That is exactly what Courtney Gauchman, COO at Wilson Group in Massachusetts, has helped her team do. With a background in the beauty industry and over a decade of operational leadership, Courtney now leads the systems and strategy that have fueled the Wilson Group’s growth, despite navigating one of the toughest markets in recent years.
And what is her approach?
Track everything, but focus only on what moves the needle. From managing three full-time operations staff to building custom dashboards in Sisu, Courtney ensures every agent has clarity on where their business comes from and how to grow it. “We basically attribute the 88 percent growth during three of the hardest years in real estate to the fact that we use Sisu,” says Courtney.
In this episode, Brian sits down with Courtney to talk about what it takes to run a referral-based real estate business, how to keep agents productive without burnout, and why they are starting to build an operations-as-a-service company for agents who do not want to manage staff. They also discuss how operational clarity impacts culture, conversion, and client experience!
Top Takeaways:
(1:38) From salon management to real estate ops
(4:14) Why are salon pros thriving in real estate?
(6:40) Building a business vs. slinging homes
(8:14) Growing 88% through post-sale follow-up
(9:26) Sisu dashboards built for ROI
(12:00) Deep conversations over cold calls
(14:34) $70M+ in referral-based volume
(15:43) Setting the referral expectation early
(18:57) Building a referral system inside Sisu
(22:42) Custom accountability for agent success
(26:43) Turning rental data into buyer leads
(31:41) Building an ops-as-a-service model from Sisu
(35:50) Reviewing past data to guide marketing
If you are still guessing where your next deal will come from, this one is worth a listen.
About Courtney Gauchman
Courtney Gauchman is the COO of the Wilson Group, a Keller Williams team based in Massachusetts. She brings 12 years of operations experience and a background in real estate sales. At Wilson Group, she leads the development of systems that support both clients and agents. Outside of work, she enjoys family time, outdoor activities, and experimenting with espresso martinis.
Connect with Courtney:
Episode Transcript:
Brian Charlesworth 00:35
All right. 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 I'm super excited to have consistent podcast going out again. I kind of slacked off the beginning of the summer, so today we have an operational guest with us, which doesn't happen that often, so I'm really excited to dive into some back office things. I'm here with Courtney Gauchman. Courtney is the Sisu Courtney is the COO of the Wilson group, which is a kW team out of Massachusetts, right?
Courtney Gauchman 01:10
Yes, right outside of Boston. Yeah,
Brian Charlesworth 01:12
very cool. So Courtney, you sounds like a decade of call it operational experience. So can you just maybe start things off today by just giving us your background? I just love to learn more about your background, how you got into real estate, and how you now went from being an agent to over operations and, you know, running that side of the business.
Courtney Gauchman 01:38
Yeah. So I started in the salon industry, and I absolutely loved the beauty industry. I thought it was incredible. I'm not gifted at the art of service, right? So I really just figured I was like, I know how to run a business, and it's something I really love and enjoy. So I got a ton of experience. It was 12 years of understanding how to run and operate a customer facing business, how to get repeat business, how to increase the retention and referrals that you get from people, and then also how to upsell, right? Cuz for us, it's when you have a client in your chair, you're trying to actually upsell a little bit, try and get some products sold, maybe sell them a package, whatever it might be. So I think it was an amazing experience to learn all about that. And after 12 years, I had almost 80 employees towards the end of my career, and I decided I really wanted to do something a little more autonomous, and that's when I transitioned into real estate. I sold real estate for a couple of years, and after I had my twin daughters in the middle of covid, it felt like the right time to step back from sales and have a little bit more of that structure that I missed from being in the operations side of things. So I ended up working for Wilson group. I've been with Wilson group for almost five years now, and it's been an amazing transition to be able to use my real estate skill set with my operational background and to be able to help grow this team. So it's it's been a good ride so far.
Brian Charlesworth 03:03
Cool. So you sold real estate for a couple years. How did the transition happen to where you moved back into the operational side?
