while others are putting in the work now to get ahead. The difference comes down to skills, systems, and long-term planning.
Jim Amen has lived through challenging markets before. He started in real estate during the 2008 housing crisis, first as an appraiser and later as a broker. What began as a small brokerage is now a 41-agent team in Sacramento. “You have to be willing to pivot when the market shifts,” Jim says.
In this episode, Jim talks with Brian Charlesworth about why his team has been able to grow year after year while so many others are falling behind. He explains the simple daily habits that drive results, including focused prospecting, clear expectations, and strong accountability.
Jim also shares how he built seven different revenue streams to protect his business and create new opportunities. From mortgage partnerships to flipping mobile homes, these extra businesses allow his team to scale without relying only on commissions.
They dig into how tools like Sisu and Battr help his team track data, hold agents accountable, and build a two-year pipeline instead of chasing short-term leads. “Building wealth comes from the work you do now, before the market turns,” Jim explains.
Top Takeaways:
(1:45) From marketing director to real estate team leader
(6:43) Growing while 71% of agents sell nothing
(7:53) Simple habits and expectations that drive success
(10:09) Taking market share before the shift hits
(12:56) Building wealth beyond just selling homes
(15:43) Lessons from losing $1M while scaling a team
(22:04) Why solo agents struggle to succeed today
(23:03) What joining a team really provides
(24:29) Turning client tracking into revenue with Sisu
(25:42) $150K in operations funded by TC fees
(27:09) Adding seven income streams to the business
(32:33) Four-step process to build a two-year pipeline
(34:58) Automating lead follow-up with Battr and AI
Listen in to learn how to prepare your team for the next big market shift and how to create a business that lasts.
About Jim Amen
Jim Amen is the CEO and Founder of Amen Real Estate, serving 14 counties across Northern California. With over 30 years of experience, including 20 years in real estate and 10 years in marketing, Jim brings a unique perspective to his work. He has completed over 4,000 home appraisals and has been part of multiple Realtor Associations for years. Jim also runs SOAR, a training company focused on coaching agents nationwide.
Connect with Jim:
Episode Transcript:
Brian Charlesworth 00:35
All right. Hello everyone, and welcome back to the latest episode of the grit Podcast. I'm here with Jim Amen today. You all know that I'm Brian Charlesworth, and I'm the founder of Sisu, and super excited to spend some time with Jim today. I've known Jim for, geez, a long time. He's been a Sisu customer for probably seven years. I would guess somewhere in that neighborhood, Jim does all kinds of social posts about our company, and we love that he does that from our client portal to a bunch of other stuff. I think you have, I think you have a great wall of Sisu in your office now, like spring too, Jim. But yeah, we've got four TVs, four big. Yeah, exactly. I saw that the other day, so I love seeing that. But anyway, Jim is from he runs the Amen team. He's from Sacramento, California, and I'm excited to spend some time with Jim today. So how's it going? Jim, welcome to the show.
Jim Amen 01:26
It's going great. Sunny California out here.
Brian Charlesworth 01:30
Is it? Well, that's good because, you know, I just saw a dust storm move through a monsoon through Arizona that hit our house, took down a bunch of trees. I heard the winds were 100 miles per hour.
Jim Amen 01:41
Oh, that's no fun. I'm glad you're in Utah today, not Arizona. That
Brian Charlesworth 01:45
was about three days ago, and thankfully I was not there. But yeah, California seems to be sunny for the most part. Well, I'd love to kind of just start by letting the audience know a little bit of your background, Jim, so maybe you could share just kind of how you got into real estate, and maybe give us a little evolution of how you got from starting in real estate to where you are today, as a team owner with 41 agents, and we'll go from there.
