Hiring, Training, and Keeping Profit in Your Pocket with Chris Martinez

[00:00:00] Chris: I don't have to like everybody that I work with, but we have to be respectful of each other and we have to be kind and we have to be working our asses off towards a common goal.

[00:00:08] Chris: I won't compromise on that. Well, how do you measure for that?

[00:00:18] Suneet: Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of the reside platform podcast. I'm your host. My name is Sunita Agarwal and today I'm excited. We have a great episode lined up. That's going to talk about some interesting parallels in different businesses that supports real estate. So as we get started, I want to ask you, have you ever thought about what it really takes to scale your real estate team to make it great and to really sell more stuff?

[00:00:50] Suneet: Well, I always think about that. And if you, the listener listening to it too, which I bet you are, you're going to be stoked. The guest today is Chris Martinez, the CEO and founder of the Bloom agency. And Chris has a shit ton of experience helping digital marketing agencies, right? Thrive. And we're going to talk about the parallels between those two.

[00:01:13] Suneet: So Chris, what's up, man? How are you? I'm great.

[00:01:16] Chris: I am great. We've got a big event coming up in a couple of weeks, so pretty excited slash nervous for that. But, life is good, man.

[00:01:23] Suneet: What's that event.

[00:01:25] Chris: So we run an agency, a marketing agency event. so I don't know if any of your listeners would want to come, but, it's for marketing agencies.

[00:01:32] Chris: We do it twice a year. It's called agency freedom live. And we dive into a lot of like the non sexy parts of running a marketing agency. I think some of the things we're going to talk about today, building up that team, hiring, training, leadership. this one's a little bit different because we are going to be sprinkling in some AI.

[00:01:51] Chris: But only because of the massive benefit that it has for operations and efficiency and being able to get stuff done faster without compromising on the quality. You're right. So we'll be talking about that, but yeah, it's really, it's exciting. That's some big, like some heavy hitters in the digital marketing space.

[00:02:06] Chris: It'll be there both as attendees and as speakers. So where's, where's this one at? It's in San Diego. In mission Valley. Awesome. Great. You can come in, come down. I got you. If you want to

[00:02:17] Suneet: just come on. I'm actually coming to San Diego, I think tomorrow or Sunday for like 24. Yeah. so tell everybody about what you do at bloom agency.

[00:02:28] Suneet: So they have some context around this conversation.

[00:02:31] Chris: Yeah, so, we do management consulting for marketing agencies, essentially helping them to run the business more effectively so they can grow it and then sell it. I started a marketing agency in 2012, kind of fell into it. I was never really like a tech person.

[00:02:46] Chris: and taught myself how to build a website that learned in there that evolved into me learning about driving traffic and digital marketing that led to me getting a job in digital marketing sales. And then I started my agency in 2012. Fast forward to 2015. I opened up a company in Mexico. I was one of the first people to outsource talent to Mexico, specifically in our industry.

[00:03:11] Chris: I was traveling back and forth across the border from San Diego to, Tijuana pretty much every day. I personally crossed the border. Thousands and thousands of times, I'm very experienced in that. So that led to me creating an outsourcing company where we would now staff people for marketing agencies in the U.

[00:03:30] Chris: S. and Canada. And then that evolved into our current business, which is Bloom, where we do management consulting for marketing agencies. And as I mentioned, we help them fix all the non sexy problems that they have and grow this business so they can sell it. And part of what we're doing now, we do equity deals with our clients as well.

[00:03:49] Suneet: So do I, I love it because right. It's because we have a lot of parallels. Yeah,

[00:03:55] Chris: exactly.

[00:03:55] Suneet: The name of this, the name of this podcast is the reside podcast. And this is far. We have a consulting firm, right? I mean, it's for real estate agencies, but more, we call them teams and brokerages. So there's lots of parallels.

[00:04:08] Suneet: That's why I'm so excited to talk. So, I love mentioning your background and staffing, because that's super relevant even today. Yeah. Like I just hired a new EA in Argentina. Cause cause our boy, was just on our second episode a couple of days ago. But, we were talking about that and the, yeah, it's the same vibe.

[00:04:34] Suneet: And we used to have a bunch of sick phone salespeople in Tijuana too.

[00:04:40] Chris: Oh, yeah. My friend Crispin, he runs a big BPO down there. I think he's got about a thousand employees. It's interesting because most people don't know this, that there are a lot of deportees that wind up on the border.

[00:04:52] Suneet: I totally know

[00:04:54] Chris: that.

[00:04:54] Chris: Yeah, I mean, But like for the rest of the country, there's people that were brought here as kids. Right. And so they grew up in the U. S. A lot of them don't even speak Spanish. They get into trouble and they get deported and then they don't have many options for jobs. So they stay on the border.

[00:05:09] Chris: They're all trying to come back to the U. S. to get reunited with their families. Their only job options really are to work in these call centers. And so there's thousands of call centers along the border all across the U. S. Mexico border. There's call centers all, from west to east. Right? And so Tijuana has a lot, a lot of call centers.

[00:05:30] Chris: I think most people in Mexico, if they speak English. They've worked in a call center if they, if they live on the border,

[00:05:36] Suneet: especially because the more sales you do, the better, the more money you make. Right.