Courtney Gauchman 03:11
Once I was pregnant with twins, my husband and I were building a new house, and my husband works in the health care field, so once covid happened, at that point, I think it was just like too much to take on that he was at work every day. I didn't have childcare due to the fact that it was a global pandemic, and I had two infant, newborn twins, so I wanted to go back to work. I knew I had to, but I just couldn't work with that, like up and down, crazy schedule, especially, we all remember what 2019 2020, was like in real estate, I would have been doing clients a disservice, because I just wasn't available at the drop of a time to go look at houses the way that they needed an agent to show up for them. Because, you know, if you didn't look at the house before it hit the market, basically, you were already lost, right? You already didn't get that that house. So for me, it was, I took a little bit of time off, and I knew that I wanted to get back into real estate, and it just made sense, like I said, to combine those two worlds that I had and then have that stability of working more on the operational side of things, because I knew my schedule was more predictable at that
Brian Charlesworth 04:14
point. Okay, cool. Well, it sounds like a fun path. I think you know, my wife spring, she also started in the salon industry cutting hair many, many, many years ago, before I knew her. But it's I know, and I've met so many people who have transitioned from that industry into real estate. In fact, somebody who used to cut my hair now sells real estate full time instead. So it's just seems to be a common path. And that's one of the things I love about real estate, is there are a lot of females that are in real estate, right? Yeah. So I think it's
Courtney Gauchman 04:52
also interesting, you know? I mean, there's so many avenues you can go with real estate, and so many strengths you can have that would make you a real. A good agent, right? For me, it's I have more of that, like visual piece, where it's I can walk into a house and understand a couple of easy, quick fixes that are going to build you instant equity. Because I think that's why I gravitated towards the beauty industry originally. It's more of that, like visual piece, but then you have other people that are unbelievable at crunching numbers and can walk you through exactly why something's going to be a fantastic investment opportunity, right? So I think that there's so many, so many elements to this industry, and that's where the team thing is really unique, because we brought 13 or 14 of us now, 14 unique individuals that all have a little bit of a different skill set together. And I feel like together, you're just so much more powerful because of the fact that you have all those different facets, and we can bounce all those different things off of each other, and it just makes you that much more knowledgeable and that much more able and capable of helping your clients for whatever their real estate needs actually are.
Brian Charlesworth 05:57
Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, teams have a distinct advantage in that, like you just said, bouncing ideas off each other, learning from each other, all the things, getting assistance if you need from each other, having somebody else be able to go show your home if you need all that kind of stuff. But I think even more so there's advantage for a team from an operational perspective, which is kind of your expertise. So let's talk about that for a minute, like, what's what's the advantage operationally? Because, from what I've seen, a solo agent cannot really compete with quality of service somebody's going to get from a team and from most teams anyway. So we'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Courtney Gauchman 06:40
Yeah. I mean, I think not only does it provide an excellent amount of service for the client, but I think the other part of it too is this is a tough industry to really break into and hit your stride as an agent, right? So from that standpoint, it's really tough to create a long standing career, especially, you know, the cost of living in the Boston area is it's extreme, and to be able to make this a real living and a real career and have it flourish and not feel like every January 1 you're back to square one. You need those operational processes set up. You actually need infrastructure. You need to build it like a real business, and not just like flying by the seat of your pants, slinging houses right? And I think that there's so many phenomenal sales people out there, and they're so gifted at what they do, and they're magnetic, and they have these amazing personalities that clients flock to them. However, it's really hard to keep all of those balls in the air when you have transactions imploding, you have clients that need you, and then you also have all the paperwork, all of the different stuff that you have to be tracking in order to actually keep the business growing. And I think that's where the whole operational processes come in, because something's gotta give. You've gotta give something to someone else to take it off of your plate. And I think the operational piece, if you're on the road doing a lot of showings or going to listing appointments, you really should delegate the stuff that belongs computer facing. So we have a team of three full time people that sit at a computer all day, and their entire job is to actually track the proper data that we need to be able to ensure phenomenal customer service. But I think the biggest thing that we really do is help our agents so they can deepen their relationships, because after the sale is probably the more important piece is we want to stay in touch with everybody. We want to make sure that we're nurturing those relationships, because our business is completely referral based and past clients. So for us, it's using Sisu as a database that collects all of the information that we need has actually allowed us to be able to scale. Think I mentioned to you, we grew 88% in volume in the past four and a half years. So we've had Max, like, a maximum amount of growth. Right now. There's still more to be had, but just from doing that and focusing on