a rapidly growing real estate team in Michigan. Ken and Brandon share their unconventional journey from managing grocery stores to leading one of the most productive teams in the state, highlighting how their background in high-accountability roles shaped their leadership style.
The duo dives into their focus on agent productivity over agent count, sharing how their disciplined approach and consistent coaching have driven the team’s success. “We’ve maintained a morning call every day since day one,” Ken reveals. “It’s the consistency that sets the tone and builds a strong foundation.”
They also discuss the pivotal role of Sisu in transforming their operations, moving away from manual spreadsheets to automated systems that provide real-time insights. Brandon adds, “The automated task lists keep us a step ahead in every transaction, helping us avoid hiccups and streamline the entire process.”
Ken and Brandon share a glimpse into their upcoming projects and offer practical advice for leaders looking to scale. As Ken puts it, “Growth is messy, and that’s okay—it’s where real progress happens.” Their forward-thinking vision and adaptable approach leave you excited for what’s next at Best Life & Co.
Top Takeaways:
(3:40) What happens when you step into leadership at 23?
(7:46) How did the grocery store experience help scale a real estate team?
(9:34) Can hiring a business expert beat hiring a top realtor?
(12:46) Why is making a million dollars now just the starting point?
(13:28) Is manual data entry holding real estate teams back?
(15:12) The chaos of manual data collection
(17:05) How did adopting Sisu solve major visibility issues in deal tracking?
(21:39) The power of daily training meetings
(22:30) The benefits of automated insights in coaching
(29:41) Combining Sisu and Follow Up Boss for results
(31:13) What’s the formula for a $10 million goal?
(34:02) Why are Thanksgiving pies part of the client experience?
(36:36) Why focus on quality over quantity in team growth?
(37:58) How does feedback shape team growth?
(39:05) Why is growth always messy?
Tune in to this episode for a candid look at what it takes to build a resilient, data-driven real estate business, with actionable advice on leveraging technology, fostering a winning team culture, and driving consistent growth. Discover how Ken and Brandon have doubled their transaction volume while maintaining high standards.
About Ken & Brandon
Ken Hirschmann, Broker/Owner, and Brandon Verlinden, President, lead Best Life & Co., a real estate team based in Royal Oak, MI. Despite a shrinking real estate market, they have consistently grown their business by 25-50% each year, capturing significant market share. Their approach includes strong client communication and effective use of tools like Sisu for better tracking and efficiency.
Connect with Ken & Brandon Today!
Episode Transcript:
Brian Charlesworth 00:34
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the grit Podcast. I'm Brian Charlesworth. I'm the founder of Sisu and the host of the show, and super excited guys, our guests just keep you know, elevating. It's fun to see there are so many, so many leaders in this industry right now that are just crushing it, and we have two of those with us today. So I'm excited to announce that I have Ken with us and Brandon, these guys run an amazing team out of Michigan, and it's called Best Life, Best Life & Co. and anyway, if you again, I, what I want to emphasize here is I'm seeing this more and more and more, and it's really fun to see this with our Sisu customers, which These guys are Sisu customers as well. But the market, you guys, has been down right. In 22 we did 6.8 million homes in 23 we did 3.8 million this year is expected to be under 4 million. And yet we have teams like these guys who are growing their business in a market where the the market is shrinking and and it shrunk so much a few years ago from 22 to 23 that a lot of people got out of the business. And if I look at the market share that you guys have captured in that time frame, actually growing your business 25 to 50% per year. As the market starts to grow again, your business is going to take off, because you own so much market share in Michigan now. So congratulations, Ken Brandon, grateful to have you guys on the show. Ken, I'm going to hand it to you and let you share a little bit more about your background.
Ken Hirschmann 02:10
Yeah, for sure. So interestingly enough, so Brandon and I, we come from a grocery background. That's how we met, which is funny, because now we're both in real estate, running the show, but started in the grocery retail business. Did that for five years post college.
Brian Charlesworth 02:24
And what does that mean? Got a little Hold on, hold on. We can't just skip over this. Did that mean you bagged groceries? Or
Ken Hirschmann 02:30
what did you guys do? Yeah, I was the number one bagger in Metro Detroit. No, I'm kidding. So Aldi grocery store. Are there all these out in Utah?
Brian Charlesworth 02:37
Aldis? Yeah, I know all these from Germany. There are a lot of those.
