Veronica shares her journey from managing a complex business that sold over 2,200 homes a year to building a streamlined, sustainable model.
Veronica opens up about the challenges of scaling too quickly, explaining how a focus on simplicity transformed her team’s operations. "We realized the business was too heavy, and simplicity became our goal," she shares. Her insights into focusing on what truly matters, like clear leadership and sustainable growth, will resonate with anyone feeling overwhelmed by complexity.
A major part of Veronica’s transformation involved leveraging technology like Sisu to simplify processes and cut costs. "Every transaction starts in Sisu now, and it’s made a huge difference for us," she says, reflecting on how operational efficiency has allowed her team to focus on what matters most—culture, performance, and growth.
The conversation also dives into key lessons about recruiting and accountability. Veronica stresses the need to maintain high standards even when it’s difficult. "You can’t lower the bar just because someone doesn’t want to comply—it only hurts the team," she explains. She emphasizes that leadership requires balancing data with heart, ensuring every agent feels valued and connected.
As the episode closes, Veronica leaves a piece of advice for leaders tackling market shifts. "People need to know where they’re going and why they’re doing it," she says, adding that clarity and authenticity are essential for inspiring teams to thrive.
Top Takeaways:
(2:07) Simplicity and sustainability in real estate leadership
(3:58) The dangers of chasing shiny objects in business
(8:06) Why recruiting never stops in real estate
(8:59) Why team standards should never be negotiable
(10:29) The cost of becoming too transactional
(12:04) Can outsourcing leadership hurt your company’s culture?
(15:53) What happens when your team isn’t ready for a shifting market?
(20:01) How does a strong culture attract top agents?
(25:14) How Sisu eliminated redundancies and saved thousands
(28:15) Filling operational gaps with vision and talent
This is a must-listen for anyone looking to simplify operations, build a winning culture, and lead with purpose in today’s competitive real estate market.
About Veronica Figueroa
Veronica Figueroa is the CEO and Team Lead of The Figueroa Team at eXp Realty, recognized as one of the top-performing real estate teams in the nation. Her team has served over 2,000 families, achieving $646 million in sales volume in a single year. She has been a Zillow Advisory Board Member since 2016 and is known for her forward-thinking approach to real estate, including leading the I-Buyer movement.
As a sought-after speaker, Veronica has shared insights on leadership and business growth at major industry events such as Inman Connect, NAHREP, and the eXp Shareholders Summit. She is passionate about mentoring real estate professionals, helping them strengthen their leadership skills and scale their businesses effectively.
Connect with Veronica Figueroa Today!
Episode Transcript:
Brian Charlesworth 00:34
Welcome back, everyone. I am excited to kick things off this year in 2025 with my first guest, Veronica Figueroa. She is somebody I've been trying to get on this show for probably nine months now, and between her schedule and my schedule, that's been a little difficult. But welcome to today's episode of the grit podcast again. This is our kickoff for 2025 and there's no one I would rather kick things off with in 2025 than Veronica. So Veronica, welcome to the show.
Veronica Figueroa 01:05
Oh, thank you for having me. I'm super excited to be here. Yeah.
Brian Charlesworth 01:08
So for those of you who don't know, Veronica's been one of the top flex teams for years. She was one of the Zillow offer teams. Back in the day when Zillow did that, I think you had the largest producing team at exp, one year is that, right? Two years in a row, we three years in a row. So amazing. Amazing because exp is full of big teams, right?
Veronica Figueroa 01:28
So we just keep on getting better and better with the amazing teams.