the right things, I think the other piece too, and you know this here in the industry, it's like there's always a new shiny object. And if you're moving a million miles an hour as a solo agent or an agent with one or two people on your team, there's a lot of distractions, and there's a lot of things that you feel like, it's like, oh, I want to try that, or I want to, like, you know, test the waters on something different. I think for our team, what we learned was, when you veer off course of what really, truly matters and what you built your entire business on, it becomes like a distraction that doesn't always turn into growth for us. We use Sisu. We customized it. So we took all of our data points, which I love, that you guys have those options. We took all of the data points that matter a lot to us, and we made those on our dashboard. Those are things that we look at every single week in our sales meeting, and what you track attracts, right? So like, we continue to gain momentum and constantly have our focus being on the things that grow our business, we can still dabble and test the waters and some things that are kind of fun and try something new, because we don't want to be completely closed minded. But it's also like at the end of the day, like you. If it doesn't have an ROI, we're not going to spin our wheels and spend a ton of time and energy into that, like, we're really, truly using the data points to grow and to actually, like, focus on what matters. So I think that's been a really helpful piece of our our business.
Brian Charlesworth 10:13
So that's it's a lot of fun to to hear your story there. I mean, the industry over the last three years has almost cut in half, right? I mean, we went from selling 6.8 million homes in 22 to last three years have been under 4 million. Yup, this year forecasted for under 4 million. So what would you credit your growth to in a down market like that? Because you guys haven't recruited a ton of agents, right? I mean, and when I hear your story, you're kind of like Gary Keller, one the one thing focused, right? You're really focused on Soi. So what have you done to grow your business, focusing really on maintaining that sphere of influence as your primary lead source? It's
Courtney Gauchman 10:59
a good question. I mean, I think, I think it really you talk to some of the best producers out there, like, we have some friends that are phenomenally successful loan officers and closing attorneys, and we all kind of continue to say the same thing, which is, we're just sticking to the basics. What you did when you started in real estate to become, you know, a profitable agent, right? You have to go back to that stuff. But for us, it's like we try to just never have stopped it. And I think that that's the goal. So for us, it is truly having those data points and having those measurable things, like I can go into Sisu and I can pull at any time, all of the lead sources. And for us, it's like we were just talking about it. We're already at Big 68 or $70 million worth of sales just from referrals this year and from referrals, yeah, just from referrals, right? So we have 105 referrals so far for the year.
Brian Charlesworth 11:51
When you say referral, can you clarify? Does referral mean a client gives you a referral to one of their friends? Is that what you mean when you say referral? Yeah,
Courtney Gauchman 12:00
a client or or a vendor, sphere of influence, like it could be my friends, my uncles, my aunts, you know, whatever it could be. So, yeah, so, like, what we started doing was in Sisu, this was three years ago, we put a field where we track referrals, and once we started doing that, it's like, year over year, you keep growing, and it's because we focus on the conversations, which the conversations for us are actually in person conversations. We don't do phone calls. We don't do not that we're not hitting the phone, but we're just not cold calling. It's deepening the connection. So the more you get face to face with people, the more they're they're remembering you, the more they're thinking of you, but also like the more you're actually truly connecting with people, and the more they want to connect you with others. Connect you with others, too. So for us, it's like we are that is the way that we grow. However, like any business can grow the way that they want to grow, if they're actually tracking the data. So you said, like, what is it that that led to us being able to grow this way in such a challenging market? I think the cool part too is like we're seeing agents on our team that have been in the industry for 1012, years, and they're having their best years ever, right? Last year, and this year, we have an agent who's been with us. He's been an agent for 12 years, and these are his best sales he's ever had. And it's just because we're getting rid of the overthinking, because we've just simplified it by saying, Hey, listen, like we can pull you a report that shows you this is where your businesses come from for the past X amount of years, okay, looking at who gave you what and how many people. Like, we have referral partners that have given us six referrals in one year, right? Like, I'm taking them out, right? I'm going to go take them to something special, a dinner or an event, or whatever it might be. It's it just allows you to quickly click of a button, figure out, where do you spend your time? Where do you put your energy? And I think that it prevents them from burning out as well, too. So like the agents on our team, know what they have to focus on. It's still tiring. This job is work, right? It's a hard job, but it's also when you take away the I'm going to chase everyone mentality, because everyone could be your client in this business, you actually have the information you need, which is why a database will give you that now you're putting your energy into the people that you know are your cheerleaders do root for you, and have proven before that they've given you a lot of business and opportunity, and you keep on just taking care of them, and They keep taking care of you. For us, it's like, it's a much better way of doing business. And we just like it, right? Like it gives you, it fills your cup more. Yeah.