Jim Amen 02:11
Sounds good. So I spent the first decade of my career as a director of marketing, and then I pivoted into real estate as an appraiser. I did that in 2004 I was an appraiser for four years, did approximately 4000 appraisals. And then I thought, for some reason, in 2008 would be a fantastic time to dive into opening a real estate brokerage, even though, you know, that was the greatest housing crisis of of my lifetime. But honestly, the appraisal industry shifted due to the housing crisis, we went from having relationships with loan officers where they would refer us business and we were making $500 in appraisal, to all of a sudden we had to partner with appraisal management companies, and they were only paying us at that time $150 in appraisal. So the math didn't didn't add up. So we pivoted, opened up Amen real estate as an independent brokerage at that time, and then we dove in. Did that for that was an oh eight, did that really for about eight years as a fully independent brokerage. And then in 2024 we decided to do a private label partnership with a global brand. And in the meantime, kind of from 20, I would say from 2020, to now, we started pivoting more into a team format versus a brokerage format. And a lot's really shifted and changed, going from an independent brokerage to a team to then partnering with a global brand
Brian Charlesworth 03:44
cool. I want to talk about going from a brokerage to a team here in a minute. But first, guess what I was doing in 2008 during that crisis of the real estate market? Guess what I had just
Jim Amen 03:54
done? I think you probably just started going into real estate with spring. Is my guess.
Brian Charlesworth 03:59
No, actually, I didn't even know. Spring back then we've now been married for 11 years so, but at that time, I actually had just bought the franchise, not a franchise, but the franchisor. So all 230 locations at the time of housemaster home inspections. Oh, wow. And same thing, where? Where does a home inspection business, get all of its leads from realtors, realtors and what do we need for us to do a lot of home inspections? We need a lot of home sales. So it was a very, very difficult time to get into the home inspection business, probably the worst time ever to buy a home inspection company. But thankfully, we were able to pivot, and we, we actually developed software company called GF easy that did good faith estimates for the large lenders back then, which actually saved the company. So thankfully, thankfully, we were able to get that that done. But I understand the pain, because we had just bought that company, and then the market crashed, and it was like went from all of our. Franchisees doing amazing to all of them struggling, you know? So,
Jim Amen 05:04
yeah, it was a really tough time. It felt like the world was blowing up around us. I mean, every time you'd get a deal on contract, the bank that was doing the deal would go out of business. There's a lot of moving parts. But at the same time, I entered being a real estate broker during a really difficult time, which made me a far better broker, a far better realtor, right? Had I come in during an easy time right now, I'd really be struggling, but because I came in during a really difficult time, this current market is just really no big deal in comparison.
Brian Charlesworth 05:36
So you know how to get through the challenging markets. I love that. So let's talk about that for a minute, because I've watched a lot of people come into this industry in 2001 2021 I mean, 2022 when things were just off the charts, I always say the fish were just jumping out of the water into the boats. That was basically what was going on. Everyone needed a house, and they were willing to sign and put it under contract the next day, right?
Jim Amen 06:02
Yeah, it was easy, right? Easy. It
Brian Charlesworth 06:04
was a frenzy, right? You had multiple offers on every home, so it was all about getting the highest offer. And everyone was willing to put in the highest offer because they wanted to get the houses. So how have we gone from that to where we're at today? Jim and how? How's that affected your business and other businesses? And I would I'm going to ask one more question as well, which is, what do you need to do? How do you show up differently in a market like today versus a market like that?
Jim Amen 06:32
Yeah, I think everybody's different, right? So if you pull the RCZ numbers, you're going to actually see our sales are higher this year than they were last year, and they were higher last year than the year
Brian Charlesworth 06:43
before. So in 2000 you're saying, If I pull up your Sisu dashboards or your snapshot page and see the year over year numbers, you're saying 2024 was greater than 2023
Jim Amen 06:57
Yep, and 2025 will be greater than 2024 and the reason is, we teach our team members how to actually fish, right, so they can actually feed themselves. And I feel like so many brokerages, especially agents that are not on a team, that are solo agents, aren't getting the training that they need. They're not educating themselves to the level that they need to, to provide actual value, and we're not. We've now moved into a skills based market. Yeah, 71% of agents sold zero houses last year, right? Yeah. Isn't that insane? It's crazy. But those who actually know how to do real estate, who actually provide value, who are more of a financial planner or a consultant to their clients, right? They're taking market share. Their sales are actually going up. And that's what we're doing on our team, is making sure that we give those agents, when they come on our team, those basic foundational skills.
Brian Charlesworth 07:53
So you've taught your agents how to have the skill set to go up. It sounds like your agents are willing to prospect and make phone calls, is that, right? Yeah. What are your expectations of your agents? And what is your average agent doing, as far as homes per year?
