How to Dominate Markets with Integrity and Innovation with Ibrahim Hussein

[00:00:00] Ibrahim: Not to get a spiritual, but the mindset of. You've been given a lot of things and a lot of tools in front of us. And sometimes we are procrastinate or like, we're not committed. You're not consistent. And all the mindset of the people shared about that motivation, all of this stuff, I get all of this, but I keep it very simple.

[00:00:16] Ibrahim: I'm like, would you be able to stand before God on the day of judgment and tell him, Hey, I have used everything that you've given me to become the best version of myself. Would you be able to say that the answer is no, get to work and yeah, so the mindset is tomorrow is not guaranteed.

[00:00:33] Ibrahim: Nothing is promised and make sure that it's a true hell when the person you could have been meets the person that you are. All right. Welcome to another episode of the reside platform podcast. I'm your host Suneet Agarwal, one of the co founders of reside platform. And on this podcast, you know, we love to share tips, ideas, and stories to help your real estate business grow and reach exciting new goals and taking new places.

[00:01:12] Suneet: Speaking about being exciting and going cool places, I'm super excited to welcome our guest, Mr. Ibrahim. Hussein Ibrahim leads the number one team in Ontario, Canada, with the XP. his team has hit over 1. 4 billion in sales. Damn, dude, that's a lot. In just five and a half years, breaking records and setting new standards.

[00:01:37] Suneet: Dude, what are you doing? How's it going?

[00:01:39] Ibrahim: It's going fantastic brother. First of all, thank you for having me. It's an honor.

[00:01:43] Suneet: Yes, dude. I'm so excited if you guys don't know ibrahim he's a total like culture creator and a visionary with affinity real estate. He's really built I mean, I've seen the journey, right?

[00:01:55] Suneet: So you've really built your team by focusing on people. And I know we're going to talk about that and relationships. So let's get started and learn from your journey. Ibrahim, how did we meet bro?

[00:02:08] Ibrahim: Well, we meet up with the bad boy, John Chablack.

[00:02:13] Ibrahim: Yeah.

[00:02:15] Suneet: He's the reason for all of that. Dude. How did you get hooked up with John?

[00:02:19] Ibrahim: It was 2019, end of 2019, beginning of 2020. , I was at my previous brokerage, Calabro Williams. We've done phenomenal work. We started the company, the team 2018. We're just turning six years anniversary.

[00:02:33] Ibrahim: So, um, congratulations hit the ground running quickly. I'll do the a hundred million and then 150 million second year. And then I hit the ceiling of like, Very, very grateful for everything I've learned from the brokerage, but then there is an ecosystem inside the brokerage at that time for coaching and training and whatnot, and we're hitting the ceiling.

[00:02:54] Ibrahim: And I'm like, you know what, what is out there? I would love to see expose myself to what's out there. So I did my homework and due diligence on coaches and whatnot. Everything is everybody's a coach nowadays. And then I thought, yeah, I found,

[00:03:08] Speakers 1: that's a good one. That's a good one.

[00:03:13] Ibrahim: So I found couple, uh, good friends and, the theme was, he is the trainer coach mentor for all the top teams and, and he's freaking expensive at the same time.

[00:03:25] Ibrahim: So I'm like, you know what, let's just give it a shot, reached out to him. he took me on and, and it's been five years now. I'm very grateful for everything that we've learned and grow together. So I looked up and I looked at the track record of the people that coached with him connected to the two together.

[00:03:38] Ibrahim: And here we are.

[00:03:40] Suneet: I mean, if someone's looking for a coach, isn't that or any kind of service, isn't that what you should do?

[00:03:45] Ibrahim: 100 percent track record. Show me what you track record.

[00:03:49] Suneet: Absolutely. Like look at what else is out there. Look at reviews, look at testimonials, look at all that, right? Like that's where you should make your buying decisions.

[00:03:56] Suneet: I don't know about you, Ibrahim, but we ordered DoorDash a lot around here. How about you guys? We order Uber Eats. Uber Eats. let me ask you, do you look at the reviews on Uber Eats? Remember eats when you pick a place,

[00:04:09] Ibrahim: 100, 000%.

[00:04:10] Suneet: Yes, that's what I think. I said this on the followup boss stage a couple of years ago.

[00:04:15] Suneet: I look at reviews when I order a frigging taco, bro. I'm going to look at reviews when I order a cup, when I work with a coach, work with a realtor or work with whatever. Am I right?

[00:04:25] Ibrahim: A hundred percent as you should responsibly.

[00:04:28] Suneet: Yeah, absolutely. So let's, let's get right into it. And you know, on this, um, Podcast.