[00:05:40] Chris: Yeah. And I mean, those guys can make a pretty good living. they're, I think they can get up to as high as maybe 20 or 25 bucks an hour, which the minimum wage in Mexico, I think it's like, Oh God, what is it a day?

[00:05:52] Chris: I think it's 30 bucks a day now or something like that. The cost of living is way down. Yeah, I, I, I, I forgot to mention this, but I lived in Mexico for five years. I lived in Tijuana. I met my wife in 2018 and I'd already had the business in Mexico. So I was traveling down every day and I met her and we moved in together pretty quickly.

[00:06:14] Chris: And I lived in Mexico for five years and it was a really, really good experience. I also got to see kind of the decline of Tijuana because right now is not a great time to be there. It's very dangerous with cartel stuff going on. Oh.so I got to see how quickly things can change, which makes me appreciate my country, like I love the United States more because of my experience living in, in Mexico,

[00:06:38] Suneet: that's wild.

[00:06:39] Suneet: So let's talk about, I just want to dig in, let's talk about operations. So like when you start working with somebody.we all want to systematize stuff, right? And like in the operations part, like what, what are, what are some of the first things that you start working on when you like take on

[00:07:01] Chris: it? So, I'm very much about making decisions based on data, right?

[00:07:06] Chris: Actually my, my new book that's coming all this call, coming out is called facts, not feelings. And, and so instead of, and this is what most agency owners and I would guess real estate, brokerage owners, they deal do too, is like whatever you think, you kind of like go off of gut instinct and we need to get away from that.

[00:07:24] Chris: Right. So like, if you look at the people that are running the biggest and best companies in the world. They're not just shooting from the hip, right? They're making decisions based on data. Now, with that being said, I'm not saying to ignore your instincts, but I'm saying to validate your feelings with facts.

[00:07:43] Chris: Okay? So one of the things that we'll do on the operation side is we're big on time tracking. How, how do you, how, how do you know if something's efficient if you're not actually measuring how long it takes to get done? So in our business, let's say they're building out a website, right? And we're saying, Hey, that website should take.

[00:07:59] Chris: 20 hours to get built, right? Start to finish. How long is it actually taking? Right.

[00:08:05] Suneet: That's

[00:08:06] Chris: maybe it's taking

[00:08:07] Suneet: anything like that inside of real estate, which is super interesting. It's a

[00:08:11] Chris: different business. Right. So I don't know how, if it's even possible, but we got to estimate. Right. And like, I even think back to my sales manager days and,we'd have an underperforming sales rep and I'd go to that client and I'd say, That man or woman.

[00:08:25] Chris: And I'd say, like, Hey, what's going on? You're at 50 percent of quota. Like, well, what do they always say? My territory sucks. The leads suck. There's no opportunity here. Right. They say that all the time. And I'm like, okay, cool. I hear what you're saying. Pull out your calendar. This is back in the day when we had paper calendars show me.

[00:08:42] Chris: What you did last week, right? And we go through it. If you've ever done a calendar review with a sales rep and you want to see them shit their pants in front of you do this go through. I pull up in the calendar. I look at what they're did. we go through hour by hour every single time. I look at the activity and the activity is low, right?

[00:09:03] Chris: They're supposed to be knocking on 10 doors a day. There may be doing three. They're making calls. They're making calls, they're just not doing the work.

[00:09:12] Suneet: Not doing the work.

[00:09:13] Chris: Right, they're not doing the work. And so what's crazy is that this person might be at 50 percent of quota doing 20 percent of the work and this is a habit, right?

[00:09:22] Chris: They'll be doing it for 3 weeks in a row, just not doing anything.

[00:09:26] Suneet: Yeah. I mean, and I think that's like, so true of any place that hires salespeople. Right. Well, so that's a lot of probably the same challenges that both are consulting businesses face. And even you probably faced it in your marketing agency.

[00:09:43] Suneet: And I faced it in my traditional real estate business is salespeople who have the best intentions. You guys typically in marketing, Pam per hour to, right?

[00:09:54] Chris: I prefer to have people on salary, because there's, if you pay them hourly, what's the incentive for them to work faster? That's just my, this is my

[00:10:03] Suneet: real estate.

[00:10:04] Suneet: Everybody's independent contractor. Exactly. Exactly. Right. So there's, so there's some, there are some real estate teams that do it like that, where. Yeah. But it totally changes like the whole. Like you're like, you're like one out of a thousand that does it now,

[00:10:19] Chris: right? Like setting the expectations as to what you need to do to be successful.

[00:10:24] Chris: That's that's universal. Doesn't matter if you're the sales team, the HR team, the ops team, whatever. And I kind of relate it back to sports. I grew up, I was a soccer player. Now I do brazilian jiu jitsu, so it's a little bit different, but on a sports team. Your objective as the coach, if you're a good coach, is to tell the player what you expect of them, right?

[00:10:46] Chris: Are you blocking and tackling? If you're expected to catch the ball in the end zone, you gotta catch the ball in the end zone, right? Like, we, I think this was really popular in the 2010s, where everybody said like, We're a family, like, we're, let's just huddle together and let's just be this family.

[00:11:01] Chris: That's nonsense. We are not a family. Right? We run our, our companies like a sports team, right? And if you have a couple bad games, it's not the end of the world. we'll help you through this. We'll keep you on the team. But if we go a whole season and you're dropping the ball in the end zone every time, I'm gonna have to find somebody else.