Brian Charlesworth 01:31
So anyway, it's great to have you on the show today. No, we had the opportunity at Sisu to work with you years ago, and then you hired some, you know, CTOs and different things. And kind of, Sisu was kind of okay, we're going to build all these other systems to do it. Now, you're back with Sisu. But anyway, why don't you give us a little bit of background? I'd like to just start off with, like, where are you at now? Like, what are you excited about for this year in 2025
Veronica Figueroa 01:56
Yeah, well, I'm super grateful that you guys kind of took me back. So I'll say thank you on that. You know, I think we're always evolving and maturing in our business. And you know, where I'm at today, if I have to say is, I'm in a really good place as an operator. I've learned a lot of lessons, and I think the last few years have taught us a lot, and I'm really excited about the future. You know, I've gone through a lot of changes as an operator. You know, like I said, we were the number one team two years in a row at exp at the peak, we sold 2000 a little over 2200 homes. And I learned a lot. But I think what we realized is, although we were doing really big numbers, we were really running a complex business. And where I'm at today, Brian, I think it just comes with time, with wisdom, with, you know, just maturity is, I'm super excited to run a healthy business that's sustainable, that's simple, that's not complex with really good people. And even at, you know, I would say 2024 as we were transitioning, we still, you know, sold close to 500 homes, which I'm super, super proud of. Even while I was not in the driver's seat of running the team, I was kind of building multiple things, but I think as the visionary of my team, that I've had the privilege of running this team for a long time now. I think the word that I would say for 2025 and where we're at is running a healthy business that's simple, that's fun, and that is, that is just but good people and not complicated. I don't know if that makes sense. You know, we just want to do good business, and that's why we're super excited to be working with you guys. Because when we sat down and you asked me where I was at, I was like, man, Brian, I just, I need to clean up some of the things that we did while we were operating at such a high level that when I when, you know, when I kind of took a look at everything, there was a lot of redundancies, there was a lot of unnecessary things in our business, and felt heavy. Felt really heavy. And here you come in and you you reassure me that we're, do you know, we're on the right track, and that we're not the only ones that are reevaluating our business. And you know, there's a lot of distractions out there in the business and the industry. And I think I was guilty of being one like, oh, shiny object. Or people are doing this. We should do this. And then, you know, when you become clear as to who you are as an operator, you start eliminating the noise and stay in. You get hyper focused, and you're like, this works for me, or this is the kind of business I want to run. So I'm excited for Sisu to be a part of our simplicity model, and our our feel good journey that we're on.
Brian Charlesworth 04:25
Well, thank you. And this, this show, is certainly not about Sisu, but I do want to mention, I think you are the only team owner that I've ever said these words to. And I basically said, I think you had your CTO on his way out the door. And I said, Veronica, I've got you I may be your CTO, or better yet, my team will be your CTO. So how's that working out for you today?
Veronica Figueroa 04:49
Oh my gosh, my team loves you, loves, you know, the entire Sisu team. And, you know, I think what, what I did with my team, you know, we sat down and when we talked. Talked about what winning would look like. And one of the things for 2024 as we close out the year, is like we will become Sisu super users. We're going to learn, you know, the ins and out. We're going to make sure that we're super, super intentional, that we're good students, and we dive deep. And the last, I would say, 90 days to probably 120 days my team. And it didn't even it take that long, you know, but they've just been excited to dive deeper and deeper and deeper. And you know, when a change like that happens, when you lose or you part ways with someone that is, you know, probably a big part of your business, because they have so much information, your data, and you're making all these transition, it's interesting to see the amount of people, either people can get nervous, or they can rise and like even seeing like ECS and Harold and the team rise up, and they say, We love the simplicity, and they love to know that they have the support that they can lean on a true, I would say, operations team or tech team, that can have our back and give us that certainty. The team's super excited. And, you know, they they accomplished what I asked them to do. I said, winning is gonna this is what winning is gonna look like. And they're all in and we, I will say, we're proud super users. Now
Brian Charlesworth 06:15
I'm happy to hear that I didn't know you. Didn't know you considered yourself that yet. So that's exciting
Veronica Figueroa 06:20
for me. Well, we, we're actually flying out to see you guys, and they're excited. The Ops team is excited to just kind of see behind the scenes. But you know, it's every single day, we're in the system. We're learning. We're obsessed with the information that we have in front of us, and we're utilizing it for, you know, recognition, to celebrate, to to make decisions. So it's really exciting to make that part of our business and realize that on the other side of some of those scary decisions, you have a team of people who will have your back. And I'm extremely blessed.