[00:04:36] Suneet: I don't like to tell the whole realtor origin story, right? So we're not going to talk about that.

[00:04:43] Ibrahim: It's irrelevant for the audience.

[00:04:45] Suneet: Yeah, it's irrelevant. Like, Oh yeah, I started here and now I'm here. How about we're here. And if you're listening to this, we have a terrific, smart, smart post. So we're going to get into what really goes on your business.

[00:04:57] Suneet: So number one. I think the most important thing that we've both learned from John is the people, right? So then there's two parts to people. There's, there's multiple, I mean, there's multiple parts to working with people, but for the context of this conversation, like we talk about recruiting and retention.

[00:05:16] Suneet: Yeah, right. And then we could also talk about staff. So let's start with staff. Can you explain to the listeners and mostly me what your leadership and operations administrative staff looks like?

[00:05:29] Ibrahim: Yes, we do have a team staffing members on payroll. We do have everything in house here in Ontario where we live.

[00:05:35] Ibrahim: 18 people in Ontario working on staff, yeah, 18 staff. Well, the nature of the business we have a staging company. Oh, that's right. We have media company. They're all in house full time people. We don't outsource anything at all. So yes, we do have a, department, social media, cinematographies, videographies, editors, and whatnot.

[00:05:55] Ibrahim: And we do have like operations department, which is admins, transaction coordinators. We do have Interior designing, department, which is staging and whatnot. And we do have the inside sales department too. So we have a total of 18 people on the staff for the team. How many ISAs

[00:06:11] Suneet: you run? You have two.

[00:06:13] Suneet: Two. Good. Okay. So let's talk about retention. Yes. No one talks. We always talk about the recruiting and no one talks about the retention.

[00:06:22] Ibrahim: you wanna hear the secret sauce? I'll listen to your secret. Yeah, yeah. The retention is recruiting by re-recruiting your existing people.

[00:06:30] Speakers 1: Yeah.

[00:06:31] Ibrahim: So, you and I know, AFR, so keep freaking recruiting and it's, I thought the word was fucking.

[00:06:39] Ibrahim: I freaking, it's a freaking, keep freaking recruiting. I just came back from a pilgrimage abroad.

[00:06:50] Ibrahim: So, um, no, all, jokes aside, um, it my law school. One professors mentors that I look really up to. He's built like a terrific work on building law firms. so he said, listen, Abraham, if you want to build the biggest law firm in the city with a lineup of strong lawyers. That they wouldn't have the desire or the need to leave and go start their own law firms.

[00:07:17] Ibrahim: Make sure these people have been given what is called emotional equity.

[00:07:22] Ibrahim: Okay. so I need you to think of emotional equity as a banking, you do banking, like deposits of, positivities and withdrawals of negativities. As you grow business, you're going to have to make some , tough business decisions. Not everybody's going to agree with it. So the degree of which people are going to be receptive for, for your stuff decision, is proportionate to the degree of which you've been a lot of the bosses in the equity relationship bank account.

[00:07:45] Suneet: Love it.

[00:07:45] Ibrahim: it's not like financial equity. It's an emotional equity is basically the belief that they belong there. They're here because this company is their own company. So I'm like, I got that concept and then I literally just applied it into real estate. we understand it's within the people business.

[00:08:01] Ibrahim: People move the money. so it's, the more people you have, the bigger the army, the bigger the sales, the more successful it will be. Long story short, it is what it is. It's a matter of like, how can you have less turnover? And then when you have a big number of people, everybody to a higher degree is how you're not gonna find the like, ideal world.

[00:08:19] Ibrahim: but you're gonna have more of like cohesive. Everybody's happy, everybody gets along. When somebody comes in, they ask you a question. Hey, who has been here the longest? You mentioned like 10, 15 names have been here from day one. No, like the team turns over every three years. We have a whole brand new team than the team that was here three years ago.

[00:08:35] Ibrahim: So I look at the retention as the most experienced and most, most important thing for us in our business specifically, and I look What is the retention? Retention is the truth of the experience. Retention, truth of the experience. If you have a retention rate of X number of percentage, like, I don't know, like 70%, like industry average, 30 percent of the industry returns over every year.

[00:08:56] Ibrahim: You're telling me without telling me that you have a, an average experience for people. So I have an attention rate. Well, you didn't say that, but that's what you said, because you have an average industry turnover. So when we say retention is the truth of the experience. Is if I have an 80 percent and here's where a mind blowing thing, if I have an 80 percent to the change of rate, people are experiencing 80 percent of what they should experience.

