How One Team Lead Solved the 87% Agent Failure Rate with Cody Burger

Cody I think Nick McClain said that more than 50% of leads convert after fixed or 12 months. I can't remember what the number was.

Suneet Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Reside Platform podcast. I'm your host today, Suneet Al, and with me today is Cody Berger. He's a brokerage owner and a team leader. He's transforming the way agents think about leverage, culture and growth. You know, Cody took his brokerage and kind of turned it around with a team rich vibe, blending the structure of a brokerage with the leverage of a team by implementing systems and tripling down on culture and accountability, and hopefully a little KFR Cody has built a model where agents thrive and the business grows stronger.

Suneet Every single day, Cody, I am pumped. What is going on, dude? How are you? I'm well, ine. I'm well, I'm excited to be here. Yes. [00:01:00] real quick, what's, the name of your market? What's the city you in?

Cody Dubuque Iowa.

Suneet Dubuque, Iowa. All right. How do you spell Dubuque? D-U-B-U-Q-U-E. Alright. I like it, Dubuque. I like it.

Suneet So before Cody and I were talking before this episode started. He goes, this is kind of full circle. Cody, why is this full circle dude?

Cody been a brokerage owner for about five years, and we'll get more into that I'm sure. But, started listening to, Ethan Butte on TOS podcast, and he was, one of his interviews was with this guy named Nick McLean.

Cody And I'm like, this guy's kind of seems like he knows what he's talking about with running a team. So then I found out about Reside and I started listening to some Reside podcast. And yeah. And then I got ahold of Nick and then I got talk to John Chela. And here I am on the Reside Platform podcast a year later.

Suneet Yes. That's great dude. That is so cool. I love to hear that. good. [00:02:00] Okay. So. Back into the content. So in the intro there, I quoted you, I said Leverage is the key to agent success. What does that mean, bro?

Cody Well, I think this is really where I started going into the team concept. I think one of the biggest issues that I see in our industry, two things is agents getting moving in the industry.

Cody I think that's. There's a reason we have an 87% failure rate in the first three to five years of being in the business because, I call it scope systems, opportunities, accountability, and processes.

Cody So without that, you know, a lot of agents kind of flounder in the first five years.

Cody But then on the flip side, the agents that do really well, this isn't a job that you can just turn off like you clock out at five. So if you're doing really good. you do really well, but then you can hit that burnout really quick. And that's where I see agents on the other end of the spectrum struggle.

Cody And that's where I said, you know, I think we can build a team that services both. And then at the [00:03:00] brokerage side too, we offer a lot of a la carte stuff. We offer some, coaching. We offer transaction coordinating on the team side. All that stuff's built right in. But agents on the, brokerage side get to tap into, almost all the resources that they want.

Suneet Yes. I love that. So when you talk about leverage for like agents on the brokerage, you said you have a la carte services. are some a la carte services that you guys have on the brokerage side?

Cody I mean, really I think it's anything that, I really try to focus with our agents, what their time is worth, entering listings, creating marketing content.

Cody I've got a couple agents that have sourced their own VA that will do some of this stuff for them, which I think is awesome. but if they don't wanna do that, we do a lot of the marketing, you know, templated transactional marketing just sold under contract. Price reduced, open house, that kind of stuff because Number one, I found it creates inconsistencies when we've got 60 different agents doing [00:04:00] marketing 60 different ways. So it helps control the brand image. But then I found that our director of marketing a lot of times is able to, Create a more polished look that, actually puts a better piece of content out there.

Cody in transaction coordinating, if agents want to tap into transaction coordinating or they're not doing their own paperwork, you know, I have some agents that, Hey, I'm in a slow, period right now. I can handle this one deal, but then all of a sudden they'll have eight deals under contract and it's like I gotta offload any kind of paperwork that I can.

Suneet Oh yes, you gotta use a tc. I didn't use a TC once and it was the hardest deal. It was like my fifth deal. I said, I might as well learn how to do this. Couple thousand deals later. I haven't. It's like, nope. good. I actually tell

Cody agents there's no sense for you to learn that. Like, I, I just need to know what, time the watch says.

