Ep 20 | Legend Sammie Knight Shares Wisdom: 5 Re/Max offices, 3.5k Properties & a Mortgage Company

[00:00:00] Ross: one thing I realized that a lot of it, our ceiling that we had hit was honestly due to either limiting beliefs that I had or, or really ul- ultimately bad leadership. trying to be everybody's friend instead of holding people accountable,

[00:00:13] Suneet: What's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Reside Platform Podcast. My name is Suneet Agarwal. I'll be hosting today, and my guest is my great friend, great team leader, great person, Ross Hardy. Ross, what is up today?

[00:00:36] Ross: Oh, man, I am pumped to be here again. love doing these things with you.

[00:00:40] Ross: it's always super, super fun, and never know what direction we're gonna go in, so we'll just let it roll.

[00:00:44] Suneet: For everyone listening, I want you to notice that I brought extra energy on the intro today 'cause ChatGPT told me that that's a great way to have people continue to listen and watch the podcast, even if there is an awkward pause 'cause of dogs.

[00:01:00] Suneet: And the reason I brought so much energy, to make sure you sit here and watch, because Ross is doing a lot of cool stuff, and I think it is only a benefit to listen. Okay? Ross, why don't you give yourself, like, a quick intro for the listeners?

[00:01:18] Ross: So, you guys will probably hear I'm not from around here.

[00:01:21] Ross: I'm neither from Florida nor Georgia or anywhere near there. I moved here from England in 2005 in what, until recently, was the hottest real estate market known to man. Got my real estate license just in time to see the market crash. yep, got into short sales, did a ton of those, and, really started building the team in 2012, with an extra emphasis in the last five or six years really.

[00:01:46] Ross: I woke up when I turned 40 and decided I had one more big one left in me. decided I wanted to build the number one RE/MAX team in Florida for transaction count. last year we were number five, and this year I would think we'll probably break the top three. we're on track to close about 400 transactions this year, which feels surreal to say.

[00:02:05] Suneet: Yeah, man. Let's talk about that, that journey. Like, how many homes were you selling when we met?

[00:02:14] Ross: Oh, man, I think we just had our first year where we broke 200.

[00:02:17] Suneet: Okay, good. So first year breaking 200. And what are the things that you've seen- happen on the journey to, like, double in three years?

[00:02:31] Ross: Man, where do I even start with that?

[00:02:33] Ross: well, first-

[00:02:34] Suneet: It's a loaded question.

[00:02:35] Ross: Yeah, really. I mean, first of all, it's, one thing I realized that a lot of it, our ceiling that we had hit was honestly due to either limiting beliefs that I had or, or really ul- ultimately bad leadership. trying to be everybody's friend instead of holding people accountable, letting standards...

[00:02:52] Ross: I would say letting standards slide. We really didn't have standards. feeling like a, a small team where everybody felt comfortable and intimate was really where it was and the fear of, of a people's discomfort letting me, grow, So that, that kinda got in the way. and then, from there on in, it's been just a matter of making sure that we put the right people in the right seats.

[00:03:11] Ross: make sure that I'm not the one where every- everything has to run through me, because that's been a huge bottleneck over the years. trusting in good people to do good things for other good people and, doubling down on, skill building for our agents to make sure that they keep increasing their,output year on year.

[00:03:26] Ross: and there's, like, 100 other things as well, but th- those are the big things that have really moved the needle.

[00:03:31] Suneet: What staff did you have three years ago, 200 units?

[00:03:35] Ross: So I think all we had at that point, was, Wendy, who's our transaction coordinator. We had one listing coordinator,i- in the office, one, marketing manager, and Sarah had literally just joined the team as director of ops n- not but maybe three or four months before, I think.

[00:03:53] Suneet: And for everyone listening, Sarah is Ross' very smart, very great wife. She has done a podcast episode a couple episodes back, and there is an episode with Ross and Sarah in addition to, I think, two other episodes w- with Ross. So you can go back and get context on,the working with your wife stuff, because, I mean, you know from coaching and talking to people, like, there's lots of couples in this business.

[00:04:20] Ross: For sure, yeah. Yeah, I actually coach one or two of them at the moment as well. It's an interesting dynamic, for sure.

[00:04:25] Suneet: Yeah, I coach a ton. but anyways, if you wanna hear more about working with your spouse, go back and listen to the other episode. I don't know what the number is, but you could find it in the Reside Platform Podcast.