[00:09:22] Ibrahim: Now, hold on a second, you said we're not living in an ideal world, so you're not going to be happy. I understand that we will come for a reason, season, lifetime. I think my job as a leader, our job as a leader here in the company is we know nobody here is going to be forever, except the person who started the company.

[00:09:39] Ibrahim: But my job is I'm just going to move the needle as much as I can do my due job to make sure that as long as it's a lifetime. Reason season lifetime. I'm just going to do my input day in and day out to re recruit them by make sure that they belong to the place that they're at, listening to what they have to see what the company is being run at.

[00:09:58] Ibrahim: So I have, I do have surveys that I send out every month for the team members. It goes as follows. So we'll call it like the value survey. Hey, it's neat. everybody gets it. So if you're the decision maker of the company, what is one thing you would like us to add, add benefits or implement you and your team members, in the company.

[00:10:17] Ibrahim: And then comes with some suggestions for me. Hey, you would love to add this would love to add this. So you sit here, I have 60 human being giving me feedback. So I hired 60 business consultant for free. Obviously some feedbacks doesn't make any business sense because the person just thinks that this is what we should be doing, but you would be amazed by some of the feedbacks that people get, the smarter ones are going to be like, Holy crap.

[00:10:40] Ibrahim: I would have never thought of this. So you're sitting here, you hired business consultants for free, giving you ideas of how would they like to see the company being ranked, right? So when you do it that way, they are feeling that my voice is heard. The company has been ran the way I want it to be ran. So now as we recruit new agent comes in.

[00:10:59] Ibrahim: People think almost similarly, they would love to see the company being ran the way they want it to be. So when they come in, they'll be like, Oh, that's how I would like it to be. I'm like, well, this is what it is. Just come join. And then people bring other people. So funny start for you. I've only recruited three people.

[00:11:14] Ibrahim: Wow. In the form of like a direct ask. Hey, Suneet, I like you. I think we should get in business together. And like a direct ask to get in business together. Only three. That's it. Everybody else in the company came through somebody else inside the company. Wow. I think that's a powerful stat

[00:11:31] Suneet: to look at. Yeah.

[00:11:33] Suneet: It might also mean you haven't recruited enough people, but Hey,

[00:11:37] Ibrahim: well, here's the thing. Here's the thing. I, I agree. And I disagree in the sense of like, There is always, we can do more, but the activities that I'm doing to re recruit the existing ones is same as I'm doing it to recruit a newer one.

[00:11:52] Ibrahim: They're just a lot more fulfilling and a lot more nicer to deal with.

[00:11:56] Suneet: Okay, cool. Have you heard of the Shakeley sales method? I have not. It's kind of what you're talking about.

[00:12:02] Speakers 1: Yeah.

[00:12:04] Suneet: So look it up sometime. We don't need to get into it in here, but it's kind of what you said. Shake shake, shake the sales.

[00:12:12] Suneet: Okay. So you're sending out these surveys. You are listening. It's one thing to send out the surveys. Yeah. It's the other thing to actually listen to them.

[00:12:24] Ibrahim: Oh, I do have, I do have a full time person. That's their job. What's their job? To literally take all the reviews. Make all the analysis for what's happening.

[00:12:34] Ibrahim: Knows the love language for everybody in the team. I know the shoe size of everybody in the team. Get out of here. You don't have everybody's shoe size. I have everybody's shoe size. I have everybody's love language. I know everybody's birthdays, if they're married, I know their wives and spouses birthdays.

[00:12:52] Ibrahim: I know their partner's birthdays. If they have kids, I know their kids birthdays. If they have dogs or pets, I know their pets names.

[00:13:04] Ibrahim: Dude, that's awesome. That's awesome. And bro, here's the thing, like, I take this very seriously. Why is it? Because most likely the audience of doing the podcast, our team leader, looking to grow their businesses, that's a money equation and end of the day, in the sense, like, what is the value of one recruit if the agency is in the team for an average of five years or whatever, whatever the life span of the agent and the team is, and then I do the math and my math tells me 640, 000.

[00:13:34] Ibrahim: Yeah. Bro. Bro. If you have a million dollar listing or a 5 million listing and a two and a half percent commission and check, you will freaking treat that seller as like a seven star service. It's a good analogy, bro. Good. You will do that. And then I'm like, Yeah. Are you doing mathematically speaking that agent worth a lot more than that 5 million thing to you as a company?

[00:14:01] Ibrahim: Are you doing to that agent what half of what you would do to treat that seller to make them feel like they're? The answer is no. So there you go. You have it.