Jim Amen 08:10
Sure. So our expectations are. We try to make them simple, not too complicated, right? So we expect them to have at least $500 a week, 20 a minimum of 25 two minute quality conversations a week. We expect them to enter everything that they do into follow up boss and into Sisu, and we expect them to attend their one hour of training each day. And we expect them to do a one on one with me each week. If they do those basic things, they can stay on the team, and we're going to provide them with leads.
Brian Charlesworth 08:44
Okay, cool. What is the average agent in your business doing, as far as homes per year?
Jim Amen 08:51
Generally, the range is going to be between 12 sales a year and 60 sales a year. So our top agent, she's doing 60 sales a year, and she's literally had her license 36 months.
Brian Charlesworth 09:03
Well, that's great. Okay, cool. So again, you're doing 12 to 60. Your average agent out there, even in the good market, was doing four. Now your average agent is actually not doing any, which is why 70% of agents didn't sell any homes
Jim Amen 09:20
last year, right? Right? And probably why half of them are going to be gone in the next two or three. Yeah,
Brian Charlesworth 09:25
this is what excites me about this market right now. What you just said in our National Association of Realtors, I watched it go from 1.6 million down to about a million members.
Jim Amen 09:38
I think that's great. Honestly, we had too many people in this industry that don't actually provide any value, and they need to go bye bye,
Brian Charlesworth 09:45
right? And so they, many of them, have gone bye bye, and that's my that's my point here. So when the market, when the interest rates drop, and the buyers get off the sidelines, I think it's going to be one of the biggest opportunities for. Existing realtors, existing people in the business that they've ever seen, even greater, in my opinion, than 21 and 22 How do you feel about that? I've
Jim Amen 10:09
been saying and telling our agents all year, great 2025 is about taking market share, putting in the work to take market share, to set yourself up for whether it's 2026 or whether it's 2027 when the market shifts again, if we take the market share now, if we put in the work now and build our foundation or our pipelines now, when the market shifts, we're going to literally kill it. You're literally going to create wealth for your families. But you have to be willing to put the work in now to create that pipeline, to create that foundation, and the way you do that, right? Whether it's farming, whether it's making dials, whether it's it's taking portal companies referrals and closing them and making them past clients, you build that pipeline. You put those clients in Sisu, right? You keep track of them, you have those customer appreciation events, and you keep taking market share, and you're really going to go from, let's say you're doing 12 deals a year, you're going to be able to go to 2436 deals a year, literally overnight, but only if you do it now, if you wait until the market shifts that people like me, people like my team members, will have already taken market share, and you're going to be way behind the curve.
Brian Charlesworth 11:20
Yeah. Totally agree. So you said something that I found interesting. You said, Anyone that's taking market share today is going to build wealth when the market turns and so I wanted to ask, seems like to me, as I've watched this industry over the last decade, most people in real estate that get some extra money, I'll call that wealth, right? Having free cash flow going around, they want to buy houses, and I don't think that's, I think that's a good thing. I mean, that's, they know how to buy houses, right? Anyone in real estate knows how to buy houses, probably knows how to fix them up. Might know how to flip them, probably not. But they'll, they'll get into it. Might know how to rent them, but what I've been trying to do, and some of this with springs agents, is get them not only to do that, but to invest at least $1,000 a month. And if they can $3,000 a month into things like the s and p5 100, where they can have that going on as well. Do you guys? Do you guys teach your agents that kind of stuff as well? And I'm just talking about this. Talking about this because you were talking about building wealth, and I think it's so important, it's the one thing that schools don't teach is how to build wealth, even though it's the most important thing that we know, and most families don't teach it if they haven't done it right,
Jim Amen 12:35
right? So for starters, and I think you have to have a money management system, right? You should have different accounts with different earmark for different things.