[00:04:38] Suneet: So you had a listing coordinator, a TC, who's still with you. Great TC. The listing coordinator was in office?

[00:04:47] Ross: Correct. Ev- everybody was in office. We had no VAs at that point.

[00:04:51] Suneet: So marketing, full-time marketing person? Were any of those people 1099 or all employees?

[00:04:59] Ross: They were all employees.

[00:05:01] Suneet: Okay. So you had three people plus you and your wife, so decent size operation at, at that time, right?

[00:05:08] Suneet: What was... From scaling from 200 to 400, what additional roles, without talking too much about the most recent one, 'cause we're gonna talk about that, what additional roles and, like, people changes happened in that three-year frame?

[00:05:27] Ross: Yeah, I mean, so, you- obviously with the expansion in closings,the way that we sat and looked at it was that we didn't necessarily need another TC, because, she could handle it herself so long as the kind of less important tasks were taken off of her plate.

[00:05:41] Ross: and, and she was very hesitant to do that, and I always said to her, "Wendy, listen, you are the best transaction coordinator on the planet. that does not mean you have to be the best person on the planet at ordering signs down after the property's closed or closing it out in the MLS or Yeah, or do an app files compliance, right?

[00:05:58] Ross: But those are things you shouldn't be touching. we need you on the phone with title companies, with lenders, making sure that these deals get across the line. it w- it was realizing that we needed, more, bandwidth in that area, but not necessarily in the way that most people would rush out and hire another TC.

[00:06:14] Ross: so we could do that with VA support. We now have two, VA, transaction assistants. and then we got to a point pretty quickly where we've always been a very heavy listing team, but our listing coordinator was part-time, by choice, and we got to a point where we needed that to be a full-time position, and unfortunately, she was not able to make that commitment to us.

[00:06:34] Ross: She was fantastic at her job, but just didn't have the extra bandwidth in her time to be able to step into a full-time role for that. so we did hire a full-time VA to take that on, who did great, and again, as we grow the team, we've now had a second, listing VA assistant as well, for listings.

[00:06:51] Ross: and then we have two marketing VAs, because again, we're just so many-- what a beautiful problem to have. So many listings, so many properties going under contract, so many closings, keeping up with all of the social media stuff and graphics and marketing on that has become a, a two-person job.

[00:07:06] Ross: and then we also have a, database, coordinator, I guess you would say, because we have an inordinate amount of leads in our database, and we want to make sure that we're letting as few of those opportunities slip through as possible. So, really, it's become a matter of making sure that as we grow, we don't let things fall through.

[00:07:26] Ross: So we're always trying to be one, as we're always trying to be one step ahead. Like, what's the next position we need? And let's, let's do it while we have time to teach them, not like when we're drowning in deals and, trying to play catch up on the back end.

[00:07:38] Suneet: I think it's great for the TC that you didn't go out and hire another one locally.

[00:07:47] Suneet: And honestly, I think it's awesome that we met when we did, because previously, I would've said go hire another person in the US because I didn't have confidence, which is interesting. I didn't have confidence in VAs being TC admin. Half of it is because being in California and the compliance and you being in Florida is a different side of the universe.

[00:08:13] Suneet: but part of it also was just confidence, and I scaled to four in-house TCs at one time Right? Each one getting 50, 60 grand a year salary. Yeah. That was expensive no matter how many deals I was doing, right? And what you did, in essence, is you created a super TC by giving her more admin to get rid of the stuff, data entry, the simple stuff, right?

[00:08:42] Suneet: So you really allowed her to scale and allowed you to save money.

[00:08:46] Ross: And, and let's, let's face it, the TCs, like the way I explained it to Wendy, is like, is, is a quarterback in a lot of senses because everything comes to them and then they have to disseminate it and work out, okay, what, what needs to happen here?

[00:08:58] Ross: And we all know a quarterback is no good unless they have some weapons that they can play with, good wide receivers, good running backs.

[00:09:06] Suneet: Good analogy for somebody from Britain. good job.

[00:09:10] Ross: I'm learning. Country music next. but, and so, so that's what it was. And, and, and the problem with having in-house people as well is that you can't hire those people easily while you're in the scale mode because you don't have the resources to do it.

[00:09:23] Ross: And so y- you always... You're trying to play catch up on the back end when you actually have the money to employ those people, and it, you're doing it backwards when you do that. So it allowed us to kind of get out ahead of the problems.

