Real Estate's Best-Kept Secret: Operational Power Plays with Lauren Rathgeb-Holland

[00:00:00] Lauren: Why are you afraid to tell people, Hey, come in office and do your job. They have big goals The fundamental thing is we're all working for money, right?

[00:00:07] Lauren: That is how we, buy food, put food on the table for our families, provide a much bigger life for our families.

[00:00:20] Mie: Hey, are you ready to unlock the true potential of your real estate investments?

[00:00:25] Mie: Well, in this episode, me, Mie, and Lauren are going to share powerful strategies to maximize your profits through effective operations. I want you to just to discover, It's time to discover how to streamline your processes, reduce costs, and enhance your overall profitability. This is an opportunity you won't want to miss tune in and take your real estate game to the next level.

[00:00:46] Mie: Get ready for an insightful episode of our podcast featuring myself, Mie, as the host, as I interview real estate expert, Lauren Holland. What's up, Lauren? How are you? I'm

[00:00:58] Lauren: I'm good. How are you?

[00:01:00] Mie: doing so good. as everyone can guess, I am not Suneet. however, I am cosplaying as Suneet today and we'll be interviewing, Lauren.

[00:01:08] Mie: I am the director of team, production for Reside. And, Lauren is the director of team operations. And today I want to pick your brain a little bit about how teams can work together. Maximize their profit through operations, which you are incredible at and the back end of that. and you are.

[00:01:26] Mie: Amazing to watch work and all of the processes that you do day in and day out. So, it'd be cool to pick your brain a little bit today. before we get started, can you tell me a little bit about you, who you are, let the people know what you're about.

[00:01:39] Lauren: Yeah. So I'm Lauren Holland. A lot of you know me as Lauren Rathgev. Just changed the last name a few months ago. So, I come from the world of operations. I started back in 2018 as an executive as. Assistant and have had all the roles you can really think of whether it was my title or not. I went into transaction coordination, ran, numerous teams across the country, listing management, operations coordinator, liaisoning, and then stepping into, you know, an operations 50 and 70 plus teams across the country.

[00:02:12] Lauren: really my love language is helping others and, I'm really good at figuring out how to scale things and just making things work. So that is how I ended up here at reside. And that's what I do today is just client concierging, helping people figure out problems and, finding the gaps in their operations so that they too can scale and build a bigger business.

[00:02:33] Mie: Love and just for all of our listeners out there, this is going to be a heavily biased, conversation because I absolutely love and adore Lawrence.

[00:02:42] Lauren: Knock

[00:02:42] Mie: Um,

[00:02:42] Lauren: Mie

[00:02:43] Mie: You know, we go back so far too. We've been working together for several years. So prior to us working in reside, we worked together at another organization that had a similar approach, to helping teams scale their real estate business.

[00:02:57] Mie: And so, I've watched you, grow throughout the years. And, I remember when you joined, I was not yet, I got here because of you, obviously I wasn't in resign yet. I started working with reside after watching, what you were doing with reside and, was definitely curious, always making jokes about, John hasn't called me yet and, here we are.

[00:03:16] Mie: Um, but I gotta say it was even, like I was I won't say surprised, but I was pleasantly illuminated really how confident you were at something. Scale. Like I knew that you were like a doer and you were like a get shit done type of person, but watching you operate inside of reside has been like really, really amazing to see how effective you are in the role.

[00:03:38] Mie: Can you, I'm going to ask a really loaded question and we'll unpack it as needed, but how do you maximize profit through scaling operations?

[00:03:48] Lauren: Okay. It is a loaded question and we'll break everything down, but I believe it's like peeling back a onion. All the layers. there's three steps to it. There is, listing management and transaction coordination. There is, who you hire there is building all of your systems and really determining what you need.

[00:04:07] Lauren: it's about the market you're into because real estate is not one size fits all. I don't believe that, a small or more rural, market is going to operate similarly to a, large metropolitan area. You know, some people are more mom and pop, small businesses really love that client interaction and summer at scale of people are busy, busy, busy on the go.