Brian Charlesworth 14:27
So can you repeat that set? Did you say 73% of your business is referral?
Courtney Gauchman 14:34
So 93% is repeat referral? Because we do throw the past clients in, so it's really in referral, but we do have, I think, right now, we just look at the numbers, and it's almost $70 million worth of business so far in just referral, in just referral, just referrals this year. Yeah, and we are a team that, like, will probably do like, 160 million like, we have about, like, we have nine producing agents. So it. It's, it's going to be a massive percent all referrals, which is really
Brian Charlesworth 15:04
nice. I love what you're saying about going back to the basics, because most teams, especially, you know, high growth teams on Zillow are a lot of their agents, don't know what that the basics are, right? Mm, hmm. They're waiting for leads, and they don't want to follow up on the leads they're given. Yeah, which is why we just rolled out a new product that's all around lead follow up, called batter. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but the basics is such an important thing. Because I sold real estate for a year and a half, two years, something like that really focused on listings, but what I found was a big part of my business was actually telling the customer, you know, you're I'm going to, I'm going to deliver an amazing experience for you, and I want you to know that now I'm setting the expectation right, and sometime During the next month, while we're under contract, you're going to talk to a friend, and they're going to be saying, Oh, I'm interested in selling my home, or I'm looking for a home, and you're going to refer them to me. And if you haven't done that by the time we sit down at the closing table, I'm going to ask you for a referral. So just know that, right? And I was able to get a referral on, you know, 80 plus percent of my my my closings, which, which is how I was able to sell, you know, 48 homes in my first 12 months, right? So, but if we could just, like, it's such a basic thing, but if we could just get our agents to do that. So how do you guys get your agents to focus on, I mean, and I think part of it is that is your focus, that is your one thing, right? But how do you get your agents to do that? Because I think that's something that a lot of people struggle with
Courtney Gauchman 16:50
well. So I think ultimately it's you're in sales, right? So you have to have a couple of different we always say, like poles in the water, right? Like a fishing reference. I guess that's what it is. We say it a lot, but I would never really think about what it means. But to us, it's you have to have a couple of different buckets going at all times. And for us it's always, you're going to work Open House leads, of course, those are people that came in off the street, right? So if you were a brick and mortar, that's amazing, right? Those clients just came to you. So these people came in, you know, they're looking those are easier to convert in terms of like, you know, they're interested in buying or selling a house, right?
Brian Charlesworth 17:21
Well, let's stop with that real quick. How many houses do your agents do a month or a week?