Cody I don't need to know how the watch ticks.

Suneet Ooh, good analogy, bro. Good analogy. So now in the brokerage, what, you have the indie side and like the mage side, right? so the brokerage [00:05:00] side is more of. A la carte services. Do what you want? A little bit of soap, right? maybe not as many opportunities handed out, maybe, versus the team.

Suneet So did I nail it on the difference there or is there more?

Cody No, no. You're, you, hit the nail on the head. I think, traditionally we've been a, just a large brokerage and I think the biggest frustration that I saw was. new agents coming into the industry were really heavy on recruiting, especially new agents, bringing them into the business, training them, showing them how to do the business.

Cody But what I would see is agents, and I don't think anybody gets into this business with the idea that, hey, the. I'm gonna go quit my job, have no guarantee of a paycheck, spend $3,000, and I hope I fail in real estate. Like that's just not something that anybody thinks of. But what ends up happening, the reality of it is, number one, you know, we talk a lot about sphere in our business and.

Cody It's awesome when we can do only sphere business, but [00:06:00] as an agent, let's be real. It takes a long time for your sphere to get to a level where it can 100% support you as a brand new agent. how do you scale your

Suneet sphere business?

Cody How do you scale it?

Suneet Yeah. Time.

Cody Yeah, time. Time. And, you know, I think that one of the big things, so I, I guess to go back, what I got tired of seeing is agents coming in. One out of 10 would just absolutely kill it. The other nine would kind of float around for six to 12 months. And this was, you know, it's exciting at first and it's really cool and I don't have a boss and, and then I'd see 'em come in and they'd come to the team meetings maybe at training, and then it's like, well, I don't have anything to do, so I'll go home.

Cody And then that becomes a slippery slope and within 12 months, hey, I'm gonna get a part-time job. And I just immediately see that as the beginning of the end for 'em. And then, Hey, I'm gonna change brokerages or go to a, a, a low cost brokerage where there's no monthly or I'm gonna put my license inactive.

Cody So yeah, so [00:07:00] I got tired of seeing that. So that's where I really wanted to like get in There's a lot of reasons I started a team and we can get into that, but.

Suneet Well, okay, so you have a, let's talk about systems and tech because you got a big old stack, right? Not only are you part of Reside, so you get to deal with all my madness all the time, but, follow Boss ypo.

Suneet Well, you have Digital Maverick two Zillow. Let's talk about like your stack, what tools you're using.

Cody we have tools for both sides of the house. for our brokerage side, we use lofty. Cool. And agents can choose whether or not they want to. Some agents are, you know, very heavy sphere and they don't want to use a CRM at all.

Cody Sure. and then the agents that do want the CRM, we turn on a, what's called a seat for them. yeah, so they have a website. They have a CRM, we have dot loop on both sides, agency side and the, team side. But the [00:08:00] team side, I think a big, big component of it is I, tell the agents on the team, if you just surrender to the process of coming in, we're gonna coach you.

Cody We're gonna train you. But then, you know, there's leads in the database and we have, we work with sisu, we have batter, which is a lead accountability tool that any company generated leads they could put into an agent's name. It's, it's an accountability tool, not only for them and us, but more so as a reminder of them.

Cody I think I, I go back to the human nature of it isn't, Hey, I'm gonna take this lead and I hope I drop the ball on it. But as we get more and more new leads and we've got a million other things going on in our business, that lead that came in three weeks ago, it's really easy to forget about that lead. and just let it fall through the cracks.

Cody And there's nothing worse as an agent than when you check the hot sheet in Paragon and you see that lead that you showed five houses to. And all of a sudden you see their name flash up as a buyer and it's like, oh, I didn't do my job and follow up with that. So Batter takes care of that for [00:09:00] us.

Cody But the integration with Follow Up Boss, we're moving, we just got approved. We're moving to Zillow Flex. We've historically been a connections team. so for our agents, it's literally just come in train coach, you know, Nick McClain talks about it, the ideal weekly schedule and then activity block. If you have showings, go on your showing block and then you're right back into an activity block.