[00:09:33] Suneet: Yeah. Great. And again too, with the listing coordinator, while I didn't have confidence in the TC, I always had confidence in the listing coordinator 'cause there was a time where I had, like, six listing coordinators, right?

[00:09:47] Suneet: And, now our entire, just like you, our entire listing side is ran by great virtual em- employees who are in the Philippines, right? So great. but I mean, isn't that just a lot of pushing buttons anyways?

[00:10:04] Ross: On the listing side? Yeah. I mean, it, it's very heavy on the data entry, right? It's, it's bringing in the listing paperwork, disseminating that for compliance purposes and then data entry.

[00:10:13] Ross: it, it's a little less, real estate knowledge-based, I would say, or pro- the real estate process-based than the TC for sure.

[00:10:20] Suneet: What are you doing to manage, like, the workflows for the listings? What software do you use?

[00:10:27] Ross: At the moment we're running it through Fub. so we have pretty decent action plans and checklists built out inside of there.

[00:10:32] Ross: and, we're running it through that.

[00:10:34] Suneet: See, that's something else, right? Like, many people would rush out and get another system But Fub can manage it

[00:10:44] Ross: For now. For now. We may break it at some point, but yeah, at the level we're at, for sure it's still, it still just about works for us.

[00:10:50] Suneet: But you're making smart economical decisions as you scale instead of a shiny object thing or a shiny object person, which is super good, right?

[00:11:00] Suneet: Super good. So now the marketing. So you have two VAs in marketing. I also have two VAs in marketing. I did scale to one person in-house full-time and four VAs at one point And now I'm down to two VAs and I like it. what kind of workflow... 'Cause I mean, they're just making graphics, right?

[00:11:29] Ross: Yeah. do- you know, graphics, making videos for our properties.

[00:11:32] Ross: one of them handles my, two email news or three email newsletters per week that we send out. but it's very heavy on the social graphics, social posts and, and video, creation.

[00:11:40] Suneet: And like what workflow are they using?

[00:11:44] Ross: They're in Fub as well, so it'll create a task and assign it to them in Fub.

[00:11:48] Ross: Yep.

[00:11:48] Suneet: Yeah. See, look at that. Using Fub. It's so good.

[00:11:54] Ross: Yeah. That's one of those things you said to us is like, and I still get that dopamine hit when I get a new toy to play with, right? But,trying to scale it back and, we don't use most of the stuff that we have to its fullest capabilities.

[00:12:04] Ross: Like you said, the temptation is we rush out and buy something else. it's like, can we do something 90% as well with something that we already have to save our money and save people moving between 15 different systems? 'Cause you lose efficiency that way.

[00:12:18] Suneet: There's so much power, security, stability from having one interface for the organization.

[00:12:30] Suneet: take it from me 'cause I got every interface. I got every i- every interface, but now I'm only using one, and you know what it is? It's a AI chatbot, right? So that's a total different, path to go down. We're not gonna go down a cold quite yet. so recently you guys have made another hire.

[00:12:50] Suneet: Tell me about that.

[00:12:52] Ross: Yeah. So we, just took on a director of agent growth. So her job will be to recruit agents and get them through the onboarding on our team. that's a huge bottleneck that we had, which we kind of worked our way around i- very, I would say inefficiently. That's not correct necessarily.

[00:13:09] Ross: Sarah was doing it to a very high level with her teaching background and whatnot, but that's not her job. her job as director of operations is to handle the other stuff. because of that, we didn't recruit people at the clip that we knew we could and probably should be. and so, it's one of those ones, this is our first really, really big hire.

[00:13:27] Ross: so it's been very, very nervy for us. It was a big commitment for us to make, the struggles we had finding somebody in the first place. but you know, when you look at the projections of what it could look like two years from now, with somebody in that, in that job, it would be stupid for us not to spend the money on someone whose quality to, to make that difference and get us to that next level.

[00:13:49] Suneet: Totally. What had to happen, what was the milestone you set for yourself to hire that person? Was it when I do X, I will hire X? Did you ever think about it like that?

[00:14:02] Ross: Yeah, I, I, I thought about it from both ways, to be honest with you. The first one is, yes, we definitely wanna make sure that we have, 'cause we're in Florida, so we're either in the best real estate market in the country or the worst real estate market in the country.

[00:14:12] Ross: so, we wanna make sure that we have sufficient funds that if things don't go the way they have been going and there's a slight turn in the market, that we're still able to support that position. So making sure that we're healthy on the financial side where it makes sense for us to take on that extra burden and be comfortable with that number.