Courtney Gauchman 17:26
Um, so we we do four open houses per listing, and basically it just depends on how many listings we have currently in the pipeline. Out of our agents, though, only probably half of them host open houses because that is their that's what they do. That's how that's one of their buckets, right? That's how they get business. And they love it. Other agents. If they found that that wasn't as advantageous for them, they weren't as interested in trying to convert those people. They spend their weekends doing something different, which I could explain that too, but it's basically you gotta kind of also look at like, what are, what is your conversion rate? And does this make a ton of like sense for you, if you're going to give up two to three hours on a weekend to do these open houses and you're getting all these contacts, are you actually doing the work? Are you actually connecting with them? Are you actually converting them? So that's one piece, obviously, and we track that. That's another thing. Again, like Sisu made it really easy for us. Like, we've never been a huge open house converting team, because we have people that just get business in a different way. So, like, they focus more on that. So for us, focusing on the customer service piece has been another massive part of it. We have some awesome processes in place, and it allows us to create an amazing customer experience. And like you said, right? Like, a lot of times we're getting referrals in the middle of a transaction, a lot of times we're getting it as soon as somebody closes, they just had a great experience. And they have friends and family that are also in the same position, looking to buy or sell, and ultimately they're giving out our team's name. So we have a great referral process as well, too, which is another easy thing, like so in Sisu, when we're closing people out, we're making sure that, well, first of all, when they sign, right? So as soon as they sign, we see in Sisu that they signed their documents. We send out a referral gift, if it's the source, says referral right. And then when they close, our ops team looks at it in Sisu and says it closed, they see that there's a referral. We have a lead source in there. And then I added another field, a custom field that says lead source description, which I can explain what we do with that. But basically it's like, so our referral process is clean. It's really easy. We follow it at all times. There's also, like, a piece in our CRM as well, too. But like, we're making sure we're loving on the people that are loving on us. If you give us a referral, you're getting two gifts throughout that process. We're making sure that we're constantly thanking you for it, and then we're inviting you to referral only events, right? Which, again, you pull those data points now you know exactly who you need to reach out to, so that
Brian Charlesworth 19:48
when you see a referral only event, these are events that you do for anyone that's given you a referral, like in the last 12 months or something. Or
Sisu 19:57
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Brian Charlesworth 20:07
yeah, so we'll do overall time. Or how do you do that?
Courtney Gauchman 20:09
It depends, right? So because there's nine agents, and they're all so different, they have such different spheres, sometimes we do a lot of, like, small, intimate events. So sometimes it's referral partners, and you just get, like a group of 15 people, and we pick people that all are client facing industries. Maybe it's their own sales. Maybe they own their own business. And we've hosted almost like a CEO style dinner, where it's three course meal in one of the swankier restaurants in Boston, and it's just basically like, Hey, you connected us with people to help us grow our business. We're going to connect you now with people that we've done business with, that we've sold homes to, that also are pretty big time in their careers, because some people in this room are going to end up now connecting and doing business with each other, right? So now we get to do kind of pay it forward, right, or right back, I guess, or pay it back, right? Um, but so that's kind of one of our our things that we do, we take people to Celtics games, right? Bruins, games, like, stuff like that. It's like, we want to take care of the people that are taking care of us. So those are the types of things that and again, these, these people, they're like, a couple degrees of separation, right? Because if once you start getting going with those referrals, it's a lot of times you end up with people who kind of, like, know one another, work with another, one another, or, like I said, like, how can we help them? What other business you know? Who do they need to know? Because I bet we know someone in that industry, and we'll connect you so it becomes a cool opportunity to kind of be that person that facilitates those relationships. And if we can't give them a referral personally, we'll at least connect them with someone who could potentially help grow their business too. Yeah,
Brian Charlesworth 21:43
you know, one of the things you talked about, which I don't know that I've ever heard a Sisu customer actually say it the way you did, and I and I love it, because when we built Sisu, it was really built on that premise. But like we have, a lot of people talk about us streamlining their business, automating their business, simplifying their business. But one of the things you just said was, we are your data warehouse, where you go find whatever data you want, right? Yeah, so talk to me just a little bit more about that, because that's intriguing me. I mean, when I when we built Sisu, it was really, yes, that's really the one of the main benefits, right? Is all your data is in a single platform for doing everything you need to do, from your intake forms to managing your sales team to managing your ops team. But one of the biggest values is, like somebody like you as a COO being able to get the data you want at your fingertips real time, right? Yeah,
Courtney Gauchman 22:42