Cody We're very heavy on that.

Suneet Good. so Follow A Boss is a big part of your team, right? How do you and your agents maximize it for the best results, bro?

Cody So part of being LinkedIn with csu, I mean, everything that we do is how to follow a boss and, and I'd I'd say if you're. If you're running a team, I, I don't know that there's, I look at everything.

Cody I had decision fatigue, you know, looking at all the different softwares and options out there, but follow up boss has been, I would say if you're just gonna dabble in it, it's really probably not the software for you because you really have to go all in. [00:10:00] But if you get in there and really get things dialed in, The system. I, I remember listening to a, podcast that Kyle Whistle was on, and he said, we set up the systems. The systems run the company. And that's really how I feel about our team. Where if they just follow the systems and the, processes that we have in place. how leads come in.

Cody Like our team members know that if a lead comes in, they don't respond within an hour, it gets reassigned to somebody else. they know that when they set an appointment, they create a deal card, which feeds into sisu. Batter works off a follow up boss for the lead accountability piece. So, we're able to keep, really tight accountability around the brokerage and lead side.

Cody And then on their spear stuff, batter will give them reminders, but we never sweep that, that's theirs. So.

Suneet Good. So talk about meetings and accountability. You guys meet three times a week, With three meetings a week, why that cadence and what happens in those meetings?

Cody Yeah, that's a great question.

Cody and I had a really interesting insight this week. So what we [00:11:00] used to do was one Tuesday meeting. From nine 30 to 10 30, people would come in and it's a, you know, everybody's happy to be there. But then outside of that one hour, you know, we've got a 5,400 square foot office, I could spot check the office at any given point in the day, and there's two people in here.

Cody so it kind of became horrible feeling, isn't it? It it is. Because, you know, like as a. As an agency owner, you want there to be a buzz in the office and you want people to come in, but I also understand that agents are out, hopefully doing what they're doing, you know, high producers are producing.

Cody And, I really think before I had a team, it was just kind of like a hope and a prayer that agents would be doing what they're doing and I'd sit down with them and find out. Ed didn't call any this week. so no follow up loss. We know how many calls they make. we have lead accountability standards that you have to make a hundred dials a week, which is nothing, in my opinion.

Cody work, two money, time, pawn shifts, come to two hours of training a [00:12:00] week and come to two team meetings a week. And if you don't, then you're off of leads the following week. what I really try to push with our team is that. The inbound leads are the silver platter. Like somebody's gonna come in, they're gonna call in and say, Hey, I gotta list my house, or I wanna buy a house.

Cody That's a layup. And what we want is to drive accountability to say, Hey, , if you want the layups, you don't get game time unless you come to practice and put the hard work in. So the hard work is to outbound dialing and, working the money, time, pound shifts and the leads that we already have.

Cody But the insight that I had this week was about two months ago. We implemented what's called a winner's circle, and we do it on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from nine to nine 30. And what the winner's circle is, is agents come in, we talk about wins and gratitude. So it gets some really quick wins within the group.

Cody And it's fun. People are happy to talk about what they just put in their contract, what they just sold. you know, we share some challenges that, you know, maybe everybody else should know about. But then we also, what we do is we [00:13:00] declare, hey. First thing we do is we check back on what they recently declared from the last winner circle.

Cody So we said, Hey, you said you were gonna make 40 calls, have X amount, two minute conversations, and set X amount of appointments. And then they have to report back how many calls they did, how many conversations they had, and how many appointments they set. And then before we leave, everybody has to declare what they're gonna do for activity.

Cody So it almost becomes a little bit of a gut check when we come into the next meeting. You have to, if you're going to declare goose eggs and say, well, I didn't do anything to move the needle forward in my business, it's probably not a really good feeling for an agent to say that. So it's, some shared in group accountability.

Cody So.

Suneet Good dude. Super good. you guys excited about Zillow Flex?