[00:04:29] Lauren: So it really just depends on, Your clientele and who you're working with and how we can mold that to your team and the people you bring on.

[00:04:35] Mie: So when you say three steps, are these three consecutive steps?

[00:04:40] Lauren: Yes and no. So I would say, yeah, so I would say for scaling, it's defining the who, who you're hiring, who you're bringing on. the second is setting up to scale the, listing and transaction management process, maximizing your agent's time, and then generating that repeat and referrals, referral business, which then is part of step three and creating that culture of productivity within your agents.

[00:05:05] Mie: Have you, seen successful operations around creating culture around productivity within the agents?

[00:05:13] Lauren: So I believe that people are going to have all these opinions around culture. And so for my belief, I think need a strong team culture. People need to want to show up. They want to be around you. They want to be around your leadership. When in turn, when you're showing up, that is what creates that. and you have really good standards, right?

[00:05:31] Lauren: That is what is going to create that culture of productivity because it's the domino effect. if one person, doesn't show up and you don't do anything about, you check in, you know, it's just making sure everything's okay. But if they're not showing up consecutively, other people are going to start to notice, but then they start not showing up and you have these things written in your standards and your missions, but it's just writing on the wall.

[00:05:51] Lauren: If you're not actually holding people accountable. To that so, hold your people accountable to the number one thing is getting people to show up and it's that domino effect So when people are actually showing up in office and start making those calls other people are going to be looking around and saying hey, am I working hard enough because Results are in the numbers have those numbers on the boards to be talking Doesn't matter how big your team is, from one agent to five agents to 30 Have that culture of competition as well on the board and let people see maybe it's an appointment tracker you have broadcasted on a TV screen or you have literally your admin writing everyone's pendings for the month closings for the month on the board.

[00:06:29] Lauren: So everything is visible. I

[00:06:32] Mie: That's so good. was just talking to Nick McLean about this recently around accountability and standards. And this is something that, I talk about regularly, obviously, because my world is about, accountability and, coaching and so forth. But,

[00:06:48] Mie: love how you talked about, standards being more than just the writing on the wall. And I see this over and over and over again in teams. and I do think that this can inhibit, the ability to scale because operationally, You have to know what your standards are, and then behaviorally, you actually have to apply them.

[00:07:05] Mie: And I think that, oftentimes team owners can fall into a couple of camps here. One is fear of losing people because you like in the moment. You make an exception around the standard because it fits the need that you have, which might be, well, this person produces or I'm already low on agents.

[00:07:24] Mie: And, how am I going to find more agents? Or maybe you're not recruiting fast enough or frequently enough in order to, bring in more people. Or maybe the other camp is like a discomfort with, the conflict or the fear of not being liked as a leader or the fear of letting people down as the leader.

[00:07:43] Mie: And this is what I call. Loving people into failure is that when we don't hold the boundaries, we've abandoned our self respect and we have taught them not to respect us, our boundaries or our quote unquote standards. And so it really just becomes nothing more than writing on the wall. But Nick and I were talking about this the other day around standards of how you can really, you should really simplify what your standards are in terms of like, What are you actually looking at every day? So when we talk about connecting standards to operations, and I know we skipped some steps here because I want to go back to the transaction management, which was your step one. But, and then I want to hear the question that you had, but when you connect standards, and operations, where do you find team owners are struggling the most to cultivate standards they can hold?

[00:08:30] Lauren: I think you hit the nail on the head or you did. I don't think in terms of people or have a fear of they're going to lose their agents if they say, Hey, you have to be in office. Why are you afraid to tell people, Hey, come in office and do your job. They have big goals The fundamental thing is we're all working for money, right?

[00:08:47] Lauren: That is how we, buy food, put food on the table for our families, provide a much bigger life for our families. It's. Like John talks about being insurance for your family. So, John will talk about go to the board. And so it's really an exercise on, goal tracking for the quarter. what's your goal?