Ken Hirschmann 02:43
There you go, yeah, that's, that's the one. That's the one. So they have a pretty cool district manager training program right out of college. So they kind of throw you into the fire. You know, you work long hours, retail hours, high accountability. You go through the training, you become a cashier and then a shift manager, and then run a store for four or five months, and then get right into district manager training, where, essentially, they give you a ton of autonomy, and you were running the full operations, financials, human resources of four to six all the grocery stores, and you're doing that at 2223 years old, so kind of try, yeah,
Brian Charlesworth 03:19
I have a question for you. So this is really cool, and that's cool that you guys were both running these stores like that. That's how you met each other. Yeah. So you use you said this one thing, Ken, you said it was high accountability. What did that look like? What did the accountability look like? Because I think that probably has a big a lot to do with why you guys run your business the way you do today. Yeah,
Ken Hirschmann 03:39
we always joke, and we say, you know, if you work 60 hours a week at Aldi, yet to have, like 59 or 60 good ones to not get fired, and obviously we've kind of taken that self discipline and accountability over to real estate, which, which kind of helps us quite a bit, but high accountability, you know, you had to set your schedule wherever you said you were going to be. You had to be there. You were 23 years old, and you were leading store managers, shift managers that were two three times your age. So, you know, you had, all of a sudden, you kind of jump into the leadership role. And you might not be quite ready for it yet, but all of a sudden, in six stores, you might have, you know, 50 to 75 employees that are looking up to you for direction, leadership guidance, you know, in the whole nine so, you know, at 23 years old, most people are still in their fifth year of college or figuring life out, and all of a sudden you have 50 to 75 people, you know, looking up to you with a very tough industry to thrive in. That's what it means to me. BV, what about you? Yeah,
Brandon Verlinden 04:37
I mean, I it's very similar, right? But I also, you know, would add the element of, you know, you look at accountability, and I mean every facet of the business you had transparency into, right? And so, like, you could see everything and how you then manage yourself and your conversations in the teams. Like, it was very unique at such a young age, right? 2223 like Ken was saying, be able to be respond. Flexible for so much and have so much information at your fingertips to be able to act on right, to impact and lead these teams, and I mean customer bases in the 1000s and up to the millions, walking through these grocery stores at any point in time it was, it was super unique, and that's
Brian Charlesworth 05:16
really cool. So obviously, you guys learned grit early on to run, a run, a team like that, to run five or six stores, 75 people at 2223 years old. Not everybody has the grit to do that. Honestly, a lot of people wouldn't run from that. So from there, where did you go? Ken,
Ken Hirschmann 05:35
so I did that for five years, and I wasn't as successful as Brandon. He was one of the quickest promoted district managers to a director position. So by the time I got him over to the good side, which is the real estate industry, I think he was running 70 or 80 stores in Michigan. But right around that five year mark as a district manager at all the you know, just got a little antsy. You know, you're kind of in the same role. And they run everything organizationally, very lean, so they don't have a lot of, you know, let's say lateral moves or smaller promotions. They have big promotions, right? So when there's bigger promotions, and they run the organization lean, they're also pretty infrequent. So was five years in, you know, wasn't sure if I wanted to be a grocery guy forever. One of my really good college friends, he got his license right after college. His mom was a realtor. They were just starting a very small Team at Keller Williams. I think they had three or four agents, one admin, and it was right when Sisu 2014 Brian, so it's right when teams kind of really took off. You know, Jeff Glover's team. Tim hile is a $55 million team down in Texas. He was just getting warmed up as a 26 year old. And, you know, my buddy like the thought of a team, and he was kind of recruiting me over the last four or five years. Knew I was getting antsy. And I really like the allure of an industry that was 100% commission, and then locally, just between high school and my college network, locally here in Metro Detroit, had a really big network. So I'm like, Alright, I want commission. I like sales. I like people, you know, I like kind of hunting what I kill, yada yada yada. So to me, it was either insurance or real estate, because I really wanted something with complete autonomy, something that was entrepreneurial, something that was like I said, commission based, and really gave me the feeling like Aldi did of building my own business. So it kind of led me to real estate or insurance. So I applied to open up a State Farm Insurance branch. That was actually my first option. Made it through two or three of the five interviews didn't make it past the third or fourth one, which was the biggest blessing, you know, in disguise, which I didn't know at the time. So my only option was real estate. So then I called up my buddy Danny from college, and I said, hey, it sounds like I'm getting my license. So I joined his team in July of 2014,
Brian Charlesworth 07:41
cool. Okay. And yeah, Brandon, how'd you come in after the team got started?
Brandon Verlinden 07:46
Yeah. So I mean, Ken, what we started back in 2018 right? So Ken started the team back in 2018 best life, and I only joined what would be probably two years ago last month. So, so like Ken said, I continued that journey at Aldi. Got promoted to be director of operations. So I was oversaw the district manager team. So got another peek behind the curtain, just operationally on the bigger scale. And so Ken and I had always kind of kept in touch. And you know, as the team grew right from 10 agents to 15 to 20 to 25 to multiple locations, you know, Ken and I had a discussion of just, you know, leadership and leading that team. And so two years ago, Ken brought me on board to, you know, be forward facing with the agents and sales coach them as well, but also then the back end operations of having scaled and and opened up new grocery stores, new markets, new businesses, you know, scaling our team. So, you know, in the last couple of years, taken us from the transactions we were doing and growing that at 15 to 20% year over year for the last couple of years, having had that business background, Ken and I kind of laid that out in what would have been summer of 2022 kind of where we wanted to be, 235, years from now, and slowly working towards that plan.