Brian Charlesworth 12:45
Absolutely. That's first step, right? Someone comes in, they have to have to have an account set aside for taxes. Have to have one set aside for their investing in themselves, and one, of course, to pay their bills and whatnot, right,
Jim Amen 12:56
right? And then you need to have an actual budget, and that budget needs to be actually updated every single month. Yeah, after that, I personally believe that it's very hard for realtors to build generational wealth. You know, there's only so many doors you can open, there's only so many houses that you can sell. So if you want to succeed, you use real estate sales to cover your bills, to pay to start to put money in your bank account to now creating a way where you have cash to invest, right? And then you want to have multiple streams of income. Yes, a realtor usually is going to go buy a rental property. I wouldn't ever buy a single family home as a rental property. I don't think that adds up. Maybe you start with a four Plex, but ideally you could get to apartment complexes if you want to keep your money in real estate, but then you should have simple things. I talk to my agents about, at a minimum, at a bare bones minimum, every single agent can have a 401 K. We go through a company called guideline for an independent agent. It's like $30 a month to have a 401 K account. You can just put in $1,000 a month into that, and you're going to be a millionaire when you retire. You know, investing in things like Bitcoin or crypto, I think you better learn how to do how to do that the s and p5 100 is obviously vitally important having other ways to make money, like flipping homes, whether that be single family homes, whether that be taking an apartment complex and adding things like washers and dryers and updating it and increasing your rent, then flipping it. Or whether that means starting with something simple, like a mobile home, where you invest five or 10 grand to buy that home, and then you flip it from there, you need to have more than one way to make money, and you need to start as soon as humanly possible. And every realtor should be able to do this.
Brian Charlesworth 14:41
Yeah, totally agree. And what you just spoke to, I think, is speaking to realtors. What you didn't speak to, I think, is more speaking to team owners and maybe some realtors as well, which is, I know you have a mortgage company. I know we're very into mortgage at Sisu. We now have a company called simply mortgage, where we. Help people like you start their own mortgage company, do mortgage savings. It's a very important stream of income. Title companies, another one, rev share, another one. So there's all this stuff going on where real estate professionals have an opportunity to have multiple streams of income, and I think some people just get stuck and don't think outside of that box. Jim, how did you go from thinking like this, I'm going to be in real estate to this, I'm going to be in real estate because they're two different games, right? And if you didn't see that, having your blinders on, if you're just listening and then opening up and seeing the peripheral of all the opportunities to have additional streams of income if you're in real estate,
Jim Amen 15:43
there are a couple of things. One, I learned from when I transitioned from being an appraiser to a broker when the market crashed, that you have to be willing to pivot. Two, when I tried to go from an independent brokerage to building a real estate team, I went through and lost over a million dollars trying to do that by just having agents and just selling houses. I learned from that that I couldn't do it on my own. I needed to put myself in rooms with people who had done it before me, with people who were smarter than me, with people who had different experiences than me. So I started getting on a plane every month, going to a new conference and just meeting people. In fact, that's how I met you. I went to a conference because a friend of mine, Zach Muir, who you obviously know, invited me to come to a conference in Farmington, Utah, of all places. And I went and I met and Zach introduced me to you, and then you actually introduced me to spring B and spring introduced me to Justin Nelson, right? And I ended up in springs world, in her inner circle. And I was fortunate enough to have Justin really, you know, take me under his shoulder, and mentor and coach me for four years on how to being, but how to be a better team leader. I also got into other rooms with other coaches and at other conferences, and from there, I learned one that I didn't know how to manage money, and I was bleeding money because I didn't know what the hell I was doing with it. So for starters, I had to get a right their budget. I had to have my money management accounts. If I had a bank account for one part of my business and that business was losing money, I couldn't just pull money from the other bank account from the other part of the business. I had to close down the part that was bleeding that wasn't working, and then I had to learn the hard way that I needed to add additional streams of income to make this all work, because the profit margins of running a team just aren't enough to build
Brian Charlesworth 17:43
wealth. Okay, so let's talk about the transition. You talked about spring, for those of you who don't know, I think most of you do know. I'm married to spring. I remember when she sold, she still went left kW, she bought a she bought a franchise, and started her own brokerage. And I remember that year, she basically went from 15 agents on a team to about 30 agents on a team that year, and 90, well, it was about 100 agents total in the brokerage. And I remember at the end of that year we looked at it, and she had made zero from her brokerage. All the money she had made was from the team. I think the brokerage actually netted 25 grand that year, and I believe that was paid out to Justin as a bonus for recruiting all those agents. So again, the brokerage model. The traditional brokerage model is a very difficult thing to make money. So you you as spring spring at that point identified, hey, all my money's still coming from my team. Why do I have a brokerage instead of that, I'm going to go do rev share at one of these rev share companies, right? And and not have my brokerage. Best decision she ever made. You've now done the same thing, but how did you I want to talk about your journey from going to a broker to a team, because it sounds like you just said you lost money when you did that. So I'm I was surprised by that, but I want to hear more about that.
