
Andrew Lewis 33:16
Yeah, I'm just thrilled with where the market is. I think it is a good spot for our market as a whole for agents as a whole buyer's or seller's like we need this a little bit. And it's seeing those strategic opportunities that you can use to take advantage to get where you want to go. And so shifting out of this, I'm excited to get into building things up. Again, providing value as a team lead that helps agents succeed, helps them have the right mindset and holds them accountable to the numbers has a great culture. That's a big piece. And so it's you know, we're in that early phase right now if we're limited to people here, currently. But as we build it out, make sure that we're building a great culture that gets people to want to stay and want to be here and have fun doing real estate, but also crush the numbers and hit the goals that they're looking for. So they can do what they want with their lives with the money that they've made. And so I'm passionate about real estate investing, and I can't wait to help my team achieve that on their side too. And in creating some passive income, so to see an awesome opportunity there to create some culture and drive value.
Brian Charlesworth 34:19
Well, it's been fun. It's been fun getting to know you over the course of the last year and then finding you on the podcast today. And I thank you for your honesty and just you know where the market is at and where your team is at and where you're going and sharing your vision. It's been fun. And I'm really looking forward to seeing your success coming here over the next year and two years and three years. So definitely we're going to stay in touch and I'm going to be able to be a part of watching you and being a part of you achieving massive success. So anyway, best of luck, everyone. Thank you for joining today. I know today was kind of a different format and I actually really enjoyed this so we may have to do some more of these as we keep going into this changing market. So, Andrew, again, thanks for being on the show, and we'll talk to you again soon.
Andrew Lewis 35:05
Yeah. Thanks, Brian.