Brian Charlesworth 08:58
Okay, so are you telling me this? Brandon, you don't have to come from real estate to run a real estate ops team.
Ken Hirschmann 09:04
Hey, I'm telling you that, right? Like we Oh, wow. I just
Brian Charlesworth 09:08
want to make sure everyone's clear on this, because so often we think we need to promote people who have their license, who are from the industry. And you know what, guys, if you grow that way, you're going to be growing with people who think smaller than you, surround yourself with people who know how to grow businesses and can come in and take your business to the next level, like Ken has done here, and it doesn't matter what it
Ken Hirschmann 09:34
Yeah, it took me two years to figure out, and then I was frustrated. I had a personal real estate coach, and I said, Brian. His name is Brian, too. I said, Brian Cooper, Nick. I'm sure you know him. I said, Yeah. I said, uncle Brian. I said, What am I missing here? And he's like, you're looking in the wrong spot. He's like, you gotta think differently. He's like, is it easier to sell real estate, or is it easier to run and scale businesses? I'm like, I think it's a lot easier to sell real estate. Not that it's easy, but I think it's easier. He's like, well. Look outside the industry. You don't need a realtor that's a great realtor. You need a great operational guy, financial guy, business guy. So immediately, you know, thought about it. And then the the two year courtship of Brandon began,
Brian Charlesworth 10:11
nice. I love it. So you, you mentioned some people in your intro there, Ken, you mentioned Tim Heil, and you mentioned Jeff Glover, yep. And you said Tim Heil was doing like 55 million at the time.
Ken Hirschmann 10:26
Yeah, I remember it vividly. So I just started at KW, July 2014 I think it was like the August issue. I think that their kW magazines, like, out front Heil was on the cover, and they said, like the $52 million man. And it was sitting there on the cover his sleeve. He was kind of rolling up his sleeve. Up his sleeves. I'm like, Oh my God, this guy's I was 27 at the time. He was 26 I'm like, Man, this guy's got a $52 million team. Look at him. Go. And I had already joined the team. But he was, I kind of read that article about him, and talked about how his dad was a builder, and, I think, in the business, and how he hits the phones with his agents. And that was, like, kind of the first young guy that was really on the fast track at KW that I'm like, shit, we can do this too, you know? Yeah, yeah.
Brian Charlesworth 11:07
So when I came in to this industry was just slightly after that, and I remember going to all these masterminds with all these top teams, and I remember their goal was to all get to 100 million, right? 100 million. That was, that was the goal. Now, I remember they would all stand up and introduce themselves at these masterminds, and they would say, you know, in this case, I'm Tim Heil, right. I'm doing 55 million in production, right? And I have X number of agents. And I remember, and not necessarily Tim. Tim wasn't in these rooms that I'm talking about, but I remember asking them, that's what you did last year? What have you done this year? And they could never answer, because they didn't know their numbers and their business right? And now I look at it and I remember everyone's goal. They were always like the goal was to get to 100 million in volume. What was your volume last year? Ended
Brandon Verlinden 12:07
up being just about what, one 663,000,001
Ken Hirschmann 12:11
63 and change. Yep, right. So
Brian Charlesworth 12:13
you far surpassed that. And where are you at so far year to date this year, and you can blow up your dashboard if you need. BV,
Brandon Verlinden 12:20
yeah. I wish I had my laptop open right in front of me. I look at that thing 10 times a day, and normally I tell you right spot on. I believe, you know, around 180
Ken Hirschmann 12:29
million, yeah, basically to do about 210 million.
Brian Charlesworth 12:34
Oh, yeah. So then, then your, your double, you'll do two 10 million this year, which is double what but it was doing back then. And I would say it's because people run their businesses different than they did back then, right back then Gary Keller wrote the mRNA book, and it was, here's how you build a team, and you would surround yourself with this ops person, and you would surround yourself with this showing assistant, and then you would add some agents. And ultimately, it was, how do you make a million dollars, right? But now, now I see teams like you guys making millions of dollars in GCI, right? And so the industry's just evolved so much. So I just wanted to point that out, because what 10 years ago was big is now not that
Ken Hirschmann 13:16
big, right? Yeah, it's really interesting. Yeah, yeah. So,
Brian Charlesworth 13:20
okay, so you came in Brandon, and it sounds like shortly after that, right after you came in, you guys discovered Sisu. How did you discover Sisu?
Brandon Verlinden 13:29
Yeah, I think it's probably some conversations. I mean, we used to use classic Excel spreadsheets, right? Every deal goes in there manual entry. And we really it started first and foremost, we were looking for a transaction management software. That's kind of where we started.