and being able to sit in individual meetings with every agent and think creatively, right? You ask me, how do we get the agents to do their their job, right? How do we get them to to do the you know, do the conversations, get appointments do the work? And I think the biggest thing is, is like, it's not one size fits all. I can't tell one agent on my team that they have to do it this way, and then someone else that they have to do it the same exact way. We have people that are 23 on our team, people who are 55 right? Like, it's like they're going to do things a little different. And I think that for us, what we did was we said, like, there's a reason why all of them are going to be super successful, or already are super successful, and it's because of who they actually are. So what we need to do is we need to give them what they need in order to understand where to focus their efforts. So for us, we added a lead source description into your fields, which I love, because what I can now do is I can download a spreadsheet and then I put it in alphabetical order, because basically the lead source can save referral, which is great. That's awesome. Of course, we want more referrals. Who are those referrals? Our CRM couldn't tell us. Our CRM could never tell us. It doesn't report anything. It's useless in that sense, right? So I'm like, how do we grow the business? Okay, well, so when I then hold the lead source description and I put that like, filter that column so it's in alphabetical order, I now see, like, boom, boom, boom. We got six referrals from this one human being. We got, you know, $10 million worth of referrals from this one group of people that all happen to work at this place. Okay, what could we be doing to actually amplify this? What could we be doing to also, like, just even give to them, right? How can we give back to people like that? You now have a roadmap like, so for us, it's the Sisu like, exports are my best friend in every business development meeting that I have with our agents. Like, I'm exporting that data, and if I'm not sharing it directly with them, I'm at least coming up with a million ideas of things we could be doing based on who gave them the referrals or open house leads, right? Like, it's like, you know, you can also see all of that. What open houses really led to us getting this much, this many can, like, converted that open house guests, and then, like, sometimes it's price point. Okay, so now if we know you're really rushing it at this price point, because maybe it's a first time home buyer that keeps coming in and that agent is really doing, okay, let's give you all those. Let's not keep. Putting you in high price points that you know you're not converting in, right? So it's a way of just having strategy. Because I think at the end of the day, this business can, you know, it's never ending there, you can always be doing something more to grow. And I think for us, it's well, why don't we just be smart? Let's have a strategy for all the things we do, and then we actually do it that much better, because we know what we're chasing, instead of just trying to do it all and chase everything. Does that make sense?
Brian Charlesworth 25:27
It does. I love the way you guys are doing business. I love, I love the back to the basics. And it's not just the basics, though, because what you just described is not the basics, actually knowing this information. Yeah, the people like nobody knows that information. Very, very few people know that information. So I want to ask so you're the COO, I think you used to be the Director of ops that, right? So in your role, it seems that you are doing much more than ops. You almost seem like you're over strategy. Talk about that.
Courtney Gauchman 26:00
Yeah. So I think what happened was, you know, real estate's the Wild Wild West, like, you can kind of make this job whatever you want, which is amazing. So first I started during covid, and I was home a lot, like, so I wasn't actually able to be in the office as much, and I did a lot of data digging, right? So I, like, mined our data. I figured out our CRMs, I had some interns help us put the right tags in place, put people in the right categories, and then we actually, again, started digging into Sisu and creating all these different forms and fields in Sisu. We weren't a team that did a ton of rentals, but we were bringing in some young agents at the time, and we're like, we need to pivot, like we need to actually have more strategy here to be able to help them grow and leverage them well, with Sisu being able to pull the rentals and being able to say, like, Hey, this is much, this is how much money you're making off of rentals, can we start now, like, really, like, leveraging them. Can we convert them? Can you get referrals from them? What companies are they working for? Can we host a renter event, which we did, it was really cool. It's at a darts place, and that event yielded two sales, right? So it was well worth the money, right? Like it was well worth hosting this event. But again, it's DC was starting to tell us these trends and these this data in Boston, of course, we're a college heavy town, right? So for us, it's those September one rentals are really insane and very intense, and it created a little bit more of a convenience to being able to, like reach out to all those people and make sure like that we knew what cycle they're on. Are they renewing their lease? Are they ready to buy? We also now capture like landlord information. So I think that there's so many elements that you can use Sisu for, and for me, it's just became I was the keeper of all the information, so I wanted to share it with the people on our team. But everybody receives things differently. So that became these individual business development meetings where we talked strategy that they were going to actually be able to digest and then be able to do on their own terms, right? So like everything from agents hosting renter events to then we have a female agent who absolutely crushes it. She does, you know, millions and millions of dollars of business, and she's hosting, like, female CEO dinners and kind of going that route. Then we've got someone else on our team who he hosts a networking event for seniors and, you know, downsizing and all that stuff. So like, we kind of do, like a whole business to business strategy with him, and I think that that's the fun part of the job, is it kind of started to turn into that all because of the fact that I could see the data behind everyone's business on our team and how they were finding success, and who was able to grow certain leads and how they were growing it. And I think from there, it just became like I was that point person and saying, like, hey, let's take an hour out