[00:11:20] Chris: It's just the way that it works, right? The mission is too big. We've got to win games. There's a lot of people that are relying on us. So like setting the expectations is really, really important. And you can do that through time tracking or just going through the job description and saying, Hey, this is what I need you to do.

[00:11:36] Chris: Most companies don't have job descriptions. They don't have that playbook that tells the player what they need to do. If you did that, you'd be surprised as to how many people would step up. They're either going to step up or if they can't cut it, they're going to leave. Either way, the problem is solved.

[00:11:50] Suneet: If it's so cut and dry that you cannot not follow it to a T. Yeah. I mean, systematized, like, okay, log into

[00:11:58] Chris: this, do that. That's our job. That's our job as the coach. Right. Or as the, I would say we're not coaches in reality. If you're the owner of the company, you're more like the owner of the sports franchise, right?

[00:12:09] Chris: You're in the head office. So I'll, I'll give you another analogy that I like to make. I'm not a huge football guy, but I think all of us have heard about, bonuses that players get when they score a certain number of touchdowns or that sack the quarterback, right? They get individual player bonuses for achieving, certain.

[00:12:28] Chris: goals, right? So let's just say, this person, they, they score 10 touchdowns that season and they get a million dollar signing bonus. Right. And everybody's like, wow, that's so cool. That player got a million dollars signing bonus. Nobody ever thinks about how much money the team is making. When that player does that, , if they're paying the player a million bucks, that team is probably making a hundred million bucks.

[00:12:53] Chris: Right. And that's where, as owners, we sit up in that owner's box and those are the decisions that we're making. We're saying, Hey, if this person does this and this person does this and this person does this, the company is going to make so much more money. And so because of that, I'm going to incentivize each of these players to execute on that specific role.

[00:13:15] Chris: Right. That's our job is to make it that simple for everybody to see. Hey, we need to get to at least the 2nd round of the playoff. So we do that. We're going to make this much money. Therefore, I'm going to incentivize this person this much and this person this much and they have to do X, Y and Z. All right, that's what we do.

[00:13:33] Chris: So. Getting back to your original question on the operation side, we analyze the data as to what's going on and then we just start identifying the inefficiencies and we just start top to bottom, right? Where are we bleeding the most? Maybe we have where is

[00:13:48] Suneet: the data coming from? Is it from their tracking?

[00:13:51] Chris: Yeah. Time tracking data for us. Time tracking

[00:13:53] Suneet: data. Yeah.

[00:13:54] Chris: So we have time tracking data that we'll look at for the individual like fulfillment staff. Mhm.

[00:14:01] Suneet: And so is is fulfillment staff a big challenge with. Eight marketing

[00:14:06] Chris: agencies. Yeah. So when we look at the product, right. So, in a marketing agency, our biggest cost of goods is going to be labor and it's going to be software.

[00:14:17] Chris: Those are the two biggest things, because what we're producing a website and ad campaign, it's all digital, right? And until the AI robots take over the world, we still have, we still have human beings that are doing that work. Right. And so we have to decide, Hey, this website should take 20 hours. As I was saying earlier, this ad campaign, it should take five hours to set that up.

[00:14:45] Chris: Right. And an hour a week after that monitoring. And so then we have to track the people and if it's taking too long, sometimes it's their fault, maybe they're not trained, right? Maybe they're lazy. That doesn't happen. So it doesn't happen that frequently. Maybe they don't have the skillset. Maybe they don't have the right tools.

[00:15:03] Chris: They're just not trained. Right. It's, it's your fault as the leader. Exactly. A lot of the times it is our fault. And then if we do train them up and they still can't get to where we need to be, well then it's a facts, not feelings decision as to whether or not we let that person go. Right. And what's interesting, lemme give

[00:15:21] Suneet: some advice to anybody listening to this right now because what Kris is saying is so real.

[00:15:26] Suneet: If you have somebody and they're not doing what you expect, do they, let me ask you, do they know what you expect? How about this, open up your, your computer and log in a good old chat GPT and write what you expect and tell it to make a damn job description. It's not going to be perfect the first time.

[00:15:45] Suneet: Maybe by the sixth time, it'll be better than what you have right now, which is nothing, right? Let's just start there. So.

[00:15:51] Chris: So, yeah, I would actually, can I give a tip on that for the job description? Yes. So when you go into chat GPT, I want you to put in a section that says on the daily, what they're supposed to do on the weekly, what they're supposed to do on the monthly and on the quarterly.

[00:16:10] Chris: Right. And so it's just bullet points daily. These are the things that you'll be responsible for weekly. These are the things you're going to be responsible for. And chat GPT to list that out for you. In that bullet form, bullet point format, right? That will make it so like clear as to what that person has to do in their job.

[00:16:30] Suneet: I had a job description. I wrote yesterday where it said log into this. Log into this, open this, go to this file, press this, do this screenshot, right? Like literally make it foolproof, not calling anybody a fool, make it foolproof. Yeah. That way you're going to get less questions anyways.

[00:16:50] Chris: Yeah, a hundred percent.