Cody I think so. you know, I think the biggest thing is. we'll be first in our market to have Zillow Flex. We're a small market, 60,000 in the proper, a hundred thousand in the metro. you know, there's only two hundred and [00:14:00] seventy five, three hundred agents in our market.

Cody Oh, wow. Yeah. And our agency's about 55 agents. So, you know, we have really good market share in terms of agents and, sales volume. So, but we'll be the very first team in our market to become Flex. So I think it's an opportunity. that's a huge opportunity, bro. Yeah. And what I've heard is with Flex is if, we're sitting at, I don't know, our best of Zillow scores at 99% better than other Zillow teams.

Cody So as long as we keep our metrics tight and do what we're supposed to do, it should increase our lead flow pretty substantially, which I, that's what I'm excited

Suneet about. Good. Absolutely. What other leads are you guys running right now?

Cody I do, Whitley, I think I got that from you off of one of your podcasts that, I heard from your Facebook leads.

Cody Yeah, yeah, we do. pay per-click with oppo. Yeah. How are those pay per click? How are those going? You know, it's one of those things that if you call a lead once, you're probably not gonna convert it. and you know, if you, call 'em ten, twelve, fifteen times over the course of. [00:15:00] 10, 12, 15 days.

Cody half of 'em are gonna say it was, you know, I just clicked on something, I'm good. But if you continuously email market to them, eventually everybody's going to transact eventually. So you're building, you're building a database and, I think that's the toughest thing in this industry is that everybody wants the, right now we wanna show a client one house.

Cody If they don't write an offer, well let's wait for the next lead because that's gonna be the magic go, you know, the golden goose that's gonna write an Yeah. Someone

Suneet that's gonna pay the bill this month.

Cody Yeah. But really what we need to be doing, I think Nick McClain said that more than 50% of leads convert after, six or 12 months.

Cody I can't remember what the number was.

Suneet Yeah, no. And there's lots of data behind that. with the accountability piece we were talking about. How do you do it so it doesn't feel heavy on you or like you're micromanaging on the people that you're trying to hold accountable?

Cody Well, I think it comes back to, you just set the rules.

Cody You just say, Hey, these are the rules. Like when somebody [00:16:00] joins the team, they know what the rules are. and it's been, you know, this last year there's been a lot of, changes within the team as we're building out infrastructure. But I think just being vocal about, Hey, this is what our standards are.

Cody And then, you let the standards, you hold the line and, and let the standards and the rules run the team. And, and I don't have to be the bad guy 'cause I say, everybody on the team's held the same standard. you know, this is why I can't have you on leads this week, or this is why you know you're off of leads until you get your conversion up

Suneet super easy.

Suneet You guys came up with standards and you drew your fucking line in the sand. Say, here's the line. Right? Yep. There's no block or wide. You're either here or you're over here. You know what? Over here is so be over there, right? Like, let's, I listen, I listen

Cody to one, I chimed in for one of your team meetings, and, and I think it's very easy, you know, to say to agents, Hey, your exact words were, if you're not down to hustle on the leads, that's, that's fine.

Cody You don't have to work the leads. If you just wanna [00:17:00] work your sphere. Lean into all the other leverage and support here you can, but you're also not gonna get inbound if you don't wanna work the leads. So yeah, real simple. It's not a punishment, it's just, Hey, this is how we're running the business.

Cody Here's again, here's the rules. If you want this, and you can choose whether or not you wanna partake. So

Suneet yeah, absolutely. But that's the thing. You know, I, I tell this story often. just my top agent last month and maybe my number one or two agent for the last four years on the team, bro, I haven't seen this guy since a Christmas party like three or four years ago.

Suneet He's been the number one or two agent every year. He doesn't take a single fucking team lead and he does just fine. He likes the leverage that the team provides, caveat if he needs it. He sells plenty of houses. I'm not over there trying to hold him accountable to [00:18:00] stuff that's gonna have him sell less houses.

Suneet I was on a coaching call the other day, said, well, well what do I do with this person? Oh, Mo, how many houses do they sell a year? 40 houses a year. Great. You do nothing.