[00:14:11] Suneet: So how do you think that this has helped? Your team, besides just from a numbers perspective, but so a lot of houses,

[00:14:20] Ibrahim: well, our stats is 70, 68%, 68 percent of our business, comes from sphere of influence and best clients for agents.

[00:14:28] Ibrahim: 38 percent of the business comes from team leads provided to the teams. Top seven people in the team. We don't take a single team, the top seven people that makes like a lot of money. It's always like that.

[00:14:39] Suneet: Crazy, right?

[00:14:41] Ibrahim: Single team lead. So how did that help the company? Like their attention for the people, people, they sell a lot of houses.

[00:14:46] Ibrahim: They stay in the team for a longer time. They contribute. That's how the team sells a lot of money. Like people are walking billboards for the company in the marketplace. And we're very loud about that on our social media. We showcase how people feel inside the company and we put it out there. So it's a recruiting in its own too.

[00:15:05] Ibrahim: When people feel and see what the inside people been treated and looked after, they end up joining us too. I'm lucky enough that, we do have a large size team and then also the brokers that we work with. So it's, it's like we become funneled in both ways. So we recruit both aspects. Team and the brokerage.

[00:15:21] Ibrahim: So everything is working perfectly fine.

[00:15:24] Suneet: Good. Good. let's talk about mindset. Yeah. So you're an immigrant, right?

[00:15:30] Ibrahim: I am. I'm an ESL and nobody's going to know what ESL is except immigrants. I don't know what it is. That's what I got. Immigrants. So English

[00:15:40] Suneet: is a language. Oh, I know what ESL is. Yeah. you came to Canada. Did you get your law degree in Canada or did you already have it?

[00:15:50] Ibrahim: I came here to do my master's degree with MPA in law. and when I came in, I did not continue it because mathematically did not add up. I was going to almost redo everything what I have done and it was a step backwards, not forward in terms of like financially, like to get on to be is going to be a way longer time.

[00:16:09] Ibrahim: So the business side of things made a lot more business sense to me. So I switched to the business on. And the show ended up in real

[00:16:16] Suneet: estate. So let's talk about mindset, mindset from being an immigrant, right. Which is hard to believe everything and move across the ocean. Yeah. I don't care who you are.

[00:16:27] Suneet: Right. comes with challenges and then also to take a team from zero to over 1. 4 billion in sales in five years. what was the mindset you had and how do you encourage the agents on your team to adopt a similar mindset?

[00:16:42] Ibrahim: not to get a spiritual, but the mindset of you've been given a lot of things and a lot of tools in front of us.

[00:16:49] Ibrahim: And sometimes we procrastinate or like, we're not committed. You're not consistent. And all the mindset of the people shared about like motivation, all of this stuff. I get all of this, but I keep it very simple. I'm like, would you be able to stand before God and the day of judgment and tell him, Hey, I have used everything that you've given me.

[00:17:07] Ibrahim: To become the best version of myself, would you be able to say that if the answer is no, your back to work, get to work. And, yeah, this is the mindset is tomorrow's not guaranteed. Nothing is promised and make sure that it's a true hell when the person you could have been meets the person that you are and Just to get off the right, you know, get after it. And if you're not first, you're last and number two is the first loser.

[00:17:35] Suneet: Yeah, absolutely. How do you translate that to agents or join your team? I say that

[00:17:41] Ibrahim: to them every single day. exactly like I just said it to you right now. we practice a lot of gratitude and I think that's the secret sauce and the cheat code, everything, every single team meeting we out loud, 15 minutes portion of the team meeting to recite that gratitude.

[00:17:56] Ibrahim: What has happened to you this week that made you grateful for, and people say, like, you, some people get in tears, when they see you, so the more you're grateful, the more you're going to have things to be grateful for. So that's the mindset of like, you, you scored the goal, you sold the house. Good job.

[00:18:10] Ibrahim: That is your job. That's what you should be doing anyway. if you're being soccer or hockey and you're a forward, you score the goal, don't freaking celebrate. That's that your job is to score goals. Yeah, absolutely. So like your job is to sell houses. That's your job. So what else can we celebrate besides selling houses?

[00:18:28] Ibrahim: mindset is, just be the best version of yourself that God has put you on this earth to be. Are you that that you can possibly be?

[00:18:37] Suneet: Love that. So how many agents are you guys at right now? Team 52, 52, 52 team and 18 staff, right?

[00:18:47] Ibrahim: Right.

[00:18:47] Suneet: So dude, you got to have some other leadership inside of your organization.