Brian Charlesworth 06:49
Yeah. I mean, that's been our it's been one of our biggest focuses over the last few years is truly making sure that we support our customers. It's like we are your partner in growing your business. That's our focus, like whatever we can do, and our team. I remember back the first time you came to Sisu, we didn't even have anyone that could help you on board. So come a long way. Since then, I'm switching gears a little bit. You've mentioned something just about like rebuilding in 2024 and obviously you guys have gone through a lot of change. Many people have gone through a lot of change. We've gone from 1.6 million agents in NAR to about a million now. So, like, that's that's a big change in itself. But you guys, I know you are now, like, on this rise of growing and increasing. Call it unit production again, which equates to closed volume as well. But like, what are some of the lessons you learned in 2024 to to take it to the next level?
Veronica Figueroa 07:46
Yeah. So, you know, I just mentioned one of them, obviously, really running an operation that isn't as complex as we used to. That was one of the things that we were focused on, and we're happy to be on the other side of that. One of the things I'll say that you guys probably talk about, or have talked about on the show. If you've I've seen some of the guests you know never let your foot off of recruiting. Even though we've been in a market where there's been obviously a declining agent count, there are agents that still want to be a part of a team, and you have to continue to stay in recruiting mode. We know that. You know that that is one of the mistakes I made. I am and have always been the best recruiter for my team, and unfortunately, it's been hard to find someone to replace me when it comes to the high level recruiting. But even when I don't have a designated recruiter, we recruit about six to eight agents a month on our team. But even then, that's not enough. You know, we we recognize that everyone who applies or shows interest isn't always going to make a cut. You know, people talk a really great game, or they believe that they want to be held accountable. But when they look at, you know, the standards, and they see that we are running a true operation. You know, some people just realize this isn't for them. One of the things that I learned throughout my years is, you know, don't make changes to your business simply because agents don't want to comply. You know, don't necessarily change your standards because people are complaining because you know what's best for them to production. You know that. You know they have to make sure that they maintain their database. You know that they're prospecting. The accountability is a must. The notes are so important. Follow up is so important. And you know, sometimes I've seen operators and even myself, we would make exceptions for certain people, and all it did was lower the standard of the team. So, you know, of course, 2025 was we cleaned house in a lot of areas of our business, and I'm glad that we got back to, you know, just accepting the fact that you make changes sometimes for people who are here, but they might not be here tomorrow, and now you're stuck with those changes. So that was a really valuable lesson that I hope that I can share with others who might be listening. I'm the first one to talk, you know, like I'll be vulnerable and talk about. All of our mistakes. And I love about that, because so many people be like, Oh my god, you guys did so well. Tell us how you did it. No, tell me. Let me tell you about all of our mistakes we've made. But, you know, as an operator, you just get back up, you learn from them. And I have never had a problem saying to my team, hey, I screwed that one up, but that one was on me, you know. And I think they appreciate that operators, I think another mistake that I could say that I've made was I said this not too long ago. I outsource the heart too soon. I outsource the heart of the team to the wrong person, and too soon, and if you become too transactional, and you lose the culture, you know your business will eventually, it'll suffer. And I think there has to be a good balance between art, heart and science. You know, that's your marketing, that's your you know, data, but we're in the people business, and people want to work for people, people they know, like and trust, that they feel, that they have access to, that they care for. And those are some of the lessons and the mistakes I had to I had to accept, as a leader, that the more we grew, there were going to be cracks. And some of those cracks were the fact that people felt like, you know, they were on a team that maybe got a little bit too transactional, because when you're selling 2200 homes, Brian, you better have the right leadership place, and you can't treat these people like they're a number on a spreadsheet. And when I did feel like I had friction in my business, it was when I realized I was out of alignment and it was running too data driven and not enough of the balance of the heart of the people, because people, they are choosing to be in your world. And if they feel like they're just a number it, they won't you. You
Brian Charlesworth 11:50