[00:14:29] Ross: and then the second part of it is just from a standpoint of there's some baller teams out there at the moment. You coach a number of them. And, seeing what they're achieving and the rate of their growth, I look at that and say, "Well, why can't that be us?" And of course it can, but the limiting factor is somebody has to do the work.

[00:14:48] Ross: And with all the will in the world, I'm not gonna be the one making recruiting calls, and Sarah's not gonna be the one onboarding people long term. So to not have that, th- there's the cost of something, and there's the opportunity cost of not having something. and from both of those standpoints, it just became impossible to ignore that this was really holding us back from the next level of growth if we didn't have somebody to take on that role and do it in the manner in which it should be done properly.

[00:15:12] Suneet: Yeah, making the calls. Like, you've done plenty of coaching calls with team leaders, and you experienced it yourself. Yes, I'll make the calls. Oh, I didn't do it this week. Now I feel like crap. Yes, I'll make the calls. Oh, I didn't do it this week. Yes, I feel like crap. Yes, I didn't make the c- yes, I didn't make the calls.

[00:15:35] Suneet: I made 'em one day, but I still feel like crap, right? And it's an endless loop, right? Like, what do you think made you decide enough is enough with that, dude?

[00:15:49] Ross: Oh, boy. I don't think there was any one thing where, where it was like a, a breaking point. I think the thing that really m- made us move quicker on it was more from Sarah's side.

[00:15:58] Ross: It was the fact that she hadn't been able to get to the systems and operations side of it for so long because we had these two or three groups of agents that came through one after the other, after the other. And so for a month and a half, her-- the only thing she did was onboard people. of course, what happens in the meantime is some of the other stuff slips, Zillow scores start to go down.

[00:16:16] Ross: there's some other stuff needs to be attended to, and, and that can't happen, right? So, when, when, when we're doing 120 Zillow deals a year, we can't lose that account. it was a matter of, I think, I think Sarah's words were, "If we don't get somebody to do onboarding..." I can't remember if she threatened to divorce me or quit or both.

[00:16:33] Ross: but that was kind of an eye-opener of like, all right, if you're this serious about it and it's this bad, then for sure we have to find somebody.

[00:16:40] Suneet: Yes. how was find- finding that person? Like, what did you do to find that sales manager or that, director of agent growth?

[00:16:50] Ross: Yeah. So we, we, ad- advertised on Indeed.

[00:16:52] Ross: went through all of our connections, trying to find somebody,who, friend of a friend. put it out on social, looked within the team to see if we could find anybody, and, we were looking for probably the best part of two months, maybe two and a half months. yeah, with very little success.

[00:17:11] Ross: and it's a tough role.

[00:17:12] Suneet: Yeah. Well, where did they finally come from?

[00:17:14] Ross: They finally came from Indeed. Yeah. Which again, like it blows my mind, when we first started coaching together three years ago, and you were telling me to put these ads up on Indeed. I was like, "I don't see how this is gonna get us anywhere."

[00:17:28] Ross: but, but sure. Sure, coach, we'll do it.

[00:17:31] Suneet: Dude, same. I remember when I first were holding, I was all, "Indeed?" Like, you're kidding. But it actually, and too many people sleep. It's the too many people are sleeping on it, right?

[00:17:43] Ross: Some of our best agents have come from Indeed.

[00:17:45] Suneet: I just had to mute myself so I could tell my dogs to shut up.

[00:17:47] Suneet: yeah, and Indeed is a great resource, like surprisingly great, right? Just as good as what you put into it. And I found like Anna Stender, who's my, kinda my team leader now, she was on Indeed. Natalie Rivers, my ops manager, she was on Indeed, right? So it's, less about the platform where you meet the person and more about the person always, right?

[00:18:11] Suneet: so let's talk about like the agent part of scaling from 200 to 400. Like what had to happen to the people that you were bringing in? 'Cause let me, let me just add this as- Was there a big focus on recruiting prior to us meeting? Okay. So up until that point, recruiting was organic, somebody in the office, whatever

[00:18:43] Ross: Like one agent a year.

[00:18:44] Ross: Yeah.

[00:18:45] Suneet: Okay. So there was never any, like, intentional recruiting happening?

[00:18:51] Ross: No.

[00:18:52] Suneet: Wow.