Jim Amen 19:26
You know, when you're running a brokerage, your overhead is really not that high, but you're not providing anything. Hey, here's my come. Come join me. Pay $100 a month. It's an 8020, split. I'll be here to show you how to fill out the forms and handle your compliance stuff. Go, you know, go, recruit anybody with a heartbeat and you're
Brian Charlesworth 19:44
okay. So that that's a very important thing that you just said, Jim, because you said your overheads not that high. And essentially, the way I took that is, as a broker, you brought no value,
Jim Amen 19:54
yeah. I mean, other than showing people how to write offers and basic training, you're not really. I don't think any brokerage, any traditional brokerage, honestly, is bringing a whole lot of value these days. So
Brian Charlesworth 20:06
when you say traditional brokerage, and I know what you mean, but I want you to define that, because I think a lot of people in this podcast may not, may not
Jim Amen 20:13
know what is a traditional brokerage. When you say, define it as a franchise model. Franchise model, okay? And so you go out there, you go to a franchise model, you sign up with them, you pay them $150 a month, then you pay the 5% franchise fee, then you pay the broker split fee, and then you gotta pay for desk space and everything else. And what do they provide you for that? Well, a name, and maybe they give you some basic training that you can attend.
Brian Charlesworth 20:39
That that's what you get, training once a month, maybe, yeah, if you're lucky, right,
Jim Amen 20:43
that's all you get, right? And I don't think that's valuable in today's market. And market teams are really, in my opinion, if you go back when real estate first started, you had that small corner brokerage, right? 10 to 40 person office, and it splits for 5050, and the brokerage was providing everything, signs and business cards, and they were doing the marketing, and they were providing leads. Well, that all went away as the splits got larger to the agents, and then the brokerages stopped providing anything. Well, now you have mega teams, or teams in general, filling that traditional role that brokers used to fill, and I think that's way more valuable, but it's also more expensive, because now, you know, we have nine pieces of technology that we pay for each month. We pay for the agent's office space. We do pay for all their marketing. We have all the lead sources that we're covering, right? What
Brian Charlesworth 21:35
about, what about the salaries of your team? That's probably your biggest expense. How many team members do you have that are admin,
Jim Amen 21:41
yeah, our our admin, one, two, we have about six or seven different people in our operations department that we have to to pay whether we sell anything or not, right? So we start in a negative each month before we start selling anything. So the overhead running a mega team is significantly higher than running a independent brokerage, but
Brian Charlesworth 22:04
you bring more value to the agents. And in my opinion, it's impossible for an agent to get into real estate today and not go to a team and be successful. It's nearly impossible, I don't know. Like how would a new person branded to the industry not be on a team that teaches them, that manages that gives them leads, that gives them software, that, you know, all that stuff, and that manages the transaction from contract to close, because, like, what's the last thing a salesperson is going to be able to step into this industry and do today and be effective? How do you feel about
Jim Amen 22:37
that? I mean, just look at the math. If, per NAR, the success rate of new agents is 13% that's because most agents start off as a solo agent, where, if you go to a team, and it varies by team, and the data is not as clear, I would say the success rate on a team is about 50% Yeah, it's not perfect, but hey, we we can give them the systems, we can provide them the tools. We can actually make them
Brian Charlesworth 22:59
work. Yeah, exactly, somebody has to be hungry to to win,
Jim Amen 23:03
right? So if you join a team, you get all the tools that you need, right? And think about it like this, I like to think about it like, if I'm going to use a grocery store example, because my family is in the grocery industry, a solo agent is like, going to buy a 711 and the owner gives you a few days of training, and then they hand you the keys, and they say, good luck. And you're writing a check for the building. You're writing a check for the marketing, and you're paying for the inventory. You're the janitor, you're the cashier, you're stocking the shelves, right? And you've never done this before, but hey, it's cool, because other than paying the 711 their franchise fee, you get to keep all the profits. But here's the reality, you're not going to have any profits, because you've never done this before, so you're stuck with all the losses. Or if you simply went to that 711 think of it more as a team, and you partnered with the owner of the 711 and that owner kept paying for everything for your for the first few years, and all you had to do is share the profits. Now you're actually making money, and you're learning from someone who actually knows how to run a 711 that's the difference. So I want to