[00:16:52] Chris: So that's, that's, those are like the biggest things that we do on the operation side, and then we'll also be able to identify where they're in efficiencies in their processes, right? Because there's what we think should happen. And then there's the reality of what's happening. And if a process is broken, there's some sort of disconnect right between maybe it's team members.

[00:17:14] Chris: Maybe it's reality. Maybe we're doing something in a way and we hadn't evolved that process. And so we just need to bring it up into 2024 right and update that process. What we find is that the existing team, they're usually so heads down doing what they're doing right now that they don't have time or they don't even think about, hey, maybe we should change stuff, right?

[00:17:36] Chris: That's where it's so beneficial to bring in. An outside person to come in and help you see the forest through through the trees, so to speak,

[00:17:45] Suneet: you just nailed something. That's so real is your current staff. The people working for you are probably at capacity as you might be a little disorganized and that's okay.

[00:17:56] Suneet: So is Amazon. Yeah, right. Exactly. So it was Tesla, you can be a little disorganized and still be very successful. But yeah, your, your occurrence, your staff working hard and doing a good job right now are doing a good job of what they're doing. Like you either need to be super growth minded or work with somebody that is that can show you more stuff.

[00:18:18] Suneet: And yeah, build your sufficiencies more, right?

[00:18:21] Chris: Sometimes they're a little afraid to, right. It depends on the culture of the company or what's been in place in the past. maybe they're afraid to break stuff or maybe they're afraid to try a new way. And so sometimes we do have to inject that into the culture.

[00:18:36] Chris: Actually, this is something that is pretty common with our agency owners. they've built a million dollar business, for example. and they've got skills that have gotten them to that million dollar business as a leader. And, they don't yet have the skills that's going to get them to a 5 million company or a 10 million company or a 20 million company.

[00:18:55] Chris: One of those skills is the ability to empower other people and let go, right? Not stupidly let go, not just hand the reins over to somebody else, if they're not capable of doing the job, but it's a process. That a leader has to go through of knowing how to truly empower somebody and also hold them accountable.

[00:19:15] Chris: The accountability pieces is what most people are lacking. I think most of us are, if you're an owner, you're what's called a visionary, right? And part of what comes with being a visionary is that you kind of just assume that everybody's doing things or that you are very hopeful about what you're doing.

[00:19:31] Chris: Them being able to get stuff done and you need those checks and balances. You can't just like, let everything just run. You need a system so that you can see that everything is moving. Sis, that is, that everything is moving smoothly.

[00:19:44] Suneet: Yes. A hundred percent systematize everything. Yeah. As a matter of fact, I'm reading, Dan Kennedy, no BS ruthless leadership right now, and I think

[00:19:55] Chris: I had that book on my desk.

[00:19:56] Chris: Like, right now I have this one. I have this built to sell right here. Dan Kennedy. Great. Just,

[00:20:02] Suneet: yeah, Dan, I think that may be my favorite Dan Kennedy book now. I don't know.

[00:20:08] Chris: well, you've been developing too, as a, as an entrepreneur, so what appeals to you is different,

[00:20:13] Suneet: Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's what makes it really fun.

[00:20:15] Suneet: I don't really need to know how to write the Ultimate Sales letter anymore. I got Chad GBT is really good. . Exactly. my Chad, GBT bot . Yeah.but, operationally, what systems, like, what are some systems that you suggest? Not typical names. , what are some types of systems that you suggest to your clients

[00:20:36] Chris: you said you don't want the technology. I can give you a few of the very basics, right? So like need a project. I mean, if it's some

[00:20:43] Suneet: nuanced, like specific thing, we don't need to go down.

[00:20:47] Chris: You definitely need a project management system, so, we use ClickUp or we're big advocates of ClickUp. I love monday.

[00:20:55] Chris: com. You love monday. Okay, cool. Perfect. There's a lot of them out there. I'm pretty agnostic. we just like ClickUp because of the time tracking. It's got some really good time tracking integrations. Sure. if you're doing a lot of, like email support, I do recommend that you have some sort of a ticketing system as well.

[00:21:13] Chris: I don't know if you've ever explored one of those. So I have it inside of Monday. Oh, perfect. Okay, cool. So, ClickUp does not have a good ticketing system. So we use a different one. That's called fresh desk, which I managed to client communications. I prefer to have it all in one. It's just for our business.

[00:21:30] Chris: It's really hard to find one. Does those two things well.

[00:21:35] Suneet: So your clients submit tickets for support.

[00:21:40] Chris: They can. Yeah. the other thing that we do internally, oh, so here's a cool, kind of AI hack. if you're doing client calls, right. Where, maybe you have an account management team or, you're doing these consistent, like once a month or maybe once a week check ins with, I do a lot of those.

[00:21:58] Chris: I do. Okay.

[00:21:58] Suneet: A ton of them. Yeah.

[00:21:59] Chris: So we record everything with read. a lot of people use, fathom, I think read ai. Yeah, yeah. re.ai. that will record and transcript the, the meeting itself.that's easy. There's a lot of tools that can do that. But what you have to do. Is after the meeting summary is, or the meeting transcript is created, take that and pop it into chat GPT and tell chat GPT to create a meeting.

[00:22:26] Chris: So, well, first of all, I say who the meeting is with. So I say it's between me and I give my company name and this client and their company name. And, I want you to create a summary of the meeting. I want you to list out all the highlights, and then this is the most important thing. I need you to list out all the to do's.