Suneet Right. You ask 'em if they need help with anything and if they don't, you don't try to micromanage 'em. This guy who I'm talking about, the number one guy on my team, he come to meetings.

Suneet Right. He also is not taking any leads or has any expectations to get any.

Cody And I think that's one of the beauties that we have the flexibility of running the brokerage side. You know, I know in some of the rev share models where it's like, Hey, if this person doesn't wanna be on the team and be held accountable to these standards, X, Y, and Z, they can just go be an agent within that ecosystem.

Cody For us, the beauty of it is if somebody doesn't wanna be on the team and doesn't wanna be held accountable to some of those standards, they still get to bolt onto our system and they get to be here totally. And, like you said, I've got agents that are doing, you know, my top performance at 75 deals.

Cody I've got an agent that did 50 deals, like just leave them [00:19:00] alone and let them go sell and do their thing. And if they need help, you know, I'm here. We have staff that they have resources they know they can plug into. And we just changed our model. with rolling out a team and putting, you know, some of the resources inside of the team,

Cody We rolled out a cap to our independent agents. that's a caveat and an incentive for them to retain and then also recruit to, and say, Hey, you know, you're running your business. Bring it here, run your business. And, you know, there's a finite amount of value that, or finite amount of money that we'll extract.

Cody In exchange for the value we provide.

Suneet Yeah. Love it. Love it. You know, and also like, one of the ways I learned this from my, mentor Perry Belcher is, you know, one of the ways that you grow a business is by having more offers. And that can be interpreted a lot of ways, but this is how I interpret it in real estate when I run a team and brokerage, is if I have more shit.

Suneet [00:20:00] Downline play, indie, side play, lead, play. There's a home for anybody. Yeah. If they believe in our leadership, it comes through a thing where, well, it's not the money that's the most important thing. Like of all these options I have for you, of all these offers that are on the table, which one makes the most sense?

Suneet And that's the one that we have and that's the one that will support you with Good. Dude. Good. so scaling a brokerage and scaling the team now, what are some challenges you've been facing?

Cody so when we acquired our brokerage in 2020, you know, the head count was around, you know, 30, 35 agents, two locations.

Cody we got up to around 55, 57 independent agents. we have had a few, handful of agents that exited the business this year. and throughout the last year, you know, the challenging part was, has been, and I'm glad we're through it, building the foundation of the team, and there's no teams in my market, a team in my market is, you know, one person that's a rainmaker and there's two or three buyers agents [00:21:00] that work underneath of them and they, I don't know, I don't think they really do much for lead gen.

Cody So this type of team, almost like a, we, basically. built a small team ridge inside of our brokerage. it's been a lot of infrastructure to build out, implementing follow up on csu, adding a second CRM, and still trying to, our independent agents, the love.

Cody It's it just because there's a lot going on. we're at four locations right now. So, yeah. And actually, you know, heading into this year, you know, it's, brick and mortar space I think is something to really evaluate. I think as we look towards the future, you know, I think, a big piece of.

Cody Our value offering will probably be more shared space. Just, Hey, we wanna be local, we want to have a brick and mortar presence. But you know, maybe it doesn't need to be as big as what it is and it's shared. If you need to come in and work, drop in, you can use any of the offices.

Cody yeah, I mean, I think just some of the, again, some of the spot check of the offices where, you know, I might walk through the office and two agents are here, or [00:22:00] no agents are here. I think that is something that we'll probably look. You know, long term look towards, the future is, more shared space.

Cody So,

Suneet yeah, totally. I had that conversation with a bunch of coaching calls yesterday about office space. It was fascinating. what role has coaching played for you personally and in your team's growth?

Cody Well, I have, I have two coaches, somebody that I was, you know, already working with prior to joining Reside. And the beauty of Reside is we get check lag for an hour, which, it's group coaching, but it, it almost feels like one-on-one and you get 'em for an hour. You can ask any question, you know, and you got his cell

Suneet phone number if you need it.