Brian Charlesworth 24:06
talk to you about running a 711 or I want to talk about running a real estate team. You gave a presentation once in Mexico at one of spring's, I guess it was her inner circle event, yeah. And you talked about how you were leveraging the client portal to get more money on your listings. Are you still doing that
Jim Amen 24:22
we do, and here's how I do it, yeah,
Brian Charlesworth 24:25
can you? Can you share that with everybody? I think that's a really valuable thing. I
Jim Amen 24:29
started another entity called Sacramento Document Services, which is essentially a TC company, and we charge $795 per file. And the way we explain it to our clients is, look, this fee is for our Sisu client portal, which is very much like DoorDash, right? You've all used DoorDash that DoorDash tells you when your food has been ordered. It tells you it's been picked up. It's on the way. Turn the light on right, so that for the driver, and then it gives you a picture of the food being delivered. So. So the client portal does the same thing. Every single time a document is put into the portal, the client is notified on their app. They get to watch this transaction happen every step of the way. And more importantly, the agent is going to work with you. They're going to schedule a weekly zoom with you every single week to go through your client portal so you can see where everything's at and all these documents are going to be stored for life. Additionally, we're going to have a professional licensed transaction coordinator who's going to dot the i's, cross the T's and make sure that these 600 pages are all compliant for you. That's how we
Brian Charlesworth 25:35
and now, by the way, Jim, one more thing, and that's such a great presentation. Thank you for sharing. Now they can actually sign their documents in the client portal
Jim Amen 25:42
too, yeah. And now they can sign the documents there too. And I want to explain why this is super powerful. I told you that I lost. I lost over a million dollars trying to make a team profitable, the operations team that you just brought up to me, my five to seven folks in operations, that was all money I was losing now because of this one thing, because using the Sisu client portal allowed me to charge the $795 fee. Now my entire operations department is covered, because I can charge that 795 by using the Sisu
Brian Charlesworth 26:14
client portal. How many transactions did you do in the last 12
Jim Amen 26:17
months? Just under 200
Brian Charlesworth 26:20
Okay, so what is 200 times 795 that's 159,000 is that right? That's right. Okay, so $150,000
Jim Amen 26:30
that was coming out of my real estate sales that now isn't and you know what? You know, how many clients have ever pushed back when I explained this fee for the Sisu client portal? How many 00, and even my new agents, who've never done this before, don't get any pushback. Clients. Absolutely love it.
Brian Charlesworth 26:49
Yeah, absolutely so thank you for sharing that. And here's what I take from that. As the CEO of Sisu, you mean to tell me it was worth paying Sisu $500 a month to bring in another $160,000 last year, 100% that's really cool. Jim um, one of the things you talked about was that 795 you started a new business that's a rev stream for you. Can you share with us how many revenue streams or how many streams of income you have coming in as a real estate business owner today, just so that people can start to grasp what are my options out there?
Jim Amen 27:22
Sure, we have about seven different income streams, and they've developed organically. It's not like I started seven different businesses at once. Yeah, one I'll share with you is that I really love is I created a company called Park home revivals. I really wanted to get into flipping homes, but I just didn't have the resources, or frankly, the stomach, to go and buy a house for 400 grand, add another 100 grand in rehab, hoping to make 10 to 15% it just didn't make sense to me. But I could go out and buy a mobile home for between 5030 1000, put in 20 to 30,000 in in remodel, and then make a 40% profit. And I could do that in a 90 days, you know, 90 day, maybe six month window, so all of a sudden, for a $50,000 investment, right, I'm able to make a 40% return on investment. So that really got me excited.
Brian Charlesworth 28:19
So you're actually flipping those after fixing them up. Okay, I know a lot of people that have done the same thing, but they've actually held on to those and rented them. So either way, it's a great model.