[00:09:03] Lauren: What's your why though? What is your why behind everything? and I might be just be going off on a tangent now back to your original. So get me back on track, but,

[00:09:11] Lauren: really, getting your agents to show up. it's not just, Hey, I had a doctor's appointment or Hey, whatever the excuse is, running an exercise that john regularly talks about. about John Sheplack is go to the board. It's a quarterly exercise. It's not just getting to what the goals are each month.

[00:09:26] Lauren: I want to hit five pendings, but really, what is that five pendings? What would those eight closings do for you and your family? What's the why behind everything? Why are you doing this? you don't have to have kids or you don't have to have serious. spouse to be able to hit these. Why are you doing it for yourself?

[00:09:41] Lauren: This could be for your parents. This could be for your niece and nephew, but when you're feeling stuck and you're not showing up and you're getting really down on yourself, I mean, you probably have this whole psychology figured out that we can go into, but it's the fear of losing these people and it's really, you're holding them accountable so that they can build this bigger life for themselves.

[00:09:59] Lauren: So really, if you're seeing you're stuck in a rut, I would do an exercise with the team and just getting them all together. Maybe having food at a team meeting, even if you're struggling because it's back to that culture of productivity, we first need to build that culture on the team where people want to show up and be around each other too.

[00:10:14] Lauren: if you're overloading people with meetings, you're overloading people with client or community events. They might not be able to actually focus on their real estate business. But if you're being super purposeful with their schedules and leading them in the right direction so that they build up a past client list and they want to be out in the community and they're building their brand, to generate that repeat and referral business, that is creating that culture of product, productivity, that culture of production that we're talking about.

[00:10:41] Lauren: But it all, again, starts with showing up. So the fear, and we'll get back to what Mie was saying about Oh, I'm going to lose them if I tell them to show up. Why are they there in the first place? And we're not just talking about, this isn't, if you don't have an in person office, we have many teams we work with that are virtual.

[00:10:56] Lauren: it, we call it, everyone has a square. Are they showing up to the 815 Zoom calls that you have scheduled, that they just have to click a link? Yes, and lots of people have school drop off. How do we work around that? Maybe we shift The time a little bit to accommodate for those people that have school drop off, but it's really practicing gratitude.

[00:11:13] Lauren: How many appointments did you set? where are you at with your goals for the month? This is a great training for your sales calls each week, but making sure that you're bringing things up repetitively during morning standups or morning meetings as well. That's going to keep people really engaged because maybe if they're not showing up, I would do a self reflection on my leadership too and say, okay, this This might be a me problem.

[00:11:34] Lauren: How do I get people to show back up? And what do I have to fix or change? And who might be that mentor or that coach for me?

[00:11:41] Mie: Yeah, that was such a big thing when I had my coaching program. The first one that went from five people to 180 people. but . hear this from leaders and also coaches alike that had programs when I was coaching other, productivity coaches at the time.

[00:11:55] Mie: Is that showing up conversation? Like, man, no one wants to work. No one wants to show up. I can't get people to show up. And, I just, have been a big advocate of meeting people where they're at, because then we can actually, lead them into the version of themselves that they want to be. And sometimes we stand so far away from that version of them, of where they're at now, we stand so far away from it.

[00:12:17] Mie: And we say, come on, figure it out. Like if you wanted it bad enough, you'd figure it out. over and over and over again, I see that leaders, the more connected they are as a leader, the more their agents show up. And so, when I had taken over the coaching program initially, and there were people anytime I've started a program, even when I came in to reside and I wanted to start doing the training program, the only way that I could get people to show up to the trainings was I called every single team leader.

[00:12:43] Mie: I held a meeting with every team leader when I started my coaching program, I called every, eligible agent, that fit the avatar in the beginning and then it grew from there and then when they wouldn't show up, I would text them and I would say, Hey, I noticed you weren't at the meeting. Is everything okay?

[00:12:57] Mie: I would come from curiosity. I would make a generous assumption and I would try to connect with them. Now with that comes boundaries. Meaning that if it is a behavior that is not changing at all after a, you know, a period of time, and it depends on the situation, then we have a step up step conversation.