[00:18:51] Ibrahim: I do have people that I always, doesn't matter where I go in the city, the province, in Canada and North America, I would never be where I am today without them. I do have a first year world class leader, five people. That they run the business with me. They're on the team with me.

[00:19:06] Ibrahim: they're all licensed people. They sell real estate other than accepting Miranda, the CEO, the integrator, other than that, these people are the ones that. When a person comes in to join the team, or if you want to make a business decisions, I don't think I've ever made a decision without taking their opinion into consideration.

[00:19:22] Ibrahim: And if they said no, it's a no true story. Yes. So a big decisions. I always have to consult those five people. So I have board of director, you may say so a board of director that yeah. Yeah, that's literally what it is. I'm like a board of director and they tell us what to do. And then the very, very smart people, God has given them, I use IQ level higher than me.

[00:19:43] Ibrahim: I can't compete about with that. So I might as well just embrace it and use it for the greater good of everybody around us. Absolutely.

[00:19:50] Suneet: Good. so how do you. Grow and encourage these leaders to succeed.

[00:19:56] Ibrahim: it depends. So some of them, have goals to succeed the sales. And you want to be like somewhere houses, be the top reducing Asian, be the most messed one makes the most amount of money.

[00:20:07] Ibrahim: Some of them, are driven by, did you read the

[00:20:10] Suneet: psychology of money? I have three copies of it and the author has been on this podcast and the answer is still no.

[00:20:21] Ibrahim: Okay. So really comes down to like what motivates them and what, really drives them. And what do you see themselves doing?

[00:20:28] Ibrahim: And we tap onto that and help them grow to be what they want to be. Not what I want them to be.

[00:20:34] Suneet: Yeah, exactly. Take them where they want to go instead of telling them what they need, where they need to go. So you have this ops and the staff. Yes. What does a well oiled machine mean in your business?

[00:20:46] Ibrahim: I will oil the machine.

[00:20:48] Ibrahim: the business runs, without being involved. as bad as that sound just happened literally one hour ago and I was so like, I was like, Oh my God. So a new or even comes in, ask me a question about some people working and like, so. Some rules in the province here changed a year ago. And I didn't know that.

[00:21:10] Ibrahim: So he's asking me a question. So I'm going to like, yeah, you do this and you do this and you do this. And then you start like one other Asian and the team starts laughing. He's like, Oh no, no, no, no, no. Just come here. Come here. That's how we do it. And then Miranda came and I'm like, Miranda, what's going on with that?

[00:21:23] Ibrahim: She's like, Oh my God. So we laughed about it. We joked about it. But I think it's a good thing. Not a bad thing is yes. there's 30 years in the business. I'm completely disconnected from, and I look back and reflect the business they're running and without me, I don't have to know all of this.

[00:21:39] Ibrahim: don't have to know all the details and the business surrounding. So it's, well, all the machine is you don't need to know everything. You need to know how to have the people that knows how to do these things.

[00:21:49] Suneet: I love that. How's it feel?

[00:21:51] Ibrahim: It feels great. It feels liberating. So. Don't get me wrong, I work freaking like sometimes 16 hours a day, so I'm not sitting on my ass watching Netflix.

[00:22:02] Ibrahim: But just gives me the ability to focus on, more complicated things.

[00:22:06] Suneet: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, dude, on this journey, once you get to a place, if you want to get there where I don't know a single answer about a real estate contract, right. I have someone who knows the real estate contract really well.

[00:22:18] Suneet: Two of them, Three of them. I don't know about a lot of these things, but I have those people. And that's like, know, one of my mentors, Perry Belcher. He like knows, he really knows what his strong suit is. And he made a decision is not even to be the CEO. Right. So he hired a CEO and he's much happier.

[00:22:38] Suneet: he's a smart man. He is. Yeah. So let's talk about dominating markets. Yes. What's your strategy for staying ahead of the competition?

[00:22:49] Ibrahim: I use this, And another recruiting strategy actually. so when an agent comes into the team, I sit down with them and we ask them all the question and they like us.

[00:22:57] Ibrahim: We like them. Everything is good to go. And then pause and I'm like, okay, we're going to have to pause here and. We do require you to visit and this is going to go 100 percent again as well. Suneet has been teaching and preaching all the years. And

[00:23:12] Suneet: you

[00:23:12] Ibrahim: always get

[00:23:12] Suneet: that

[00:23:12] Ibrahim: disclaimer

[00:23:13] Suneet: every time you say

[00:23:14] Ibrahim: it.