[00:22:45] Chris: That that person said that they were going to do and that we said that we were going to do and the due dates Create that list And then we can upload that into our project management system or our ticketing system And we can make sure we can start assigning, tasks and start and make sure that all that stuff is getting done There's so many times when we have a verbal conversation with somebody and we forget to write down all the things and what happens is that the one thing that you forget is the one thing that the client's like i've been waiting for

[00:23:18] Suneet: So we built out a workflow, Otter.

[00:23:22] Suneet: ai does a lot of what you said, however, the workflow we're building right now is take the meeting transcript, compare it to all the other meeting transcripts with that same client. Right? So you got to do it with Antrophic. So I can read that far. I'm going deep.

[00:23:40] Suneet: Yeah, you're getting more

[00:23:41] Chris: advanced. I was given the 101 version. Now you're getting fancy. But,

[00:23:45] Suneet: yeah, got to do that. And that still takes some human, like human interaction. Yeah, I told you, I think I just told you, I hired somebody in Argentina and their job is going to be just a copy and paste.

[00:23:57] Chris: Yeah, perfect.

[00:23:58] Chris: so you can, there are, at least for, Read chat, GPT and a fresh desk, because that's where we put all of our stuff. There's web hooks or Zapier integrations. So that all of that can just happen automatically.

[00:24:13] Suneet: We have that right now where the zoom summary, which just comes with zoom, the AI companion, which is not the best, but it does good enough that we have that going to Monday, but it's not.

[00:24:26] Suneet: The zap isn't good enough to where it's not organizing it by person yet, right? Right. It's just all putting them in date spots. The item is a new day. So working on that part, it's getting

[00:24:37] Chris: there. It's getting close. Oh, yes. I know that like otter and read, they create their own meeting summaries. it's just in my experience, The, what they produce isn't as accurate as actually downloading the transcript, putting it in a chat GPT.

[00:24:55] Chris: Hopefully those tools will get it together and they can eliminate that step. But, for now, for me to create a meeting summary, like the notes, it used to take me anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the meeting. Now I can get those meeting summaries created in, And seconds.and then I just have to edit and then I can upload.

[00:25:15] Chris: It's really, really fast. So it saves me a ton of time. That's awesome.

[00:25:20] Suneet: So let's talk about hiring.

[00:25:25] Suneet: We hire a lot of independent contractors. We also hire operations, people, administrative people, marketing people, sales coaches, right? So there's a lot of parallels there between that and marketing agencies. Can you give me, drop some gold on the audience about.

[00:25:46] Chris: Yeah, for sure. hiring is one of those things that's.

[00:25:50] Chris: I think it's always going to be challenging. Who knows? I know there's some AI, technology that's coming that will probably streamline the process a lot. But part of the reason why it's so challenging is that your company is different and your company culture is different, right? Somebody might be a great fit for you and they would be a terrible fit Or another company and and that's the way that it's supposed to be.

[00:26:10] Chris: It's kind of like dating, right? You like be a great fit for somebody else. Absolutely not for me. And so I would start with, of course, got to start with the job description. The job description, just to be specific, or just to be clear, is an internal document that we use for us and the employee once they're hired so that they know what they're supposed to do to be successful in their job.

[00:26:34] Chris: Out of the job description, there is what we'll call the job post. And the job post is what we use to attract, new hires, right? So if you don't have a great job description, then your job post is going to be off and you're going to be attracting the wrong people. Does that make sense? Right? So you gotta have a really, really thorough job descriptions first.

[00:26:56] Chris: Otherwise, everything's gonna be thrown off. next I would say, depending on what their, their skill set or their role is, we got to look at their ability and their skill sets. Can they actually do the job? Who you need will change over time. At our peak, we had over a hundred employees, right? That's a lot of people.

[00:27:16] Chris: As the business evolves and advances in its stages, you're going to need better people, right? Like, I think most of us have heard the term who the people that got you here aren't going to get you there, right? Is it very, very true? It's hard for us to recognize that, too, once we're in it, because we want everybody to be able to come with us.

[00:27:36] Chris: But the sad reality is they They will not, right? And so you have to look at the skills that you need like right now. And I would say even look like two or three years down the road. What, what are the skills that we need this person to have three years down the road, maybe five years down the road and hire that person.

[00:27:55] Chris: Right. What's great about now is that, we can work with people all across the world. So you might think, well, I can't afford that director of marketing, right? Because they're going to be 150, 000 base salary. But guess what? You can probably find somebody with a similar skill set that's working in another part of the world that you can get for a fraction of that 150, 000 a year salary.

[00:28:19] Suneet: My main marketing person lives in New

[00:28:21] Chris: Zealand. Exactly. Exactly. South Africa is another place where we're, there's a lot of hiring going on. A great salary in South Africa is like 2000 bucks a month, right? 1, 500 a month as a, as a good salary in South Africa, 2, 000 a month. You can get a really, really talented individual, right?

[00:28:42] Chris: So identify the skills that you need, that person to have. And then I would say. Okay. Even more important than the technical ability are the soft skills, right? So certain soft skills for me are like, I will not compromise on these ones, right? Like being on time. You gotta be on time, gotta be a nice person, gotta be kind, gotta be willing to go the extra mile for your team members.