just shared four massive, massive nuggets, and thank you for being so vulnerable. But that's what I love about you. Like you're like, Yeah, I was number one team, and now I'm I'm in a total rebuild. Couple of things you talked about outsourcing the heart. So I have an experience. I've been an entrepreneur for a long time. I started my first business when I was 25 and when I was 28 years old, I had a business that we just raised $43 million we ended up bringing in some VCs that thought we were a billion dollar business, and they were going to accept nothing else. So about 90 days after that happened, after we raised the money, we had an opportunity to sell the business to a few big names. And one of the things I ended up doing, because of some of the things that were going on with my board there, is, I ended up doing exactly what you just said, outsourced the heart of my business. In other words, I brought in a CEO from a big company, thinking he could take this to the billion, and all he did is kill the heart of the company. Because back then, it wasn't like today. You know, we all back then, everyone thought, Oh, these young entrepreneurs, you need to replace them with some seasoned entrepreneur. And now we, now, we all know, like the Amazons of the world, or the call it Facebook, or whatever. It's the founder that took it to that level, right? It's not outsourcing the heart. So I think many times, even though you do an excellent job of bringing in the right people to run your business, and I see spring do the same thing, where she doesn't have to be in the business. She's working on the business. You're working on the business, but you're still the heart of the business. And if you let that go, that's where things can start to change, right? Because then the culture changes. And that's one of the things you talked about, was culture. Yeah, you talked about, okay, now all of a sudden you let one agent not live by the way you want your team to run.
Veronica Figueroa 13:46
Now, what starts to happen? The rest of the culture crumbles.
Brian Charlesworth 13:49
It changes your entire culture, right? So then we have to start from the bottom, and we have to recruit people to your third point, right? We have to recruit people from the bottom in people who are going to do what we want them to do, and work the way we want them to work, so that we can change the culture from the bottom up again, because these agents who have been around forever, who are no longer living the culture, are no longer doing high production, these new agents. That's the beautiful thing about running a team. You get these new agents in production and doing five, six transactions a month, within 90 days. You know if they'll do what you say to do, right?
Veronica Figueroa 14:37
Yeah, you know what? I think another lesson Brian is that you know cash hides mistakes, right? When money's coming in, cash is good. You know, in the COVID years, it was like it was a rainbow. It was like a unicorn year, right? Those were unicorn years. Two years were great. You know, like we had Zillow offers, and prior to that, I had already been a team leader for 10 years. So it wasn't like it was my first rodeo. I. I've been through multiple market shifts, but this was different. It was like, wow, it's it's crazy. So I brought in talent that got to enjoy the ride of the high. So when things started shifting, people started panicking. And I'm like, Why is everybody, you know, so uptight? This is called Real Estate. We pivot. We, you know, it's a actually, I'm excited. The market we're about to enter is a competitive market. It's what I grew up in. It's, you know, oh my god, we have days on market more than 3045, days. We have a higher absorption rate than two months.
Brian Charlesworth 15:37
Like, this is real estate, but we have expired listings, expired listing?
Veronica Figueroa 15:40
Yeah, we have expired listings, you know, like, it's competitive. People want discounts. People want options. Oh my gosh. It was like the end of the world. And I was like, Wow, another mistake. I didn't prepare people for the reality of what real estate was prior to that hockey what? What is it? The hockey stick, and it was just like, boom, to the moon, right? And everybody was excited. Then, when you weren't number one anymore, people felt like they were failing Brian, and yet we're still selling for 500 600 homes. They're like, that's not good enough. I'm like, Guys, you understand that what we did was, you know, it was unique, and we could do it again, but the only way to do it again is, you know, now in this market, it's going to look different. And do we even want to do it again like that? What's most important, profitability, culture, you know, the right leadership. So it was interesting. So for me, I was, like, it was, it was crazy to witness how people expect to always be winning, and they don't know how to shift in a market, and they're usually beating themselves up because the industry still thinks we're winning. I mean that that's I didn't have some self proclaimed title where I'm like, Oh my God, I'll always sell 2000 homes a year, like, you know, so I was like, or I'll always sell 1000 homes. It was part of that, you know, really cool, like, I would say, unicorn era. Now, what's really cool is, we paved the way for a lot, and we can, we know how to do it. I know how to do it again. Now, it's a matter of we're going to do it the right way this go round. And I think it's going to be a lot more fun.