Brian Charlesworth 13:44
Why? Why were you looking for transaction management like, what was your process back then? So
Brandon Verlinden 13:48
the way we operate the team is we have full service transaction coordination on the back end for all of our agents, right? So agents put in a sub form, and we have in house transaction coordinators that see it from start to finish at that point, you know, being the point person with the agents, when
Ken Hirschmann 14:04
he said, When he says, sub form, it's like a Google form that they submit, and it kind of enters the information on that transaction. And then, kind of, you know, okay,
Brian Charlesworth 14:12
let's dive into that. Thanks for the clarity. Ken, so people would submit a Google form. That Google form would go to whom, transaction coordinators. So transaction coordinator would get it, yeah, they what would they do with it,
Brandon Verlinden 14:26
take it, enter it into manual spreadsheets that
Brian Charlesworth 14:31
they would enter it into a from a Google Sheet, into a spreadsheet,
Brandon Verlinden 14:35
yep, all the information for that to build out like a task list that they would then execute on the back end for TC tasks, and then they put it in a different form that would then be our financials. So okay, two forms, the transaction management side and the financial side, both separate spreadsheets.
Brian Charlesworth 14:53
Was your task list, actually in a spreadsheet,
Brandon Verlinden 14:56
it was just had classic little check boxes and just go. Them down the list all the way down,
Brian Charlesworth 15:02
wow. Okay, and this was two years ago, right? This was two
Ken Hirschmann 15:06
years ago. Yeah, that was the 130 $7 million version of best life and company. Yeah,
Brian Charlesworth 15:12
I love it. And so then you'd have to take it out of that and put it into a spreadsheet, yep. And then, like, if you wanted to make a business decision. Like, let's say you wanted to say, like, what kind of ROI are we getting on these lead sources, or which agents are converting the highest or, or, like, where's our breakdown in just, let's say appointment. Matt to signed. Like, how would you get that information? Yeah,
Brandon Verlinden 15:35
I mean, that would, that was the really and Ken, you might be able to touch on that.
Ken Hirschmann 15:38
I can tell you here's what we do. I would sweep slack for our intra company communication. Brian, so I post a message in Slack, and I'd say, Hey, everyone, do me a favor and take 10 minutes and go through all your set and Mets in the last 30 days and enter your response here. And then they would go through their calendar. They would do it. They would post in Slack. I would manually tally everything, and then I come up with some figures that I was interested in. That's how we do it.
Brian Charlesworth 16:06
Wow. Okay,
Ken Hirschmann 16:07
how long did that take him every time I had an idea? I mean, you're talking about 20 agents trying to track down information in Slack, busy, productive agents. I mean, sometimes days to compile the info just so I could use it on a morning call for five minutes. So, yeah, okay, cool. At
Brian Charlesworth 16:25
least, at least you were thinking about it, right? So, so Brandon, when you guys were taking it out of the Google intake forms and putting it into two different spreadsheets, like, how long did it take to enter that data into those different spreadsheets, it
Brandon Verlinden 16:42
varied, right? And then I mean half hour to an hour at any point in time to get stuff rolling per deal, right? Okay, so
Brian Charlesworth 16:49
30 to 60 minutes per deal, yeah, how many? How many deals were you guys doing at the time? 130
Brandon Verlinden 16:54
at that point in time, right? Ken, probably 400
Ken Hirschmann 16:56
Yeah. Except saying 130 100 and 40 million. So, yeah, probably, oh yeah, something like that. Okay,
Brian Charlesworth 17:03
400 Okay, so then you guys discovered Sisu, yep. And what changed, like, why you said you wanted transaction management, but yeah, so
Brandon Verlinden 17:13
that's kind of where it started, right? And, you know, it was, it was two pronged. One was transaction management. The other one was, it'd be, uh, you know, Saturday morning, and Ken and I would be texting, and we'd be, you know, where are we pacing this month? You know, how many deals do we have in what do we what do we have in escrow right now? Outstanding? Because we'd always see snapshots of the last couple of days, but we wouldn't see releases. We wouldn't see what's already closed, a cash deal that closed in seven days. We wouldn't know what was like an outstanding, what we call pending deal, right? So, you know, the combination of both of those, that's then why we turn to Sisu, right? We found that it had both of those kind of simultaneous to where we would have operational insight to the finances of how many deals are in escrow, what's pending, what are the closing dates upcoming, and the transaction coordinators will then be able to build out their task list. So the big thing that started is we took our spreadsheets in conjunction with Laura at Sisu, who gave us some insight into how other top teams at Sisu were structured, and we built out this, this automated task list based on days since getting into escrow, right? So every day a TC goes in there, and they have their hit list of, you know, 810, 1525, items due today. Based on where these, you know, currently we have 98 deals in escrow, right? 98 outstanding pendings today. You
Brian Charlesworth 18:31
have 98 today. We
Brandon Verlinden 18:33
currently have congratulations. Yeah, no, it's a great, great month for us. Last month, second highest month we've ever had as a team, in October. So in a really strong position. But with that, all of them are at a different point in time, right? And so RTC can pop in today and say exactly what she needs to work on automatically, right in front of her hits that list. And then Ken and myself, you know, we pop in there. I can speak for myself, pop in there every single morning, right? And we can look at Sisu and say, hey, you know, we're currently at 98 pendings, and when $31 million outstanding, it helps us to know what's coming down the pipeline, what's going to close by the end of the year, what sort of sales contests or budget we can work with as we look ahead at future months. So it just gives us a ton more insight. I mean, that's kind of the other goal we had when we jumped on board.