Jim Amen 28:28
It's a great model, and that created my next income stream, right? So I have a mastermind company, or infopreneurial company, whatever you want to call it, where I pay I train other people how to do mobile home flips. I train other people how to add additional income streams, because they sign up for my mastermind on my school account. So those are a couple of my income streams, and then I have, you have a school account. Yes, I have a school. What's that called? School.com? Forward slash, soar, S O, A R, S,
Brian Charlesworth 29:01
O, A R, okay. Thank you. You probably know, Jim, we just started a Sisu one with spring. Yep, I already signed up. Are you part of that? Great. You guys are not a part of that. We just launched that this week. It's free. Come join in. We'd love to have you
Jim Amen 29:13
guys be a part of it. It's fantastic. And couple other income streams I just want to touch on, mainly because they're due to you. The very first time I met you, you told me to stop being an independent brokerage and move to a revenue share model. And I'm really, really stubborn, and it took me three years to and many seeing you at many conferences and having many discussions before you're blaming me for that. It's my fault. I'm stubborn, not yours. No, that's great. That's great. But I finally, I finally made that, that move. And I know not everybody wants to attract agents, okay, but at a minimum, if you're a team leader and you're just a. Attracting agents just to your team, you're automatically going to get revenue share. And let's say they leave your team in two years. They decide, hey, I want to be a solo agent. I want to start my own team. Whatever it is, they're going to most likely stay with the brokerage. And now, at least for all that training you gave them, you're still going to get the revenue share. And maybe even more importantly, when you're a team leader, it's about the stock, right? You're going to be able to have be getting stock because of every agent you attract your team. You're going to get stock because of each sale your team member makes. I can tell you, in literally 11 months of being with a global brand where I can get sock options, Megan and I already have over $70,000 in stock. And when I ran my independent brokers, we wouldn't had any of that. We would have been at that would not have saved any of that. And it's only one year, and it's not a ton of money. But multiply that out in 10 years now I would have, what, millions, 700,000 in stock, plus, let's say that the stock doubles or triples. Now it's worth millions of dollars Exactly. That's because I took your advice,
Brian Charlesworth 31:05
yeah, well, I'm glad that's working out for you. I'd like to add one more thing for that model that I think is important, and I think it's that you can surround yourself with people who maybe have done things you haven't, and they're willing to teach each other, right? It provides a community of agents and leaders helping another instead of you just having your broker that you can go to for help, and your broker probably doesn't know how to build a business anyway. So
Jim Amen 31:33
you know, for me, I've been really fortunate. I told you that I started going to a conference every month, so I've been doing that for four or five years, and I've met the most amazing team leaders. And one of the things I absolutely love about our industry is people are willing to collaborate. If you meet them at a conference and and you get to know someone, you share with them, and they share with you, and it's really a magical thing, because none of us knows everything right? So I think it's super important when you are part of these big brokerages, when you're a team leader, wherever you are, whether it's a five person team or 100 person team, that you give back, and you give back to other team leaders, and you share what you learn. Yeah, yeah, that's
Brian Charlesworth 32:16
great. Just for the sake of time, Jim, it's been great reconnecting with you, because it's been too long. I'd love for you to share just like one thing, like with where we are in the market today, with where you think the market's going. What is the most important thing that a team leader should be doing right now to make sure that when rates drop, or even today, before rates drop further, what is the key thing that's going to get them to where their business just takes off in the coming
Jim Amen 32:51
year? The key thing, in my opinion, is having your team members build their pipeline. And that doesn't necessarily mean only working with people that are transactional, right? You've got to build the pipeline up over at least a two year window. So for us, what we do is we do the a four step buyer mastery process. We do a buyer's consult, then some basic educational showings, just to see if their finances and price point are in alignment. Then we do a quick lender handoff for a prequel, not even a full pre approval, just to kind of understand their finances. Then we sit down and we do a strategy session. And this is where you can build your pipeline. Most people, if most agents, if someone doesn't qualify to buy a house in the next 90 days, they move on. We don't, if they do qualify, great. We're going to sit down. Have a strategy around how to write a winning offer, how to view homes. But if they don't qualify, maybe they need to pay down 30,000 in credit card debt. We're going to have a strategy session around, how are we going to pay off this 30,000 we're going to have a strategy session on, how do we save 20,000 whatever the case is, and then we're going to have them sign a representation agreement. They're going to actually, literally hire us, even though they're a year out, even though they're two years out, right? And then we're going to have a monthly call with them. It might be to create a budget. It might be to verify whether they made that credit card payment or whether they opened that house bank account and put that $500 in there. Now we're building our pipeline for the future. We're not just reinventing it every single year with a third party lead source. So building your pipeline is the number one way that you can take market share going into the future.