Cody Yeah, seriously. I mean, I've, fired him text messages and he'll text back. Which is really cool to see. But, you know, coaching, I coached with Nick for a while, then I started coaching with Jessica. And I think the biggest thing is, having a sounding board and, you know, somebody that is, they're not inside of our ecosystem every day.

Cody So they're not, tunnel visioned. And it, becomes kind of [00:23:00] a, Hey, what are you doing? What are you thinking? it's a good feedback loop. Mm-hmm. The other beauty of the coaching is, you know, trying to learn from people. I mean, to me reside is just a massive shortcut.

Cody It's a massive shortcut to, you take the mistakes that you are probably going to make. Or, you know, the, one of the things that I love about Reside is that Facebook, the private Facebook group, and we have team leaders from Florida to Seattle, to, you know, Boston, you know, to Sacramento.

Cody More than one in Sacramento now. Yeah. Yeah. And the cool thing about it is you can, ping ideas off of like, Hey, what's everybody doing on lead gen? What is everybody doing on, you know, pick a topic you don't have to walk the plane.

Cody Cologne.

Suneet Yes. Love that. Now, in your experience and what you've experienced, what's the one thing you think a lot of brokerage owners and team leaders get wrong about? Like building the cultural aspect of the business?

Cody culture is such a hot button word everybody wants to say.

Cody We have dude, and [00:24:00] it has been for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, you know, I, I hate sitting down in an interview and, oh, our culture's awesome because, and I always say, talk is cheap. Our culture is awesome just because anybody can say that it can't be a definable metric. Now, I think my brokerage team, like any brokerage or team, it goes through, there's things that ebb and flow.

Cody You lose some agents and then, you know, sometimes that can cast out on other agents and you have to go, you know, reassure some agents that, we're here to support you and we want you to be here and this is the right place to be. But then there's also times where it's like you're just riding this, this high for 6, 9, 12 months and everything is just rocking.

Cody and I think the interesting thing about this industry is I've had agents about every two to three years I have agents come to me and they'll say. It feels like things have changed. It feels like the culture's changed. That's going to happen because there's an 87% turnover rate in this industry, and the culture is predicated on who's here at the [00:25:00] time.

Cody I found a newspaper article from 2019 from our brokerage. Mm-hmm. And I wanna say it was like 75% or 80% of the people had either gotten outta the industry, moved. a couple went to a different brokerage, but the recruiting aspect is so important in this business because if I lose two agents, okay, what's my net?

Cody Did I recruit 10 this year? And that's what you always have

Suneet looking

Cody at.

Suneet Yeah, it's good. Okay. If you had to boil it down, what's the biggest leadership lesson you've learned building this team?

Cody It's funny, I've talked to my business partner about this, being, you know, I don't wanna say as we've gone through this, we've, made changes to the brokerage and, because we're not operating, you know, just as a brokerage anymore, one of the things that we've been wanting to do is, give a carrot to our independent agents, and that comes in the form of a better compensation structure.

Cody Then really laying out the value offerings on an la carte basis, [00:26:00] but being more succinct in our decision making. you will take as long as you need to to make a decision, and what I found was until my back was against the wall to finally pull the trigger and make a decision, it took me nine months too long to just to, to make decisions because what your agents want from you is they want clarity and they want to know where the ship is heading. And the longer you sit in indecision, the more an easiness it's gonna create. And I know that, you know, we've just gone through that and that's a huge leadership lesson that we need to be more decision making and reassure agents.

Suneet remember

Cody that.

Suneet I was all, dude, you gotta do it. You gotta text me till you get it done.

Cody I never texted you. You never texted me. I never texted. That was like six months ago.

Suneet Yeah, but I knew it was done. I got the update. I'm always watching everything.

Cody Right. But, you know, I think the tough thing is, is there's, I think the toughest thing about running a real estate brokerage is, and [00:27:00] team, if I talk to 10 team owners.