[00:29:06] Chris: That's not a core value at all companies, right? There are some companies that just don't care about that. Right, and that's okay. That's that's on them. That's on them. That's not for me for me. Like, I don't have to like everybody that I work with, but we have to be respectful of each other and we have to be kind and we have to be working our asses off towards a common goal.

[00:29:26] Chris: I won't compromise on that. Well, how do you measure for that? So if you have written down core values, it makes it a lot easier.Have you ever talked about EOS before, or are you familiar with EOS? Sure, yeah. Okay, cool. So, the EOS A lot

[00:29:41] Suneet: of people in the real estate space are big subscribers to that, too.

[00:29:45] Suneet: Perfect.

[00:29:46] Chris: So, in EOS, Entrepreneur Operating System, I'm not an owner in that company. I don't have any affiliation. I'm just a fan. But they have one thing in there where they evaluate people, and they call it the People Analyzer. We joke around that we call it the people of annihilator. So the people analyzer, it's fancy name.

[00:30:03] Chris: And it basically says that on this X access, you have all of your core values, right? So if one of your core values is like, go above and beyond for the clients, the next core value is, be the spark, right? That was actually one of ours. And then on this Y axis, you have the names of all of your employees, right?

[00:30:22] Chris: Okay, or potential hires. And so when you're evaluating a team member, right, either if it's for a new hire opportunity or if it's a quarterly review or something, you say, okay, here's Jimmy does Jimmy name. Yeah. Has he exemplified the go above and beyond for your team members, right? It's either a thumbs up or a thumbs down.

[00:30:44] Chris: That's my version of it, right? Were they the spark? It's a thumbs up or a thumbs down. When you're doing the interview for a new candidate, a new perspective hire, don't ask them, Hey, give me an example, or tell me what is,be the spark mean to you. You have to ask them, give me an example of when you.

[00:31:07] Chris: Went above and beyond for a team member. Right. They, you, you make them tell you a story. Don't ask, what would you do if questions ask, tell me a time when you questions. Yes. Because they'll tell you the story and you'll be able to tell if they're bullshitting you.

[00:31:26] Suneet: Yes.

[00:31:26] Chris: If they're giving you vague answers and they're like, oh, well, yeah, like there's this one time and, somebody needed help.

[00:31:32] Chris: And, I stayed late and I helped them. Right. That's a bullshit answer. If it's a real answer, then you'd be like, absolutely. Stacy. One time we were dealing with this client and Stacy had been struggling and she was, like on the verge of getting a performance improvement plan. And she's my great friend and, she needed help with this account and we worked all weekend and we produced these reports and then on Monday we presented it to the client together and we won that client over and Stacy kept her job and we ended up growing that account.

[00:32:01] Chris: And it's the. One of the best experiences I've ever had in, in the workplace, right? That's a real story. Right. And we want people that have these real stories that show that they check the box for that core value. If you have, I'm just going to give you a general rule of thumb. Let's just say you have seven core values.

[00:32:22] Chris: I think if it's a kind of frontline employee, if they're not really a manager, they have to check the box for at least four, four out of seven, maybe five out of seven. Okay, if it's somebody who you're looking to hire for a management position, somebody that's going to be in charge of other folks, somebody that's going to be in charge of cascading information down to other people and holding those people accountable to the mission, that manager Has to check seven out of seven or six out of six or five out of five.

[00:32:55] Chris: They have to check all the boxes. I will not compromise on that because what happens if we do, we bring on somebody who doesn't align with us. Well, as the owner, as you get different layers of management, it's kind of like playing the telephone game. So we say something at the top, we're relying on these people to take that and cascade it down and then it's got to go down and then it's going to go down.

[00:33:19] Chris: And what happens is they don't have the same values as you, that message will get diluted. And diluted. And by the time it gets down to the ground floor employees, they are not hearing at all what you wanted them to hear. That's why it's so important to have people with the same values. You do those things, evaluate technical ability, well, job description, technical ability, soft skills.

[00:33:40] Chris: You will have amazing team members. Dude, that was

[00:33:42] Suneet: so good. Thank you. Tell me about training the people that you bring on.

[00:33:48] Chris: Yeah. some very, very practical tips as well. This is things that anybody can do. So the first

[00:33:54] Suneet: thing with real estate is a newly licensed Realtor joins. What are my clients are me, how do we get them up to speed?

[00:34:05] Suneet: Because here's the difference. They're not making any money. Exactly.

[00:34:09] Chris: So day one, they come in, they're scared shitless. I want them to learn about the company culture. I want them to interview with some of the other managers and I want you to review the job description with them. Okay. That's our day one training.

[00:34:23] Chris: I don't want to overwhelm them with stuff to do. They've got enough stuff going on. You and I have not had a job in a very long time. When somebody takes a job for the first day, they're terrified of everything. They're nervous. And like, are they going to do something stupid and get laughed at? Are they going to have friends?

[00:34:39] Chris: Are they going to have to eat in the bathroom? like that type of high school fears come back on your first day of work. Right? So let's, Start the process of ingraining them into our company culture. I want them to learn about who we are as a company. I want them to learn about the struggles that you had building this business and how we all banded together.