of your day to work on your business instead of in your business. And, you know, they're the ones doing all the work, right? I'm just helping them. I'm saying, Hey, this is the stuff that we have access to these, yeah, like, and it's but you need someone to do that right, like, it's like, you need to be able to actually see it. And I think that it's really cool, because sometimes it's very eye opening, where a lot of times your mind, you think your business came from the last four or five deals that you just had, but if you actually look at the trends, it's like, well, this is really where we want to focus our efforts. So I think that it's super important to, like, use your history in order to be able to actually grow and then there's always the question, which I know I'm going, I'm rambling, but there's always the question of, well, what if you have no history, right? So you're like, a new agent, you don't know what to do and where to start and how to grow your business. And I think that's also another fun piece of it too, is basically to say, like, okay, so this is again, where teams come into play, or also just history of our company. These are the buckets that you could focus on. Let's talk about how you can do it right? Because for us, it's we're not going to sit here and give agents leads, right? We want you to work hard teach us and show us that you know how to get your own business and hunt for it and convert it and. And you'll start reaping more of the benefits. So I think that that's like, another cool piece of like, they can actually physically see on the scoreboard every single sales meeting, that it's like, Oh, wow. They did that based on the data of, like, where their business came from, and it resulted in that. And then now, like, a new agent is capable of saying, like, this is where I'm going to focus my energy, this is where I'm going to put my time. And then they start to see it pay off. Like we just saw one of our agents. She joined us five months ago, and she said every Tuesday meeting, her scoreboard was empty. It wasn't looking great, right? And she just put three people under contract within two weeks, and they're like, over a million dollar properties, right? So for us, that's a really good thing, right? I know people all over the country have different sales numbers that they're looking at, but that's a really big success. And it was just doing those things, the conversations we do, what's called past client meetings, which we put in Sisu, and we track and all of those things. You just accumulate them. You just keep on compounding. And now she's got business, which is great.
Brian Charlesworth 30:59
Yeah, it is. It's been really fun to hear you, because obviously all of our customers have all this data at their fingertips, but I don't think most people realize how valuable it is, and so to hear the way you're leveraging that data to to just really grow each of your agents businesses independently from each other is is amazing, and to get referral business and all these things. So anyway, it's been really fun to hear this journey. So Courtney, before we drop off, you're a data expert, and now you're saying, Hey, we're thinking about starting this other business, leveraging Sisu. Can you tell us about that
Courtney Gauchman 31:41
we I mean, we basically attribute the 88% growth during three of the hardest years in real estate to the fact that we use Sisu and we leverage Sisu. So we basically said there are a lot of agents that do not want to hire employees, they don't want to manage people, they don't want the fear of having to pay salaries year round, because we know that it can be cyclical, right? You can have a couple months of not having a ton of commission checks coming through. So we just basically figured out what all those pain points are, and we meet with so many different agents in our area that are super successful people, and they're like, I need to coordinate. And it's like, well, it's a compliment, and I'm super flattered, but I'm also like, it's not like that easy to just hire people, right? Because someone has to help train them, onboard them, help them learn, at least the industry, right? If they don't have real estate sales background like This is taking forever to some, for somebody to ramp up. So we basically, like, compounded all of these different pain points that people have. And we said, You know what would be amazing for agents that want to just grow and just give, like, phenomenal customer service, and just stick to their lane, which is, like sales, selling real estate, doing a phenomenal job doing it. Why don't we just give them a turnkey operations business, not just transaction management, because transaction management is great to give you a little bit of time back, but the operations piece someone who's going to keep your business consistent, every single client gets the same consistent experience. Every person gets gifts when they're supposed to be getting gifts. Your referral partners are getting thank yous and gratitude when they should be getting that gratitude. So you keep them going, but then also that data to be able to pull in Sisu and say, Alright, my business is getting slow. How do I get more quickly? That's the biggest conversation we have in our business development meetings. It's like, how do I get more business quickly? Because it's starting to dry up, right? And it's like, very fast. You just look at what you've got for data points, and you're able to come up with something really quickly, and all of a sudden it's it's snowballing again and turning into more business. So we are starting a business that is all about operations, leverage, and it probably won't be until like 2026 where we can actually, like, launch it and get it off the ground, because Wilson group is our number one focus, our number one important piece of the business, and we don't want to derail that, but it is something that we just know that there's a lot of opportunity for people to be able to grow and scale and hit their maximum potential in real estate if they had that support, but didn't have to manage that support day in and day out. So that's where we come into play. I manage the employees. We already have the processes written out. We already have everything that people need. And then on top of it, we're also going to give you all the data, so you can take that information and, you know, turn that into more.