Brian Charlesworth 17:23
So I want to talk about that for a minute. This podcast is called Grit, for a reason, because of people like you. That's why you're on here. But I think the industry, if we were to look at the industry today, most people in this industry have been in it now less than five years, right? They don't know. They don't have the grit that you have to say, Oh, I've been through this before. We're going to make these pivots. We're going to do this, we're going to simplify, and we're going to build a more profitable business. It may be smaller, but it's more profitable than when we were just on this, you know, hockey stick journey. But how do we as leaders today, like, how do you get your team on board with, really the grit, I would say, having to shift, having to now, actually do the work, versus just get a Zillow lead and the next day it's under contract. I think, I think there's so many people that got so spoiled by that market that they forgot how to work, they forgot the grit, or they never had it because they're so new to the market, they've never been in here, and they've had to grind and make the phone calls and do the work, do the follow up. So how do you get people back into that? And maybe, maybe you don't know, but I don't know anybody like that's that's a big challenge today, right?
Veronica Figueroa 18:38
Well, you know, we have a mutual friend, right? Chap, and he's been my coach for eight years. And right? You can't make anyone be productive. You must just, you just have to create an environment of of accountability and and and productivity, where everybody is pushing each other to excellence, right? And ultimately, people are going to weed themselves out. They're going to be like, I can't keep up. Like, this is too much. But what I love is, right now, the culture of our team, instead of it feeling like people on the outside might say whatever they want, but for me, I'm sleeping well at night. I feel good, because what's happening is the quality of of the agent and the in the in the culture is rising because we're watching our agents who are now becoming the top producers on our team, like, literally empower and inspire the newer agents, and they're the ones showing them, Hey, man, this is what we do. Like we're a culture of XYZ. We're actually seeing new agents who want to join our company. They're being brought in by other agents, or they're the ones helping us select who's the right fit for our agents. They're like, hey, metal, that's what they call me on the team. Hey, metal. You know this. What's your name? Hey, what? Vero. It's Veronica, but it's V, E, R, o, so now you know what my closest friends call me. It's Vero. Roll the R A little bit. You get veto. Ahead. That's my nickname.
Veronica Figueroa 20:01
So they're either v or vet. Oh. So they're like, hey, you know, this person's a rock star. I did a transaction with them, and I asked them about their business, and they said to me, man, I see you guys are doing great things over there. You guys got a great culture, you know, you guys train together. You guys are always like, you know, shooting content, and you're celebrating each other's successes. And I see that you guys have some opportunities there. What would it look like to be on the team? And they're like, man, come on into our office. Come to our one of our workshops, come to one of our dial days. Come in and see us. Come dial up with us. We'll dial with you, even if you're not with our team. Come on into our office. We're an office that welcomes everyone. Come and check us out. Get a feel for our office. Get a feel for what we do. And if we're a good fit, let's set up next steps for you. But what's happening is everybody is rising. The quality of our team is rising, and they're themselves. They are telling agents, amen, don't come here if you're looking to just hang out and be a country club, that's great. You're on the right path. Now, you know, come in here if you want to dial, if you need me to help you dial, if you want to go shoot content, you want to visit new construction. You need an open house buddy. You're ready to do, you know, like massive events. Because guess what? We're shifting the culture. In the past, we used to drink through a fire hose, but Veronica's been preparing us that well rounded agents have multiple sources of business, and that we are entrepreneurs within her world that have an obligation to run our business like a business, and she's preparing us, and she's teaching us, she's giving us the tools, the resources, bringing in the coach. Yeah, we have this opportunity, this database of over 160,000 you know, like golden opportunities, right? You gotta but you gotta hunt. Now you get that. Plus, let's go network. Let's go do this. Let's go do that. You've got a winning formula. You've got a winning formula here. You want to become a listing agent. You got to do X, Y, Z, I'm going to teach you. I'll be your mentor. Like, what I'm loving now is that the culture is it's elevating because of our agents themselves, creating the environment of production. But the message I'm bringing home is, guys, the team's going to look different, it's going to feel different, but you're going to be a better agent. You if you follow my lead, I promise you what will happen to your business is going to be life changing. If you can just do the things that I know have helped me and help every other top agent that I know build a sustainable business. So now it's kind of like they want to protect it. They're like, we only want to be around winners. So it's really it's really exciting. I can't tell you how to get your agents to be more productive, because ultimately, there's going to be a point where, you know, they might want something different, they might want leverage, they might want freedom. They might want time. So when I meet with my agents, it's a matter of what's important to you. So somebody might want to sell 50 homes, someone else might want to sell 24 homes, and that's okay, but what I know is they want to be around people that are putting in the work.