Brian Charlesworth 19:18
Cool. So you mentioned automated task list. What does that mean? What's automated?
Brandon Verlinden 19:23
Yeah, so just, you know, we look at something and say, you know, here in Michigan, you might have a seven day inspection period typically, right? So, you know, an agent would go in there, they would say how long their inspection period is, so you're an escrow today, right? And they'll say the that's the inspection period seven days from now, on day six, our transaction coordinator has a message in their inbox to reach out to that agent and say, Hey, is this cleared and moving forward? So it was able to set up daily reminders ahead of potential hiccups in the transaction, to make sure the agent was on top of it. You know, one of the things we're. Rifle is just agent productivity, right? And leveraging those TCS, they don't know if it's day 5678, sometimes, and so our TCS, the goal is to stay on top of that, and that task list is built out to keep them one day one step ahead every single time. Yeah.
Brian Charlesworth 20:15
Now a lot of our teams grow because they're able to recruit and onboard more agents, or using our recruiting and onboarding platform. But with you guys, I think your growth has actually come from a different means. Is that, right? Your growth has, you haven't added that many agents over the last two years, but you've gone from 400 to 750 transactions. Yeah, so you guys are focused on agent productivity. I want to dive into that, like, what does that mean? I heard you just mention Brandon a sales contest.
Brandon Verlinden 20:46
Yeah? And I'll let you touch on that, right? I know it's kind of been a big piece of how we grew the team and kind of where we're at now,
Brian Charlesworth 20:54
yeah. So yeah, you've, you've grown from 400 to 750 transactions. That's massive. And I think you said you've only added like five or six agents
Ken Hirschmann 21:05
yep in the last year. Yep, yeah.
Brian Charlesworth 21:07
So how did you do that?
Ken Hirschmann 21:21
I get asked a lot, and I'm always kind of a little bit of a loss, right? Because I feel, I feel like we don't do anything, we don't have, like a magic pill, but if I think about it, you know, kind of been in simplest form. I think consistency and probably just like, consistency and coaching would be the two. So one of the things that are really important to us is consistency. So since day one, when I hired my first agent, our Laura, who's our current executive admin Director of Operations, she was my first hire, we did a morning call. And when I hired her, it was just her and I, if we were together as a morning chat, if we weren't, it was a morning call 830 to nine every morning, and we've had a morning call every single day from 830 to nine as a company since, really my first hire since almost month one. So I think the consistency and we have a different, different topic every day, you know, gets people out of bed, gets the the juices flowing, gets everybody, kind of their mind sharp and just gets them up and moving. So I think consistency of the morning training calls has been really big for us, and we have a month we've had a monthly meeting, a monthly sales meeting, since day one. And then the other piece of it is the consistency and coaching everybody in the company, whether they're on the sales side or not, they get coached one on one twice a month. And now with Sisu, now we're using Sisu for most of the data and insight for our coaching forums. So the old coaching forums used to be pretty manual, like like Brandon suggested, and now they're a lot more automated, and with having all that data and insight at our fingertips, it's making our coaching go a lot a lot better and a lot more efficient. So I think consistency with the morning calls, the coaching, the sales meetings, I think that's a really big piece of our consistent and growing productivity. Brandon, anything to add there?
Brandon Verlinden 23:04
Yeah, I think the other piece, you know, and one of the things we're probably prideful about Brian, is we bring on new agents, and we bring on agents who are also top producers as well, right? So it's kind of a unique blend that we've brought on to the team, you know, I think last time we looked at it, I think it was like 15 or 18% of our team was going to make north of $180,000 after team splits, after every split, right? So we're prideful of the production aspect, with a big piece of that then comes, you know, I say there's, there's two reasons people typically are going to join our team and ones to come here and learn or to leverage, right? And when I say leverage, it's, it's leverage, our transaction coordination and our, our, you know, behind the scenes operations, you know, we host client appreciations of events for the team we have showing agents. We have a number of things we do to then help leverage. And the big thing that we found super helpful is, in, you know, over the last two years, is, as you grow and scale and you get 700 deals, there's a lot of moving pieces, right? And the more you can put a process in place to where a deal doesn't become a headache at every hiccup, it just becomes something you work through. Because you're you're one step ahead, has been super helpful, because, you know, we had a guy who joined, he was an independent agent before, and he joined the team, and he said, 28 deals here seems much easier than than eight on my own right. It's the idea of just the leverage and the Smoothness behind the scenes to where you can go prospect, you can go show another house, and you know, you know your deals making it to the closing table, or things are moving along. Yeah.