[00:18:54] Ross: It was literally just people coming to us from, like, o- other agents we did deals with who were like, "Hey, are you looking for new team members?" Or, we, we... I, I literally never made an outbound recruiting attempt, I think until, until we started coaching together.

[00:19:05] Suneet: Wow. Okay. That's-- I don't know if I knew that. so from 200 to 400, what was that journey with the amount of agents? Growing, losing, shrinking?

[00:19:15] Ross: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, all of that, right? So, I think that, as you put systems in place, that's gonna make some people uncomfortable. some people are, very happy with their production where they're at and, with the way things are, and then when you start shaking things up a little bit because you need to standardize things and you have to have standards in place to make sure you're getting ROI on lead sources and, you're, you're handing out leads with fidelity.

[00:19:38] Ross: some people are gonna get upset and leave. I think, probably most team leaders have been through that, and if they haven't, they're gonna go through it. people get uncomfortable around growth, that they feel like if someone's being brought in, they're taking their opportunities and, it's happening at the expense of, of their leads.

[00:19:52] Ross: so we had a little bit of that as well. and then the third problem we had is that when we started bringing people on, we did okay, but it's a tough real estate market out there. And getting people into production quick enough where they could sustain that 90, 120-day runway to, to survive in real estate, was very, very hit and miss.

[00:20:12] Ross: And so, again, with bandwidth being an issue, because my focus was on something else at that time, we knew we needed a solid mentor program. And that, for us, has been the real game changer over the last 12 months is, giving those mentors free reign to, be able to help these new agents that come onto the team.

[00:20:30] Ross: And I will tell you, they do a, a far better job than I would be able to do. They're phenomenal.

[00:20:37] Suneet: Yelling at the dogs. Awesome. I remember when you launched that, right? And it is kind of... It is leveraging yourself and it is creating leadership opportunities within your team, right? Which people want. My very first leadership opportunity in a real estate office was being a mentor at Keller Williams, right?

[00:21:01] Suneet: And I remember being so excited. I got the binder they had and I read it, and that got me into teaching agents in that little office, right? Or maybe it was a bigger office at the time, but newer office. So that's really, really cool. okay. So now You guys are crushing your numbers, right? How many record-breaking months did you have this year?

[00:21:25] Ross: Oh, I think we've had like five in a row.

[00:21:27] Suneet: Five in a row, folks. That's a lot.

[00:21:30] Ross: At least four. At least four. I was just looking at the, the P&L yesterday. Yeah.

[00:21:35] Suneet: Right? So with that, so with that being true,And with people that you coach, what does a winning team look like right now?

[00:21:45] Ross: Oof. Yeah. So the winning team looks like...

[00:21:51] Ross: So first of all, I think there's maybe three key components to it. and I'll die on this hill. So the first one is they, are synergistic in the way that they come together on a daily basis. So whether that's a morning huddle meeting or you actually have people physically coming into the office and they feel that energy and they're calling together and they're asking, "Hey, Sonny, I, I got an issue with this.

[00:22:11] Ross: What would you do in this situation?" And, and, getting advice from other people. I think Chep, said it, isolation is a productivity killer. for us, having that physical office and getting people together in that office and getting together on a morning huddle call, I think that's invaluable.

[00:22:25] Ross: so that's number one. I think, to not have a physical office at the moment where people need extra support,going through these tough times, I think that's huge. Number two is,a pipes-ism, they're prospecting-based, marketing-enhanced. I think that everybody knows 28 real estate agents, and so agents that have traditionally been heavy on sphere, are finding that less of those opportunities are available to them because people are clicking on websites or, they're on 16 people's database and that person reaches out to them at the right time and they're getting those opportunities.

[00:22:56] Ross: So I will never understand, teams that do not believe that h- heavy calling works, because we've seen it work. and again, market's down, so if the market's down, your activity has to go up, or, or nothing's gonna change. and then I think skill building. people have to be obsessed about skills in this market because it's not easy to get people across the line on the listing side or the buying side.

[00:23:22] Ross: when you're sitting across from a seller and you're telling them that the market's down 9% and the house that they thought was worth X is now worth Y. Oh, and by the way, it's gonna take forever to sell your home, and, and even when you get it under contract, that's just gonna be the start of the heartache and, strap yourself in.