[00:23:16] Ibrahim: Everybody's on the same page. There is no right way or wrong way of doing anything. It's just a different way of doing it. So actually send them out to interview. Minimum of six other teams before we move forward to the next steps. Do you give them a list of teams to go? No, no. I mean, like there is very well known couple of teams and then the rest of you have to figure out on your own.

[00:23:36] Ibrahim: So do you go there? And I'm like, Just they said, and then I'm like, Oh, by the way, just when you're going through the interview, just ask them, a couple of questions. One of them is who has been here the longest? What is the attrition rate, which is the word, the opposite of the retention, the team leader, some of them doesn't know what attrition is.

[00:23:54] Ibrahim: Just that's what attrition is. And then the third one was the average commission per Asian on the team. And just ask, ask the team leader those questions as you go. And, once you finish the whole six interviews, we can come back and come back. So is that okay? And just by the way when you go sit with them, everyone of them was going to try to close you in the spot.

[00:24:11] Ibrahim: Just keep that in the back of your mind. Like, oh, okay. So I sit here, people go, interview six other teams and come back to me. So neat. I literally sit on my freaking desk here, and I know that every single team in the city has to offer the agent that comes to me. Okay? And the agent comes back to me, because here's the thing, the shocking fact is like, nobody's telling them to do the same thing I'm telling them.

[00:24:37] Ibrahim: That's one. Two, everybody's trying to close them in the spot. And here you are, you trying to push them away. Respectively, because I teach them, in your best interest, because A, you might find a team that's actually better than us. Why would I block the opportunity for you?

[00:24:51] Ibrahim: Two, is once you know exactly what, and here is the big one. Once you know exactly what other teams has to offer and whatnot, you're going to work in the same city if you happen to be in a listing appointment and then the seller is interviewing one of those team members, you know how to overcome that conversation because you're almost going to join that team.

[00:25:06] Ibrahim: But you didn't. Do you know why Suneeta I'm sending you to interview other team? It's better for your business. Thank you so much, Ibrahim. You're most welcome. So, this is, my definition of how can you stay ahead of the competition when it comes to recruiting and growing the team is. Make it almost unfair for everybody else to compete with you in your city when it comes to recruiting.

[00:25:27] Ibrahim: It is recruiting in its own, just the opposite way.

[00:25:30] Suneet: Dude, that's really good. And every time I hear that. You get better at explaining it every time. Because the first couple of times I was like, wait a second here. Yeah, I haven't even said that out loud. The first time I heard you say it at the press,

[00:25:43] Ibrahim: I'm going to close.

[00:25:44] Ibrahim: Everybody comes in here. I'm like, I get it. I understand. It's just like. Sometimes we have to explain it in a different way for people to kind of like, okay, I get it. I understand. So yeah, so that's what we do. and it's working like every single time brother every single time it works So i'm i'm like it's proven to be working.

[00:26:02] Ibrahim: So why would I change it

[00:26:03] Suneet: if it's working for you? Why would you change it? Yeah, keep on going

[00:26:06] Ibrahim: 100 Also, it's a market specific though. North America is too big. So it might not work in your marketplace, but it just works in our marketplace.

[00:26:15] Suneet: I mean, I think it's important for anyone listening to it and getting inspired by that strategy is, if something's not working, then here's another strategy to try test it.

[00:26:24] Suneet: If you're curious,

[00:26:26] Ibrahim: you know what, as a reason, intrinsically why I do this. And I, I, even my leadership team knows that is like. If an agent was sent to interview other teams and end up joining one of those teams, we will know in a month or so when we do our follow up call or when we see them registered on MLS online.

[00:26:42] Ibrahim: Then we have a meeting and we're going to be like, hey, truthfully, let's look in the mirror. Why did this person join that team, not us? What is it that they have that we don't? And it's an opportunity for us to improve. That's another reason why we do this.

[00:26:54] Suneet: Yeah, great.

[00:26:55] Ibrahim: Good. So, think about it, you have two doors, one door people come from, and one door people leave.

[00:27:01] Ibrahim: The people, the back door that we will leave from, we did bolted it. So it's dead bolted. Nobody leaves.

[00:27:06] Suneet: Hmm. Good one. Yeah. let's talk about something that john has always talked about is like principles. Yes. Right. And that's honestly something that I learned a lot about in my business in my life from john, I never heard that word you so often.

[00:27:23] Speakers 1: Yeah.

[00:27:24] Suneet: And, been hanging out with John and working with him multiple businesses now for seven, eight years. And, I know what he's going to do because I know his principles always. 100 percent right. Which is really powerful. and we just talked about you coming back from the pilgrimage back to, uh, Mecca and off air.