Brian Charlesworth 24:36
So it's really, really cool. So Ken, you talked a lot about consistency. And one thing I think, when you you talked about coaching, I think there's also consistency at that next level. Like, what do you do to consistently get your people to do the activities that it takes to sell the 28 transactions a year? Yep.
Ken Hirschmann 24:56
Well, I, you know, I think it starts. I mean, luckily, you know, the the team that we started growing best life with in 2018 2019 there's a pretty big chunk of those hires that are still with us. So I think it starts with, you know, we got lucky and had a really good nucleus, and we kind of set the culture of prospecting, right? I come from a Keller Williams background. We're now at exp, but, you know, kind of, I learned through making contacts and nine to 11, you make your calls, and then you have lead follow up and you manage your database, right? So that's kind of foundationally how I learned in the culture that that BV and I try to, you know, have, and I think we have a really good group, you know, we, we have two really great offices. We try to make, you know, lead generation optional, but, you know, strongly encouraged. So, you know, a lot of times there is Office participation, and I feel like we have just a good, productive, mature group that takes care of their business. I don't know, you know. And last, last thing, I'll say, obviously, right, we're a Zillow flex team, so that's been big for us. And, you know, growing a Zillow team. I mean, it's almost a whole other department of your of your team, just because it's another animal, but I think we've just done a really good job of being consistent. And I think we coach very, very hard, even though it doesn't feel that way to the agents. But I think we coach very, very hard, and I think when you do that, it just ingrains. Habits. Podcast is called Grit habits, grit and consistency in those agents, and then we've had a ton of success, and we have a top 10 leader board. We do a lot of sales contests, and this group's pretty competitive, so everyone wants to be on the top 10, and everyone's trying to keep up with each other. So
Brian Charlesworth 26:36
so I'm guessing that sales contest and those leaderboards are all in Sisu as well.
Ken Hirschmann 26:40
Yep. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay.
Brian Charlesworth 26:43
I mean, because I think about it, I remember when I first started building Sisu and I met with one of the largest brokerages back on the East Coast. They happen to be Better Homes and Gardens brokerage, and they were talking about leaderboards, and they were talking about sales contests, and they were doing them on a whiteboard. So I just want to make sure that people know it's not that difficult to do like again, if you streamline and automate and have all of your back office stuff in the same place as your front office. So Ken's leveraging Sisu to run the sales organization. Brandon's leveraging Sisu to manage the back office organization. In doing so you have automated leaderboards, dashboards, sales contests, everything which is which is so much fun. That's actually how we started the company around that, because it does Drive Agent production. So in the last two years, you guys have taken agent production from an average agent doing how many deals a year to where it is now, Brandon. What was it two years ago?
Brandon Verlinden 27:44
Yeah, I would say probably, what, 2324 homes per agent. You know, in 2022 and we're probably going to do 20 or 21 homes per agent this year. Okay, yeah, so staying fairly consistent with that as we grow right? I would say, probably better than what we had, 2223 agents, and now we're in the, you know, high 30s, low, yeah,
Ken Hirschmann 28:07
but, but from everything I've seen, too, Brian, I was just going to say, I mean, as you continue to grow, the productivity challenge of productivity per agent. I mean, that's just the fight that team leaders and organizations face with growing teams. So the fact that, I think, you know, it's kind of like when transactions go down, if you if you're not up, but you maintain you're still gaining market share. We really feel like keeping that productivity at a couple deals a month has been really, really key for us, and really kind of put us ahead of a lot of other, you know, teams and whatnot in the area. Yeah,
Brian Charlesworth 28:36
for sure. So Ken, maybe you can give us some insights as to what your one on ones look like I'm teaching team leaders all the time how to run one on ones out of Sisu. I've never taught you how to run one out of Sisu, but I want to know how your one on ones look so that you can just share with these teams. How do you keep your agents in that high production mode of at least two transactions a month? Yeah.
Ken Hirschmann 28:57
So a lot of things we do, I mean, you know, we'll, we'll ask them, you know, everybody has a metric, and we're pretty flexible with what the metrics are. We don't think that you should have a uniform metric. We think that, you know, you kind of customize it and tailor it to whatever you know you think is best for that agent. So we start out, you know, what were your metrics last week? Did you hit them? You know, if you did, great. Let's talk about it. If you didn't, why not? What was the challenge? So, just kind of basic stuff like that. You know, typically there's action items, you know, that that they have coachings every two weeks, right? So typically, they got some action items that they need to execute, whether it's securing a deal or, you know, getting a deal to the closing table that are a little more specific than the metrics. So we go through that immediately. It jumps into a follow up boss audit. So we use follow up boss, really, in conjunction with Sisu. So jump into follow up boss. We'll do a spot check on a couple leads. We have certain sales processes and lead follow up processes. So it allows us to kind of look at some game film of how they text and communicate, how the frequency of it, what type of value they're giving their agents. So we kind of spot check. One or two leads, and really do a deep dive on a couple of those, as opposed to a lot of surface level coaching questions. We really try to go deeper, not wider, on a couple examples, to really, you know, help them, you know, get some traction, and then from there, you know, obviously, we're right back at Sisu, and we're talking about deals that they have, pendings for the month, listings, by side, what they're pacing for the month. And then we always look at year to date. We always kind of take a step back and say, What's your year to date, going units and volume, what are you pacing? And do we have to make any adjustments in metrics or activity to help get you back on track?