[00:35:00] Chris: I want them to start to believe in the mission that we have as a company, right? And then I want them to interface with the other people that are in the that are running the business can be 15 20 minute. Just let's just sit down and get to know each other. And then the most important thing is you're going to go through that job description with them line by line in that meeting that you're going to have with that employee, you're going to itemize to them what they need to be able to do at the end of month one.

[00:35:28] Chris: So at the end of 30 days, the end of 60 days, and at the end of 90 days, at the end of 90 days, they need to be at 80 percent capacity, right? So here's a hundred. I need you here at the end of 90 days. This is where you're going to be at the end of month one, month two, and month three, you will always know where you stand.

[00:35:50] Chris: I can, I'm going to give you the tools to be successful, but you got to step up and get it done. And if you feel like you're falling behind or you have questions, obviously I'm here, set that as your goal. From the very beginning, we were talking about expectations. Nobody ever does that. And then you have this there, then there's like this confusion because the team member will be like 60 days in and they think they're doing amazing.

[00:36:14] Chris: And you're like, why the hell did I hire this person? Like this was a gigantic mistake. It's because you didn't set them up for success at the beginning. Just have that hour long conversation and go through the expectations. And then what I would recommend is just once a week, meet with them at least once a week.

[00:36:31] Chris: Meet with them and just review their progress, right? If there's something that you see, let them know, right? If there's something that they have a question about, they get some time with you to ask as well. And that doesn't always have to be a one on one setting that can be in a group setting as well, but you have to have those weekly check ins.

[00:36:49] Chris: If you invest the time, I know it sounds like a lot, but if you invest the time for those 90 days and that person gets to 80 percent in 90 days, your life is going to be so much easier. Cause now we're taking somebody who's been molded into this really, really like high potential machine. And now we just got to make little tweaks and changes to their game.

[00:37:12] Chris: And then they're going to start crushing.

[00:37:13] Suneet: That's good. Got me thinking, dude, got me thinking. So let's talk about, and I'm curious about the parallels here. Let's talk about making fucking money and profitability, right? So. What are some things you've seen that have helped your clients increase profitability?

[00:37:35] Chris: first of all, it's controlling their gross margin or their cost of goods, I should say. Yeah. Do you say And gross margin, right? So like, in our business, most marketing agencies have no idea how much, it costs them to get that website out the door or that ad campaign out the door. They just don't know.

[00:37:53] Chris: Right. They might have a goal. Maybe they have a goal, but they're not tracking it because they're not doing like the time tracking stuff.most people are spending way too much money to get those stuff, their projects out the door. So, we got to get those, time tracking systems in place. We got to analyze what's going on.

[00:38:09] Chris: We got to see if there's ways to make things more efficient. That's by far and away the number one thing. secondly, in our business, it's a lot of monthly recurring revenue. And so if clients, if they're losing too many customers per month, we have to figure out why a lot of the times it's because they, they don't have a very good product, right?

[00:38:30] Chris: Marketing. I've sold my first job out of college. I sold postage machines, right? I worked for a company called Pitney Bowes. If you remember them back.

[00:38:36] Suneet: Yeah.

[00:38:37] Chris: All the mailers, the real estate people do, right?

[00:38:39] Suneet: Yeah.

[00:38:40] Chris: I was slanging postage machines, knocking on doors. this is before we had fancy, online CRMs and stuff like that.

[00:38:49] Chris: My paper calendars. And, so like with, in that business, you were selling something that nobody gave a shit about. Like it was an expense. It was a commodity, right? Marketing services are very easy to sell. Right. If we look at it, if you hire a marketing agency, you're giving them a couple thousand bucks a month.

[00:39:10] Chris: And you expect that to turn around and come back as 10, 000, 20, 000 in revenue, right? That's the goal. So it's very, very simple. So in that, when we look at that product, if the agency is churning out clients, if they're losing customers, we have to look in most of the time, it's because they're not actually getting results for their clients, they're not helping the clients make more money.

[00:39:34] Chris: So they have a bad product. Yeah. Right. So that's the other big thing that we'll look at is like, do you actually have a good product in real estate? Do you actually have a good experience for the clients? Are they getting homes? Are you putting them in homes or whatever it is, whatever type of real estate that you're you're selling?

[00:39:52] Chris: Is the buyer getting what they're actually looking for, right? Is it a good deal? Got to actually look and make sure that it's a good product. Those are the two biggest ones that there's a lot of other little things, inconsistencies in sales. Maybe they don't have the right leadership team. sometimes it's not very common in marketing agencies.

[00:40:10] Chris: Sometimes they have some operating expenses that are too high, or like they have some team members that don't need to be there, or they're being paid too much. I have one of my clients. They hired, an operations manager, and that person didn't know what they were doing, brought them on, 120, 000 a year salary, and that person couldn't do anything.

[00:40:29] Chris: So we come in and you have a clean house, right? Those types of things. So, yeah, but the big ones are cost of goods sold and then making sure you have a good product and that you're delivering for the clients. Sounds simple. It is simple, but not necessarily easy.

[00:40:44] Suneet: Sure. The way that we look at it is cost of goods sold, because that includes the split that you pay to the agent, any split that maybe a team has to a brokerage, right?

[00:40:56] Suneet: And then we divide the rest into 3 categories of expenses. You have advertising, marketing, right? You have people, and you have overhead, right? In my experience, people is always the highest, unnecessarily. How about yours?