[00:27:44] Suneet: We said, you know, we talked about you going twice a year, which I think is great. You sure have a lot of vacation time, dude. We get into that another call, so you live by an honor system, That's faith inspired, which, without us getting religious, it's faith inspired, and that's something that's important to Ibrahim.

[00:28:01] Suneet: How do you think that that faith inspired honor system has like shaped your decisions and leadership

[00:28:09] Ibrahim: January 12th, January 12th, 2022. we made a business decision. John was actually involved in it. we walked away 125 million of sales volume out of the door in one. I remember.

[00:28:20] Ibrahim: I remember I got a text. Yeah. Yeah. So, I messaged John 3 o'clock in the morning. I'm like, are you adult? He's like, yeah, I'm like, we need to meet up morning. He's like, what's going on? So I told him, he's like, Oh, what are the damage? I'm like, there is no damage. It's just like 125 million that we have to walk away.

[00:28:35] Ibrahim: It's like, You do the right thing. Thank you. So basically long story short, when we had unfortunate incidents that we had to publicly make a statement online on social media about it, without getting into the details, basically a misalignment in the values and the principles and what we stand for.

[00:28:50] Ibrahim: And it did involve, 12 agents, three of which are top producers, because of the alignment was a principle on what we stand for. and this is where the personality versus like, you're making a principle business decision, not a personal business decision. when the decision gets, gets imposed, you look at like, Oh, we can't do that, man.

[00:29:09] Ibrahim: It's a Sunnit, you know, that's, I'm like, well, now the personality is getting impacted or having an influence over your principle business decisions. So we don't look at it. That doesn't matter what the name is. It was a defining moment of our company's history.

[00:29:22] Ibrahim: And I look back and we recovered from it and we're twice as big now. So very, very grateful for that. So you do the right thing and the right thing is going to happen. So even though sometimes you look at this, I'm like, we have a principle issue here and we're going to make a decision.

[00:29:36] Ibrahim: That's like 125 million of sales volume walks out of the door. Are you okay with that? Or should we tweak the principle to keep the business or should we like just cut it short to do what's the principle and then move on? We did this and it serves us the long way and people can see through that and people you earn the respect of the people that's inside the company because they see you making those decisions.

[00:29:59] Ibrahim: And it also fuels their attention in the long way because we will know, Everybody want to be led by somebody else. Everybody want to be led leaders want to be led to by somebody So when we see the leaders of the company stands for what's right inspires confidence in people that they are in the right place

[00:30:15] Suneet: Dude, what a good answer.

[00:30:16] Suneet: Love that and a good story. And yeah, that's exactly what you did Right. As you stood by your principles, dude. And something I love, like I said, I learned really applicably from a chap and you've demonstrated well in your career. So good job. Shout out to you.

[00:30:30] Ibrahim: Thank

[00:30:31] Suneet: you, brother. Okay. You know, lots of teams are having challenges in this market and the date of the recording is December 18th, 2024.

[00:30:39] Suneet: so a lot of people are having challenges. Hopefully. By the time this gets published, I don't know. We were probably a couple of weeks out Christmas and all that. And hopefully people aren't having as many challenges, but has the Ontario market. Slow down similar to the rest of the Canada and the United States.

[00:30:56] Ibrahim: Big time, big time, big time, big time. It's, I think it's statistically speaking, it's the worst year in real estate here since 35 years ago. Okay. That's the,

[00:31:06] Suneet: that's the number for you. I

[00:31:07] Ibrahim: asked, right?

[00:31:07] Suneet: Yeah,

[00:31:07] Ibrahim: it's worse than 2008 here. So, lowest number of sales, price points, 20 percent down. It's just not good.

[00:31:14] Ibrahim: The show. for context, the market has never seen that the truck, the condo, the apartment building, the condos in Toronto, it's the highest number of volume ever. The hit MLS I've ever seen. There's so many for sale because everyone needs to refinance every five years, so many for sale.

[00:31:32] Ibrahim: So yeah, it's not, it's not a fun time. in the market, but guess what, for everybody that's listening us here. And if you survive 2024, it doesn't get any worse than that. It's in the past 2025 and forward is going to be better. So kudos for you. Where do you tell your agents? We're having a hard time. literally, we had a team meeting yesterday.

[00:31:50] Ibrahim: I'm like, if you're here, if you paid your bills, if you ate last night, everything is good. You're good because some people didn't, and if you're still having your license, it's good because a lot of agents went out of business and it doesn't, this is the rock bottom 2024 is the rock bottom. So other than that, we're good.