Brian Charlesworth 30:36
Okay,
Ken Hirschmann 30:36
that's the short version, but 45 minute coaching.
Brian Charlesworth 30:39
How long does each of those sessions take? Yeah,
Ken Hirschmann 30:42
generally, about 45 minutes. Okay?
Brian Charlesworth 30:46
And you said every two weeks? Yep, every two weeks. Okay, great, yeah. Thank you for sharing that. So right now, here we are, November 6. What are you doing to get ready for next year? What have you done? What do you have on the plans? Are you guys like bringing the team together to set goals? What's what's happening there? Yeah,
Ken Hirschmann 31:08
we got a lot of good stuff. BB, yeah. I
Brandon Verlinden 31:11
mean, first thing we do so, yeah, every November meeting, we walk through a business plan for 2024 or 2025 it'll be this time, right? And we'll walk through a business plan that we utilize, kind of, you know, first starts personal, where do you want to be and get to, and then we kind of factor that back into then real estate, and breaking it all the way down to the conversation, right? And so we then get those goals, you know, we look at Sisu, look at the stats we provide everybody, kind of stats of, you know, from from conversations to a point like, how many people do you need to talk to, to how many appointments do you need to set to? How many do you need to meet with? We go all the way down. We get a tailored percentages so people know, okay, if I want to close 10 million in 2025 how many conversations do I need to have every single day? Right? We work all the way back. So that's our business plan. We do. And then, actually, I think it's pretty neat. Started this what two years ago, Ken, we have the whole team put together, like a 45 to 62nd video, and we piece them all together in a, you know, half hour, 40 minutes, and we share it at the team meeting, but they walk through the highlights of their business plan for the next year. You know, what are they shooting for? Why are they shooting for it, right? Like, what's their big why? Usually it's something personal, family, relationship, personal growth, whatever it may be, but it kind of gets the whole team, you know, bought into each other. You know, their goals. What are they striving for? You know, some peer to peer accountability. And that's been really cool to see year over year. It's a
Brian Charlesworth 32:30
great idea, yeah? So I'm gonna steal that from you guys and share it across the industry, just so you know, yeah,
Brandon Verlinden 32:35
no, it's nice deal. We shared it in person the first year. Wells ended up taking five to six minutes a person, because everyone gets talking. So we put together these videos. And last year was awesome. And you get to see your agents personalities come out a little bit too, which is pretty unique. So, so that that's a big thing. And then, you know, the the back end stuff for me and Ken, you know, is just taking a look at what does 2025 look like for us, operationally, with growth, right? And kind of creating our budget, and everything that we look at for next year, kind of simultaneously, to, you know, agents and their their expectations on
Ken Hirschmann 33:04
the on the on the front end. BV, I thought you're going to say or what we have coming up in a couple weeks. Brian, so, so our slogan is beyond real estate. And you know, to me, that just means clients become family. And we always want to grow our business foundationally through, you know, raving fan experiences, close clients becoming family, and then getting referrals and growing our close client referral base from our Raven fans, right? So our team slogan is beyond real estate. So in two weeks, we have a beyond real estate week where the team is going to come into the office, hopefully every day, but we're going to do a couple of fun sales contests. And really the kind of the week before Thanksgiving, we're just going to hit our soI and our close clients really, really hard, you know, whether it's giving them CMAs, giving them massive value, checking in on them so that, you know, heading into the holidays, we're top of mind, and we are the real estate team of choice, and we think that'll give us, you know, it's a good week to give us a really strong foundation heading into q1 and next year. So the team's excited about that. We just announced it, and we'll let you know how it goes.
Brandon Verlinden 34:02
Yeah, and Ken, that leads into we do a pie day, right? So, so we get Thanksgiving pies for the team. So every agent on the team, newer veteran gets, he gets 10 pies, right? And so they can order their quantities. And so throughout the weekend leading into Thanksgiving and the week of Thanksgiving. So we're going to do a whole team wide like pie delivery day, we drive them out to close clients, right? We go deliver those to close clients or sphere or referral sources. And so that's always a fun time for us, too. So this year, I mean, I think we have 440 or 450 that we have ordered, right? So that'll be 450 direct one on one, in person, touch points. You know that that our agents will have with their database, which is pretty awesome. It's
Brian Charlesworth 34:42
great. I mean, so many people take off from Thanksgiving to December, and it's really what sets you up for the next year. And so that's why I wanted you guys to share some of this stuff, because what you do today is what January is going to look like, right? Got it? Yeah. So. Okay, you guys, this is great. It's amazing. You guys run an amazing business, and I'm just grateful that Sisu is a part of it and can really help you guys run more efficiently and know your numbers better, and just hold your agents accountable better, and all those things. So I'd love to hear, I have one question, and then I'd love to hear a little bit of advice. So are you guys using the client portal as well?