[00:23:37] Ross: And you're trying to get first-time home buyers who have no money and need down payment assistance or co- closing cost concessions to buy homes at one of the highest price points in history with 7% interest rates on top. you better be damn skillful at what you do, because, it... People who are not able to articulate the benefits or, you know, talk about the market coherently.

[00:24:00] Ross: I'll never understand, like, how people feel like when someone says, "What's the market doing?" And someone says, "It's okay." How someone feels like that's okay. 'Cause if, if I ask my, my financial advisor, "Hey, how's the stock market?" And they were like, "It's okay." I'd think This guy doesn't know what he's talking about.

[00:24:16] Ross: Like, I'm not giving him hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like, are you kidding me? so just, mastery of what you're doing. and, and, and it's sad that the bar in real estate at the moment, I think it's because there's so many agents in, in there who are part-timers or just don't have any recency of experience, but the bar is so low at the moment when it comes to, mastery and expertise.

[00:24:36] Suneet: Yeah. So the first one, community, getting with people. Are you guys doing huddles every day?

[00:24:42] Ross: Huddles every day, in-person meetings, every other week, but we have probably a third of our agent population are in the office on a regular basis.

[00:24:51] Suneet: Yeah. That is great. You guys must have a good vibe in that office, huh?

[00:24:56] Ross: It's, it's awesome. Yeah.

[00:24:58] Suneet: How does one create that vibe, dude?

[00:25:01] Ross: Oh, man. Well, I think a lot of it is the character of the people you work with, right? so we, we hire people for, grit and personality. will they play nice with the other kids in the sandbox? 'cause we know we can teach them most anything.

[00:25:14] Ross: So for us, like the vibe starts with who are we bringing in. and we're very, very, protective of what we're building and what we have built. I mean, our team is super, super tight. one of our agents was just in hospital. She's like, "Hey, I'm in hospital. I need some help."

[00:25:28] Ross: everyone's on the Slack channel. "What do you need? Who am I taking out? When am I taking them out?" and y- y- how do you create that? Like, that's not, there's nothing I can do to create that except bring the right people in. the, the bulk of the responsibility is on the other 26 people on the team to create that amongst themselves.

[00:25:44] Suneet: also it's in leadership style, right? Like, you can't be a dick to people and expect that to exist, right? So you have to You have to have a good leadership style. What's your leadership style?

[00:26:01] Ross: softy, nicey, nicey. No, I, I think, I think that I'm,I have become a little bit more hardened over, over the last two or three years just from various things that have happened on the team.

[00:26:11] Ross: but, I think I would say, reasonably empathetic to, to people, understanding that they're probably doing the best they can do with what they have going on in their lives at the moment. but at the same time, we all have enough friends in our lives. we don't have enough mentors and leaders, and the responsibility of the mentors and leaders is to hold people to the standard they said they would keep themselves to.

[00:26:31] Ross: and so, that's been a big shift for me is like, if, if I'm not the one telling them, "Hey, you said you were gonna do this, man. Like, how can I help you?" Then who else is gonna do it? Right? It's not our partner, 'cause our partner loves us so much, they're gonna be like, "That's okay, honey.

[00:26:43] Ross: tomorrow's gonna be a better day." but tomorrow's not gonna be a better day if you don't do anything different.

[00:26:47] Suneet: It'll be the same. It's the definition of madness, right? Definition of insanity, expecting different results from doing the same shit every single day. Man, that's so good. I love those three things that are winning.

[00:26:59] Suneet: Prospecting, community, and, mastery, dude. Mastery's an interesting one because, How do you drag someone across the mastery line, right?

[00:27:15] Ross: Yeah. And I, I think,that certain people are, are just not open to... or they, they think they've learned something after the first time. for us, it helps that when we have our trainings and, and whatnot, that the top producers are pretty much coming back time after time.

[00:27:29] Ross: because they wanna teach it themselves. they're, they're, they're mentors. They wanna make sure they've mastered it so they can pass it along to the mentees on the team. And so, when they have Chance come into the trainings, who's closed 28 deals so far this year in his second year in real estate, it's like, if he's still coming, maybe this has something to do with his success," right?

[00:27:48] Ross: "Maybe this is what I should be doing. If I'm just copying what he's doing, then I need to be at these things." and, and, again, like being able to have proof of concept. So any- last year, for example, everybody who was with us for a full year the year before had an increase in their business last year.

[00:28:03] Ross: Now market's down, so it might be more effort, probably a little bit of that as well, but it's also being better at the job that you do. getting more output from the same, from the same amount of effort. so yeah, it's, it's... we, we, we've proven it. our, our best agents are still some of the best learners on our team, and they just set a really, really good example for everybody else.