[00:32:06] Ibrahim: But overall, our business didn't decline. We're the same as last year. So it's good.

[00:32:10] Suneet: Oh, awesome. Good. Okay. So final question for you.

[00:32:15] Ibrahim: Yes, brother.

[00:32:16] Suneet: We have a lot of aspiring team leaders and team leaders, period. Listening to this podcast, watching the podcast, what advice do you have to them to give them?

[00:32:26] Ibrahim: something that served me very, very well, personally. I always learn what not to do before I learn what to do. Um, if it talks to need, two years to get from point A to point B. First of all, Suneet doesn't know what he doesn't know. I don't know what I don't know. And they learn from their own mistakes.

[00:32:43] Ibrahim: So if goes back and look at what he's done, he would have avoided this and this and this and this, for example, but now he did this because he didn't know that this is he shouldn't have done that. So I learned first what not to do before I learn what to do, because if I avoided the steps or the mistakes that has done.

[00:33:00] Ibrahim: it will take me only one year to get from point A to point B instead of two years that took him. So always learn everybody's like, Hey, how can I do this? How can I do this? How can this is good as you're learning what to do and how to do stuff. Just learn what not to do.

[00:33:12] Suneet: Absolutely. I think you just said to work with the reside platform.

[00:33:17] Suneet: So I think that's flat out

[00:33:21] Ibrahim: because the reside, it teaches you to avoid the mistakes that everybody else does. Right. fast forward a couple of years of your life through errors and trials. It just, it gives you the roadmap of like, Hey, don't do this. Here's how to do. I agree with you. I love you guys all at Reside.

[00:33:37] Ibrahim: We love you too, buddy. Yeah. We have positive impact in the industry and I think we need more positive impact in the industry. So thank you for everything you guys are doing.

[00:33:45] Suneet: Yeah, dude. And you too, right? Like you speak and doing coaching and getting all these things. So if somebody wants to send you a referral or talk with you, pick your brain a little bit, or send you a referral, cause we like those too.

[00:33:58] Suneet: And I want you to have a bunch. yeah.

[00:34:02] Ibrahim: We appreciate it and your clientele will be taking care of, seven star service for sure.

[00:34:06] Suneet: I'm surprised that I haven't sent you anybody in ontario with all my people out there, dude, like what's going on with me?

[00:34:12] Ibrahim: I was like,

[00:34:12] Suneet: you're the majority here Do you ever get some good indian food do you like indian food?

[00:34:19] Suneet: Oh, I love indian food

[00:34:20] Ibrahim: butter chicken is my I can eat butter chicken every day and I will never Butter, chicken and choma, these two things. Choma, you know what choma is? Yeah. Um, lamb, yeah, it, has lamb, but like, can be chicken, can be meat. So I can eat this two every day and I'll never complain. So, but butter chicken comes first.

[00:34:38] Ibrahim: Was not bread, garlic, not just that. A lot of carbs in that. Yeah, man, can't go wrong with that.

[00:34:46] Suneet: If somebody wants to get ahold of you before we talk about food, because me and Ibrahim can talk about food for hours. do they find you? How do they get ahold of you?

[00:34:54] Ibrahim: if you were to Google affinity real estate, in Canada, Ontario, just Google it.

[00:34:59] Ibrahim: The first time comes in Google. The highest group of reviews in Google is asked to, or, social media, Ibrahim Hussain, the spelling is I B R a H I M H U S S E I N a habit to connect. I We'd love to serve anybody, however we can. Yeah. Clientele, real estate questions, team questions, any questions.

[00:35:18] Ibrahim: contribute. Somebody has done good to us. So our job is to do good to other people

[00:35:22] Suneet: and make the world a better place. Dude. Thank you so much for being on. It's a long time coming. And I think this episode was great. Thank you, brother. I appreciate you, my man. Everyone else out there listening.

[00:35:34] Suneet: Hey, thank you for listening to this episode of the reside platform podcast. Once again, I want to give a huge shout out to my boy and great guests. So going to have you on again, Mr. Ibrahim Hussein for sharing a cool story and some. Really cool advice. Not that I agree with everything, but Hey, we'll, we could talk about that on another episode, maybe part two.

[00:35:54] Suneet: if you did enjoy this episode, please make sure to subscribe, leave a review, share it with your team or anyone, you know, who wants to grow their real estate business for more tips and tools and other information, check out. Reside platform. com and follow us all on social media. Thanks for being here and we'll see you next time.

[00:36:15] Suneet: Keep working towards your goals and making a big old impact in other people's lives. Okay. We'll see you next time.