Brian Charlesworth 34:29
Yeah, that's amazing. What a great concept. I love it. So whatever I can do to help you in that journey, let me know, because I'm, I'm all in on that. We will
Courtney Gauchman 34:38
definitely be reaching out because we're excited, but we really can't. Thank you enough. Sisu has been amazing. We hope to come out to Utah again and get to sit into one of those amazing classes, because spring's team has also been really cool, to be able to watch them grow and see how they're leveraging Sisu as well, too. But I think the number one thing is, is like, if you have clarity. And you're tracking something, then you're automatically just step above the the competition, because you actually are focusing on what you need to focus on, and not getting distracted.
Brian Charlesworth 35:10
Right? Yeah, what, what you guys are doing is, I hope, I hope everybody listens to this and can learn from it, because so many people are not doing that today, and they're relying on everybody else to drive their business, instead of driving their business from their data. So it's such a different approach. And I loved hearing the way you're doing that today, and you're completely in control of your business. You're not relying on anybody, so that's why you continue to grow. And I love seeing it. So congratulations on that, Courtney. Is there anything if, if you were going to tell anybody like the thing that could have the biggest impact today, anybody who's running a real estate team like, what advice would you give?
Courtney Gauchman 35:56
I would say, make sure that you actually, and this is an operations person, but make sure that you actually segment your database and your data based on the differences in people, because if you're going to blanket market to people, you're just not going to get responses. You're going to get a lot of people ghosting you, a lot of people ignoring your your message because you're not speaking to them the way that they need to be spoken to. So I think that that's the most important thing, is, even if you're brand new, or if you're seasoned, right, it's like, go back in and, like, spend a little bit of time looking at, like, where your business came from, and then make sure that when you're targeting and talking to those people, you're actually giving them a message that matters to them, and not just something that's about you. And I think that that's how you can actually, really, truly make a bigger impact in your business.
Brian Charlesworth 36:45
Well said Courtney, I think we may have to do a webinar with you to people how to leverage their data, because I think most people don't realize how to do that. So let's, let's mark that one for a future, future time, but let's maybe sit down and talk more about that. Thank you so much for joining us on the show today. For all you listeners, I'd go back and listen to this again and take some of these things that you've heard from Courtney and really see what you can do to implement those in your business. Because this a way to grow your business without and don't get me wrong, I think hiring agents is a great thing. This is a way to grow your business, almost double your business, without hiring a bunch of agents. And so, you know, there's two ways you can grow your business. One is you can increase your agent productivity, and most people don't really leverage the data to do that, like Courtney's done here. And the other is to recruit more agents, right? So I think they've chosen that. Hey, we want to help our agents be more successful. We're going to go this route, and we're going to do the data, and it's been successful for you guys. So congratulations, and thank you on the show for all you listeners. Give us a like, and we'll catch you on next week's episode of the grit podcast. Thanks for joining us today.