Brian Charlesworth 22:54
So you are becoming a Sisu rock star right now, what was it? What was the terminology used? Super User, super user, Sisu. Super User, I like that. So as a Sisu super user, have you run a sales contest yet? No.
Veronica Figueroa 23:12
So we are still playing around with all the gears and all the gadgets, and we're super excited for next week, when we fly out there to kind of see how the challenges work. Everybody's like, when's the first challenge? So it's q1 now. So it's like, you know, I'm thinking, what do we do? March Madness, q1 I need something exciting to get them going, because my team loves competition. When
Brian Charlesworth 23:31
you come to behind the scenes, I think we should set a goal before you leave. We will have a sales contest set up in your platform the last afternoon, that's what we do, is our we fly our entire success team out here, and the final afternoon is, hey, you spent two days seeing what this team, Utah life is doing, how they're running Sisu, how they're leveraging Sisu, and how they're, you know, and much, much more than that. But what is it you want to implement that you have not yet implemented, right? And we will do that on site. So here's something I want to suggest, and I've watched hundreds and hundreds of teams do this, and it works. And so number one, you want your sales contest to be no longer than a month. So maybe we shoot for a February sales contest. You also want your sales contest to be run on appointments met. And Tom Ferry was the first one that ever told me that, when I interviewed him about four years ago. And he's right. You may want it to be appointments met. And one other thing, but that's the cool thing about a scoreboard, is you could say appointments met. You get, you know, 50 points for every appointment you meet, but everyone you put under contract, you get 100 points, right, or whatever. And so now you've got this point scoreboard where half of your team is on this team, half's on this team. And now you've got, like, a NBA game going on, right, like,
Veronica Figueroa 24:50
well, and you and I both know, because, you know, we're a Zillow flex team, and we've got some KPIs we've got to meet, and we've got other KPIs. So I'm really excited about that, because, you know, of course, we know we have to. Measure. But I'm like, how do you also keep your people inspired while you're measuring these KPIs? Right? That sometimes can feel a little draining, and, you know, like, I'm really glad that we're talking about this and that you're going to be my accountability buddy, and we're going to get February. You know, when I say about being a super user, I do want to just kind of just say why I feel like we already feel like we've made so much progress. I'll tell you guys helped us save money on our skyslope integration and our, you know, all the Zapier that we had connected with that that saved us about $4,000 a year. We were able to eliminate monday.com which saved us probably close to $9,000 a year. We were able to, I mean, like there were just so many things that when we sat there, and we looked at the P, L, and we looked at, you know, what are the things? Every transaction starts in Sisu now, and it, you know, like it allowed us to be able to simplify things. So, like, for me, I'm like, I feel like we're a super user, just with that in itself, because we're able to, you know, my ops team and my TC team, right? They didn't have to go through so many systems. And, you know, the agents can, can start and finish everything, and, you know, for the most part, in one spot, and it also eliminated all these other redundancies and needs and and you know when, like I said earlier, cash pies mistakes, right? And then I was able to come to you and, like, Brian, can it replace this, this, this, that. So now that we've gotten all that, and everything is pretty structured, and the processes are flowing, and any requests that we want, you guys have been able to make that happen for our world. Now it's fun. Now we get to have fun right now that the agents have really adopted, you know, you know how there's always an implementation process, and you gotta get them onboarded, and you gotta get them to buy in now that they're in together with some other cool tools that we're using. We talked about some other things that we're doing with fellow and some other companies, but now it's fun. Now let's make it fun again, because we talked about KPIs, right? You can KPI your people to death, but how do you also keep them inspired, to keep the ball moving and keep them going, and competitions are fun. So, you know, like I said, fig team. A lot of times people think it's the fig team, you know, short for Figueroa, I guess it makes sense. But really, for me, it's about family, inspiration and