[00:28:23] Suneet: Yeah, love that. Love the, the culture, that vibe. Folks like Ross and Sarah have mastered it with their crew, so it's important you pay attention to that. last Monday, Cheplak asked me to go onto a call and, give a speech. So I talked about,what top teams are doing, record-breaking teams like yourself.

[00:28:46] Suneet: So you were an example. Are you, Tyler Blair, Tim, Michelle, bunch of... Buck, the Burnett. I have so many people breaking their own records every month. Steve Myers. And the topic of AI came up. Shocker. How much AI do you use in the real estate business?

[00:29:04] Ross: Yeah. So, we use it, I think, for some of the most common, uses that other people are probably doing it for.

[00:29:10] Ross: So we help-- use it to help us with, some of the marketing stuff as far as graphics generation, as far as, helping with listing descriptions. I have a couple of things that I'm using it for, now that I've got FUB hooked up into it and, some stuff like that. it's interesting. I, would really love to be able to use it more in my YouTube stuff.

[00:29:29] Ross: but I've, I've tried and I've even, transcribed my videos, re-uploaded it, said, "Recreate," "Create this using my voice. Here are some reference documents." And it's just not, it's just not, and, I think that AI is a balance of being able to do repetitive tasks really, really well, but a lot of people are using it to outsource their voices and opinions.

[00:29:52] Ross: Like, the example I use is when that RE/MAX Reel, thing went down like four or five months ago, and everybody's post was AI slop. And it's like, well, I know we all have an opinion on it. can someone not just write their opinion? do-- is this we have to read the same stuff over and over and over again?

[00:30:10] Ross: and I think real estate as a, as an industry lets itself, self down a little bit when it does that, because again, I think that y-you have to have an opinion in real estate, about where the market is, where the market's going, what your message is, what, what makes you different.

[00:30:23] Ross: And if you're outsourcing all of that to AI, I think it becomes disingenuous at some point. And, that's where for me, I-I'm, I'm trying to avoid it on that side of things and trying to use it more on the, the, automated if you want or repetitive tasks.

[00:30:38] Suneet: Yeah, that's the thing. That's what I said, is these top record-breaking team leaders, they aren't using AI like you think.

[00:30:47] Suneet: They're using it for the basics, just like you, right? And I've yet to meet a top real estate team that is super, AI driven. Which is very interesting 'cause you would think differently

[00:31:05] Ross: You would. And, and, and listen, it's evolving at such a pace that I'm sure a year from now the landscape looks way different than it does today.

[00:31:12] Ross: but yeah, I mean, I know you've messed around with some of that HeyGen stuff more than I have on the content creation side of it. And I think it's cool. I think it has some really good capabilities. I just don't think it's quite there yet a- as far as, being able to authentically, transmit messaging.

[00:31:31] Suneet: Yeah. Yeah. that's the thing, dude, is it's not. And,like reside operations are very AI leveraged, because I see an opportunity in that side. when on the real estate side, the reality, the humanness of it is the part that makes it work, right? all right. What are you most excited about coming up, bro?

[00:31:55] Suneet: What's, what's getting you pumped right now?

[00:31:57] Ross: In general or on, on our team? I, I think in general, like I have a, a feeling I think like you do as well, the next two years of real estate has a lot of opportunity out there. I think that, we're gonna see a, a dwindling agent population. I think we're gonna see teams take over a bigger market share than they have currently.

[00:32:18] Ross: the, being in some of these rooms, that you've been into where people are talking about these, 1,000 agent teams, which, is, is a ways off maybe. But you, the team's taking a bigger piece of the pie, working out how to, give agents more leverage, and more opportunity to do the stuff they enjoy doing.

[00:32:32] Ross: So I think that, there's a huge market share grab over the next two years for team leaders if they do it the right way across, every market. for me personally, I'm doing what you said, which is, like if, if there's something that's working, get every single piece of juice out of the lemon before you move on to the next thing.

[00:32:48] Ross: So I- I'm, I'm doubling down on my, video content creation. I'm gonna start the second YouTube channel, make sure I'm pumping out really good quality stuff on that end, and then just get loud on social.

[00:33:00] Suneet: Yes. I love it. all the good stuff. And I believe our last episode you even talked about YouTube, right?