[00:41:15] Chris: I would definitely say, well, just in general, the people are going to be the biggest expense for the business.

[00:41:23] Chris: when it comes to our people, it's usually that we have people that are ineffective and we've held them on and the business is outgrown them. Right? That's, that's very common. we have some people maybe that are inefficient, And so while they're supposed to be able to produce X amount of whatever websites, right, they're not, they're not even coming close to that.

[00:41:45] Chris: so, and then the other thing, because marketing agency people are like, they love shiny objects, they love buying software.

[00:41:52] Suneet: Same with the real estate.

[00:41:54] Chris: And so they'll buy whatever deal of the day software it is. And then it's death by a million cuts, right? That 20 payment here, that 150 payment here, that annual payment of 3, 000 that hits once a year.

[00:42:08] Chris: And so you forget about it, right? And you add all those things up. I mean, we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in crap and like, just light the money on fire, So you got to go through and audit your books and make sure that you're staying lean and mean. It's like discipline.

[00:42:23] Suneet: Yeah, Chris, what advice do you have to the audience

[00:42:30] Chris: in terms? well, yeah, I mean,

[00:42:31] Suneet: if you can leave us with some parting words. Off the final goal, although I really, I got a lot out of everything you said and really made me, I like shut up. I took some notes. I don't know if he got that. Yeah, I saw it. I love it.

[00:42:45] Suneet: Yeah. Yeah. So, so that was good. If you have some advice to entrepreneurs and business owners,

[00:42:52] Chris: I, I, I try to think about myself and where I was when I started my entrepreneurial journey. when I started my marketing agency or when I started getting into marketing, I was flat broke right at my first business.

[00:43:03] Chris: I started a soccer magazine in 2007, a few months after, after my dad died of cancer. And, so I was in a very tough spot. Mentally and emotionally dealing with the grief of my dad. And then, when I failed at that soccer magazine, I was like, I didn't think it could get any worse. And so I look back to that version of myself in 2007, 2008.

[00:43:30] Chris: And all the things that I thought that were true that weren't right. So one of those is I thought that the, that the business, like once I made a bunch of money and I was, financially successful or whatever, I thought, man, I'm finally going to get all this respect and admiration from people. And that ain't true.

[00:43:49] Chris: That's not, that that's not a reason to start a business. If you think that the business is going to give you self worth and validation, you're setting yourself up for failure. It's not so with that being said, whatever goes on inside here and in here in your head and your heart, you got to work on that 1st because otherwise you're going to have some limiting beliefs that are going to prevent you from actually going out and do the thing, doing the thing that you need to do, right?

[00:44:14] Chris: If you want to just be instagram famous, right? And that those are the decisions that you're going to make in the business. Most likely it ain't going to work out. Right. Cause that's not real life. Like you need to be willing to go. My dad said this before he died, he said, I would go out and sell oranges on the street.

[00:44:34] Chris: If that's what I had to do to make sure that you guys were okay. Right. And that's like the mentality that I go, I'll do whatever it takes. I'll go out, I'll call whoever I'll clean toilets. I have clean toilets before, like I've done all the dirty work. I'm willing to do whatever it takes to be successful.

[00:44:51] Chris: That's just my mentality. Right. So I would, maybe this is a cliche, be willing to get your hands dirty. You're not, you're not above doing anything. Do whatever I reach our, just, just do it. Just get out. Like it's going to be fricking hard and it's going to test you. And you're going to want to quit so many times, but if you want it bad enough, we'll figure out, you'll figure out a way.

[00:45:16] Chris: Right. There's so many times that I want to, dude, people talk shit to me all the time. Like people disrespect me all the time. It's just the way that it is. Sometimes you got to eat a lot of shit. That's okay. In the end, I'm going to win. You can't beat somebody who never stops. Right. As long as I got air in my lungs, I'm still in the fight.

[00:45:35] Chris: Still in the fight. Hell

[00:45:37] Suneet: yeah. Well, if people want to hook up with you and get more information or chat or check out your podcast,

[00:45:45] Chris: so you can go listen to the podcast, it's operation agency, freedom or on Spotify, you can also go to our website if you want, bloom partners. io, and, we have our podcast episodes there.

[00:45:55] Chris: you can check me out on Instagram. I think I'm starting to post a lot more stuff. And, I think funnier stuff, more entertaining stuff. That's not just marketing agency related. Chris from bloom, just go, Instagram, Chris from bloom. And, we're always posting stuff, even if you're not in the marketing agency space, there's some tips like today with, hiring and, and interviewing.

[00:46:19] Chris: Right. There's some tips that you can take away. Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:46:23] Suneet: Well, everybody, thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode with Chris Martinez of the bloom agency. what's that bloom partners, bloom partners. There we go. All right. Let's let's do that again. Thank you so much for tuning in today.

[00:46:41] Suneet: My bloom partners, we'll drop Chris's links in the show notes. If you did enjoy the conversation, don't ever miss an episode. Like we do, we're doing like two a week right now. It feels like subscribe on your favorite platform or on all of them, join our community of listeners who are getting great real estate and entrepreneurship value every single week.

[00:47:05] Suneet: if you got something out of it. Then share with a friend and we'll see you on the next episode of the reside podcast platform later, Chris.