Brandon Verlinden 35:23
So we're not right now that we're in the process of getting that kind of figured out and leveraged. You know, when we rolled out, we wanted to deep dive into the transaction side, so client portal kind of went on the back end, but the last 60 to 90 days, we've realized more and more the need for it, because it's just keeping the clients up to speed on their side. So not there yet, but it'll, it'll become, I think what
Brian Charlesworth 35:43
you guys will find is it actually empowers communication with the client and streamlines that whole process, which is equally as important as everything you're doing internally. And so you're gonna, you're going to love it. So what advice do you guys have like for I want it from each of you, Ken, I'm going to take it from you for for like, a team leader or a sales leader, and Brandon, then we're going to move over to you. And I just want to know, like, what advice you have for an ops leader who wants to grow and scale every year like you guys are, Evie
Ken Hirschmann 36:17
and I, I mean, we've been able to grow a really good organization. This is my second team that I've grown at a large scale, and it's still a challenge every single day. And that's, I think, that's why I love it, because we're sickos. But, you know, don't do it for reasons other than the fact that you want to grow a team. And you kind of have that leadership heart, right? If you love sales, you have a leadership heart. I mean, you kind of start with that. And the byproduct is, what most people think is, when you grow a big team, you make all this money a lot of times. That's not even the case, but if you grow it the right way, and for me, what I, you know, kind of figured out was the right way, to me, meant not sacrificing agent productivity. So even though we're at 42 agents today, there's no doubt we could be at, you know, 82 agents and one A in terms of our North Star was always going to be agent productivity, and we were never going to sacrifice that for agent count. So I think you kind of pick and choose a couple things that you're married to, other than that, if you want to grow in scale, don't sweat the small stuff and be very flexible with some of these other things. Right? This is my second round, and I had a lot more accountability of being in the office and being in at certain times and doing this and doing that, but pick a couple things. Marry those, hold your team accountable, do them really well, be flexible and a lot of other things, and you're going to be able to retain and also grow. That's what I'd say.
Brian Charlesworth 37:39
That's great advice. What about you? Brandon,
Brandon Verlinden 37:44
yeah, you know, I would say one of the biggest things would be, especially in operations, or operations isn't always sexy. You're dealing with the problems, right? You get all the problems all the time, right? You hear the scenarios that need to be solved. And I would say, you know, from my perspective, be open to feedback. Be open to feedback from the agents. Be open the feedback from your admin, what's working, what's not. We listened to a training and they said, the team you, you know, joined today won't be the team that exists tomorrow, right? We're going to change every day. And I think we've done a good job of hearing agent feedback and doing our best to put systems in place, whether that's automations and follow up boss, whether that's back end transaction coordination, whether that's, you know, developing our showing agent program to next levels, or, you know, bringing new training programs on, like it's fluid and it's going to change. And the process you have today doesn't mean it needs to be the process tomorrow, right? But be open to feedback from your agents, from your ops team, and just know that being fluid and dynamics, okay, right?
Brian Charlesworth 38:42
I mean, we should always be advancing, growing, right? And that's why it that's why, if we have systems, yep, you can then easily make an addition to that system, and that'll be repeatable on every transaction, right? Yeah, that's great. Totally. Ken, you were gonna say, I was
Ken Hirschmann 39:02
just gonna say, you know, Brandon said that. And it's like, you know, you're always in the messy middle. People ask us, oh my god, you guys must be running so efficiently and running like, you know, running like a top and I'm like, Oh my God, you have no idea. Growth is messy all the time, right? It's taking chances. It's adapting Sisu, and when you roll that out. Of course, it's messy. It's it's a massive product that's going to change our business. I mean, it is, I'm kidding, but it's a shit show in the middle all the time. And messy is good because that means you're growing, right? So don't be afraid of the messy. You're always in the messy middle, and that's usually where the growth happens.
Brian Charlesworth 39:36
Yeah? Great advice. Okay, guys, well, again, it was fun meeting you in person last week at exp con, and thank you for joining us on the show today. And for all you listeners like just keep listening, and I'll keep bringing on powerhouses like this, so that every week you can join in and see what the best of the best are doing to grow their business. So once again, guys, thanks for joining and. And again, what is the best way to reach you guys can and Brandon, if anybody wants to reach out to you,
Ken Hirschmann 40:05
I'd say online social media at Ken Hirschman, realtor, H, I, R, S, C, H, M, A, N then, and then at best life & Co, CEO, either one hit us up and let's connect. Yep,
Brian Charlesworth 40:17
great. So this is Brandon and Ken out of Best Life & Co. out of Michigan. So feel free to reach out to them, guys, and I'm sure they're happy to help you guys expand your business any way they can. Again, guys, thanks for joining us on the show. We'll see you all next week.