Cody How you run your team is different than how Nick runs his team. It's different than how Jamie Seneca runs her team and how Jessica bought, me

Suneet and Nick are hella different

Cody on

Suneet the surface. Yeah. But in the nuts and bolts, we're pretty much the same. And the thing with Nick is Nick has way more experience than me.

Suneet I may have sold more houses in bulk. I'm also in a bigger market, but Nick's been at it much, much longer.

Cody But yeah, I, I think that's, the toughest thing. I, I think is there's a million different ways to slice the pie in this business. and you, I had really bad decision fatigue on what's the right decision.

Cody And you gotta pull the trigger and make a decision.

Suneet You do. where do you see the team in the next three, five years?

Cody You know, as Chipex says, you know, everyone's with us for a season, they're with us for a reason, and hopefully we impact 'em for a lifetime. I think the team is, is a huge opportunity for incubation.

Cody you know, [00:28:00] I, I think we will continue to run this two track system of running a team, but I also know that there may come a day where as agents build more and more of their sphere business and, and we may get to a point down the road where. We wanna retain team members on the, the team side. So maybe we've changed that split structure at some point, for retention.

Cody you know, you and I talked about that. It's this, battle of, you know, holding the line on profitability, but then also the retention piece. but then also, we do have that independent side that has those offerings. I started a team one year ago, it was me. I was alone and I hired an assistant who quit in June, after I had about 18 members. but we've, we've grown to 10 team team members within a year. We're gonna do between 150 to 200 transactions this year. In the first year. Yeah. Dude, you're doing,

Suneet you have 5% of the agents on your team in the market.

Cody my goal is to get into 20,

Suneet no, not many teams can say that.

Cody our [00:29:00] goal is to, you know, on the team side, I just looked it up, the number one team at Exit in North America to between 200 and 299 sides. So our goal for 2026 is to be the number one team at Exit in the World.

Cody Let's go baby. Let's go. Yeah. So we think that'd be pretty. Pretty cool way to plant the flag. But yeah, you know, I, I want to get this to 20 to 25 agents and then, you know, I don't know what it looks like from there. It maybe it grows, maybe it, you know, 'cause as we grow the team, I think, you know, eventually we will also grow that independent side because we have an incubation system that we haven't had traditional,

Suneet Yeah, dude, like I've taken my team to be really, really big. and then I've taken it to be pretty, you know, I went from super double mega team to just a medium sized team now, you know, 49 agents it just depends on what you want to do. So all our options, right? Like I took many of the agents on my team put 'em in my downline when I moved over to [00:30:00] LPT.

Suneet just changing it around and you'll find your way and especially we're all hanging out, working on it with each other, so it's gonna be good. Okay. What advice do you have for anybody listening to this episode?

Cody If,

Cody If you could have fast forwarded me to where I am right now, one year ago I would've said, holy shit, there's no way I would've thought that's possible. it's the small wins every single day, and there's gonna be, there's gonna be times when you want to give up.

Cody And I think that's the, you know, the spirit of an entrepreneur is to just hor said it, that, you know, it's not, who moves the fastest, it's who can last the longest.

Suneet Good. I love it. Okay. If somebody wants to send you a referral on a deal and send you some money for a home sale in Iowa, what, where do they go?

Cody cell phone, five six, three, four, five. 1, 2, 3, 4, 6. if anybody wants to talk, bounce ideas, ask questions.

Cody How I started, you know, I've changed comp plans a couple of times. Labored on what, the right way to do [00:31:00] things is. And I, I'd be happy to open my playbook to anybody that is needing help. So,

Suneet well, you heard it here first. Learn from Cody and also equally important.

Suneet Send them the referrals Yeah. Out there in the Dubuque and the surrounding areas. everybody.

Suneet Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Reside Podcast with my awesome, very cool guest, Cody Berger. I hope you got something outta this episode. If you did, and even if you didn't, go ahead and hit like, subscribe and share with a friend. Uh, come back. We put out a lot of these episodes with all kinds of great team leaders, all kinds of great founders and marketers.

Suneet Come back and check us out and reside Platform podcast and we'll see you next time. Peace.