[00:33:06] Ross: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:33:09] Suneet: If you wanna learn more about how Ross is crushing YouTube, go check out the last episode that he did. What advice do you have for a real estate team leader listening to this episode right now?

[00:33:19] Ross: Oh, boy. I would say simply Honestly, get yourself a coach who's been there and done it and avoid the mistakes they made to get there.

[00:33:27] Ross: no matter what level you're at. I mean, you're talking about, Tyler Blair and Steve Myers and some of those guys who are, a level or two above where I wanna be, that they're still coaching, right? So I, I think for team leaders, when you have the opportunities we have ahead of us over the next couple of years, you've gotta be there to take advantage of it.

[00:33:43] Ross: And to me, the easiest play for that is to make sure that, you avoid the pitfalls that are gonna keep you stuck in the mud for the next six months trying to work it out and not be able to concentrate on the things you need to concentrate on. So for me, it's, it's whether it's a mentor, coach, it's getting into an environment where you have access to these people.

[00:34:00] Ross: you've gotta have someone who can help navigate you through this, this dif- let's face it, this very difficult real estate market because there's, there's massive opportunity out there.

[00:34:09] Suneet: Exactly, and you're a great coach, so people should hire you. How-- If people want to work with you, if people wanna work with you and learn how to totally scale their team to double and be one of the top teams in the state, what's the best way for them to reach out to you?

[00:34:25] Ross: They can reach out to me on my socials, but they need to get in the Reside circle, man. Like that's where, that's where we did it. That's been the game changer for us.

[00:34:33] Suneet: Yeah, so hit up Ross on his social. Which one's best?

[00:34:36] Ross: Facebook or Instagram. just Ross Hardy. You'll find me on there.

[00:34:39] Ross: It's the weird looking British dude.

[00:34:41] Suneet: Are there any other Ross Hardys on Facebook when you look?

[00:34:44] Ross: There's a rosshardy.com, and a hardyteam.com, with, real estate, so that's really upsetting. but yeah.

[00:34:52] Suneet: So rosshardy.com is not Ross H- this Ross Hardy. So if you go to that, you're in the wrong place.

[00:34:59] Ross: No, and hardy, and hardyteam.com isn't either.

[00:35:02] Ross: So, I did, I did-- Yeah, I did, I did c- like contact these people and ask if they'd be willing to sell it to me, but they never responded.

[00:35:10] Suneet: Are they even in the US?

[00:35:12] Ross: Yeah. Yeah, they were in the US.

[00:35:14] Suneet: Dude, I had somebody, I had a Chinese company, like, poach one of my websites when I forgot to make a payment.

[00:35:20] Ross: Oh, how funny.

[00:35:21] Suneet: Yeah, I still don't have it back. It was a long time ago. It's super disappointing. Good. All right. bro, you killed it. I love the advice that you shared, and I, I love the way that you put it, 'cause, like, you're a practitioner. You're in the thing right now.

[00:35:37] Ross: I'm still there.

[00:35:38] Suneet: And right, you're helping other people in the thing, too.

[00:35:42] Suneet: So it's really, I used to share that. Like, it's a unique insight when you're in it and you're teaching it.

[00:35:48] Ross: It's so much fun, because, I see a lot of myself in these people that I'm coaching, but you know, a lot of them have great ideas as well that help me then in my business. because when you get to a certain level, you, you forget some of the other stuff that, that, is so simple that you're just not doing it, effectively.

[00:36:04] Suneet: Good. Well, dude, thank you so much for coming on. Everybody listening, go follow Ross on the socials. If you wanna learn more about him, hit him up on Facebook or Insta, and go check out the other few episodes that, we've done. Ross is speaking at a lot of our events, so you wanna see him in person.

[00:36:20] Suneet: Oh, wait. Those, those events are invite only. So, hey, you'll be speaking at, some other events, too. I saw you had a couple gigs, so good. Make su- And you, I know you'll be sharing them on social. So everyone listening, go back and listen to Ross' other episodes. We t- we purposefully talked about something else in this episode to not make it a repeat, so we got that.

[00:36:41] Suneet: Tons of good content. Tons of great content on the Reside Platform Podcast anyways, with other great guests like Sarah Hardy. Hell, even like me on there. I've, I've been a guest on my own podcast, too, so there you go. In addition to many other podcasts, yes. So make sure you go check it out. Follow Ross, hit him up, and we'll see you on the next episode of the Reside Platform Podcast later