Brian Charlesworth 34:28
I love that. That's such great advice. You You remind me of one other thing that I want to talk about, and that's Battr, which is the new Sisu product. The company Sisu has the product Battr. It's a different product than Sisu, but it's all around lead conversion, and it's all about setting standards for your agents and being able to make sure you follow up the same way that Zillow has their flex teams follow up. You can do that on all your lead sources now, which is how you get higher conversion? Is that a product you're using? I don't even
Jim Amen 34:58
know. Yeah, we use. And let me explain why it's really important to me. I have 108,000 people in our database. Our agents have endless people that they can call. And what I was noticing pre Battr was they would have like 1000 people in their in their pipeline, and I couldn't tell if they were following up on the cadence that I wanted them to I suspected they were not. So what we ultimately did is we paired three different products together that are super powerful. We paired follow up boss with Battr with shiloh.ai, yeah. And here's what happened, especially since I'm super hyper focused on them, building a two year pipeline, all of a sudden, literally overnight, leads would go into there to follow up boss. We were able to preset the cadence, just like Zillow flex does, right? And then Battr would audit every single morning that cadence, and if they didn't follow the cadence, it sends them a nudge. Hey, this client needs a follow up. If you don't follow up, you know, it's going to be swept away, and then we're going
Brian Charlesworth 36:04
to take the lead. And what do you do with that lead? When you sweep it away, you
Jim Amen 36:08
get SWEP away and assigned to other agents and and here's the powerful part. It's not about me punishing somebody or me taking anything away from an agent. It gives them a tool to hold themselves accountable, and maybe more importantly, it actually lets them see that they're hurting themselves by not following the cadence. And now it gives them the ability to create that two year pipeline where before they didn't have that ability. So by by pairing, you know, those three products, it's really been a game changer for our agents, creating their own businesses, holding themselves accountable and putting themselves in a position to take market share, regardless of me and my
Brian Charlesworth 36:47
leadership. Yeah, it's it's we're seeing so many amazing results from that. And what I love about it is, for a team leader like you, if you have an agent that is not willing to follow up, you can get it in another agent's hands, and you can actually still get the transaction sold. And that's what I'm seeing happening, and I love that.
Jim Amen 37:08
One of the reasons we lost so much money was because we couldn't figure out how to verify if the agents were agents for following up. There's only so many hours a day right in your database is everything right. And Battr gives me the as a sales manager, as a team leader, it gives me the assurance to make sure that our agents are actually following what I'm training on, and if they're not, then it indicates to me I need to do a better job. I need to be a better leader. I need to adjust my one on ones. I need to adjust my trainings because they're not getting it. So it's a huge pool, and everybody should have it.
Brian Charlesworth 37:45
Well, I remember when you came to me about four or five years ago, asking me to build something similar that in Sisu. And I was like, It's great idea, but it's separate product, like Sisu is all about, you know that first appointment to close and managing that whole process along with goals and activities. But this is, this is different, right? It's all around lead response times, lead follow ups, lead conversions and so anyway, I'm glad you're enjoying that, Jim. I'm glad it's having an impact on your business. I'm going to want to go offline with you and talk more about that. So to all of our listeners, thanks again for joining us this week. I'm grateful that I could get Jim on the show. I've known Jim for a long time, and it's always fun. I usually see him in Vegas. For some reason, when I'm walking through hotels
Jim Amen 38:32
November in Vegas for unlock,
Brian Charlesworth 38:34
there you go. I will be there so I will see you again at unlock in Vegas, Jim. Thanks for being on the show. Tell you listeners, give us a like, and make sure and join us next week, we'll see you again next Tuesday. Thanks for listening.