growth. You know, I really want these people. They are important to me. You know, they're my family and and you know, it's my job to keep them inspired and to help them grow a business that will hopefully last them however long they want to be in this career. There's no plan B for me, and we stand by those core beliefs. You know, I could break it down even more faith and just being innovative and also being a generous person. I That's just who I am and what I want this team to feel like. So it is really fun to build something that you could reward people for the activities that really move their business forward, such as appointment set and meeting those benchmarks that we need to meet as a team. You know, one of the things I didn't mention to you, Brian, that I believe is the reason we became the number one team at when we did is, you know, I set out an intention probably about five, six years ago. You know, it was me with my back up against the wall, and I took some really big risk and some big leap, you know, I took a big leap of faith. And I'll never forget one of the things that I said is, I want to become one of the best operators in the country. I want to show that. Number one, I can do this. Number two, like women have a seat at the table. And scrappy, you know, my scrappy little mindset, I had big dreams, but I knew there were areas of my business that were flawed, and it was on the operational side. You know, I could, I could go out there and just paint this big vision, but I needed to be able to implement and that is where I got to work. And I was like, I'm going to become, I'm going to learn. I'm going to be a student. I was very unassuming. I'd get in these rooms and I'd watch what people were doing. I was like, I could do that, if I implement this, I do this, and I can learn from what this person did and their mistakes, and then I just got to work. And one thing I did is I just recruited talent. I recruited talent that could help me fill the gaps in the areas that I perhaps wasn't as strong in it. It was my job to share the vision and show them, tell them where we were going. And it wasn't a straight line. It looked like, you know, the zigzag, but it was one thing that it drove me to show that if I could do it, man, anybody like, let's do this. Let me show others how they could do it, too. So, you know, I'm humble enough to say that that was my driver, because I had something to prove to myself. It wasn't anybody I had to do. I had to prove it to myself. Then once I got there, now I also have the responsibility to let people know I didn't always do it the right way. It wasn't done the right way. Now I'm rebuilding, and this time around, I'm excited to do it in a way that feels good for the people I'm doing it for. Yeah,
Brian Charlesworth 29:33
if I had to guess, I'm guessing you've had a lot of people tell you in your life that you can't do something. Is that right kind of sort of little here's what I love about you, Veronica, and I know we're about out of time, so I just want to point out some things I observe. You obviously don't take no for an answer. You believe in yourself enough that you're going to share the vision with those around you, and that's why you've become a great leader. Because you are able to transfer that vision and have those around you support you in that and help you build it. And in turn, you are not afraid to talk to anybody. And if I had to say one unique talent of yours, you are probably the biggest connector master connector of anybody I know, which is why you've I went to the unlock event a couple years ago. You were on stage interviewing everybody, right? I went to the place, what's the event called they do bill how the built, how event in Arizona. You were on stage interviewing everybody, and you just have a way of bringing the best the best together. And so anyway, coming from you, it's been really, really fun to get to know you, and I know you've helped connect me as well. And you know, because of that, Sisu and exp have a relationship where exp is now providing Sisu to a lot of their agents. So I'm grateful for that. I am grateful to you for that right, because you were able to connect us. So anyway, I just want to say it's an honor to have you here. I have about 10 more questions for you that I'd love to ask another time, because I know you've got to catch a plane. So anyway, thank you for joining me on the show today. Happy New Year, and I'm excited to see you at behind the scenes of a real estate machine here in Utah next week,
Veronica Figueroa 31:23
I'm excited, and we'll have to give them the update on the challenge once we're done with the challenge. So we will. I appreciate you, and congrats for all your success, and thanks for having me.
Brian Charlesworth 31:32
Yeah, thank you.