[00:13:16] Mie: And it's really easy because I can see it, show you that, Hey, I've been showing up and wanting to, get you, into the fold. And I've been asking you to show up and I've been letting you know, it's not okay that you don't show up and yet you're still not here. so I think when, we're afraid of losing agents.

[00:13:32] Mie: Sometimes I think we're avoiding connection. as a leader, you have to lead your people you can't hide behind your production. You can't hide behind your busy ness you've got to connect with your agents. And you have to do it like coming from like an open, generous place, not a passive aggressive, I shouldn't have to babysit you place. Any comments on that before we move on? Because I would love to talk about the first step.

[00:13:56] Lauren: Yes. and it's about showing up and something you had just said. you've talked about this. John's talked about this. Suneet, Nick, Preston. a lot of the times we revert to, oh, the agents are lazy. They're not showing up. It's a them problem. They don't want to work, but we can't make people work more than they want to work.

[00:14:17] Lauren: And I think that this comes full circle in terms of standards and the expectations of, hey, when you're on my team, this is what I expect. Can you commit to that? Yes or no? because when you don't hold the standard and you don't hold the boundary, people take advantage. And that might not mean that they are lazy.

[00:14:33] Lauren: It could mean that they are lazy, but when you're talking about meeting people where they're at, I think that's really powerful because we just make assumptions of, oh, they don't want to work when really something might be going on, or they don't have the skills or training necessarily necessary. To do what you're expecting of them.

[00:14:50] Lauren: So I think when we're talking about leading from the front and how to lead your people, are you a really good communicator? Have you clearly communicated what you expect out of everyone? it's not especially means in the database. What does leads look like for you? Nick McLean posted something this morning about, um, it was so good.

[00:15:10] Lauren: And you can probably talk a little bit more about that, more well versed than I can with your background, but, having one lead come in on a round Robin system and the quality and when we're just chasing people that might not necessarily work, but if you have a batch of leads coming in that agents want to grab, that's more of an opportunity and shiny object for you.

[00:15:28] Lauren: For people to gravitate towards your team. So if you're having trouble recruiting and you feel like you don't have the leads, or you feel like you have a really good lead system, but the numbers aren't showing up, the conversions not showing up, evaluate that go in and do a database audit and see what's going on.

[00:15:42] Mie: Well, and John, says this, and nearly every time I hear him talk, and that's why I think it's so effective, is you should be inspecting the database every single day. the, I call it the 1 1 1. I don't know what his, I don't know if he has an official title for it, but 1 1 1 is You know, one hour lead generating for your business, one hour, lead generating with your agents.

[00:16:02] Mie: And then one hour lead generator, one hour of inspecting the database. and when I say lead generating for your business, I mean recruiting. So one hour of making recruiting calls, one hour of lead generating with the agents and one hour inspecting the database. I do think we need to stop calling it expectations when they're being held, like a way to get honest with ourselves is that you have a nice little wish list, that you would like to see people, fulfill on your behalf.

[00:16:25] Mie: but an expectation is a two party, interaction, I have to hold the expectation, meaning like I'm holding the boundary and I'm saying, this is what I expect. so good. Okay. So let's, backtrack here. Let's go to step one, where it was, your TC and listing management.

[00:16:40] Mie: Tell me more about that in terms of like, how do I scale? So if I'm, a team, maybe I have one to five agents, maybe we're doing 20 to 30 million in volume annually. want to get to the next level. Next level would be anywhere from 50 to 75 million for me. and I'm finding that, I've got a TC I pay.

[00:16:59] Mie: I'm not ready to bring someone on full time. So I'm outsourcing, or maybe my agents are doing their own TC. Where are, can you help me kind of fill in like an ABC, like three, three levels of like, how can I scale?

[00:17:11] Lauren: Yes. So that was perfect. And let's talk in terms of the metrics that you set. So if you are doing, a good amount, you're going from 30 deals, you're not just a solo agent, you have a team coming on asking yourself, am I fully leveraged? Because agents are likely going to go to the team that have a transaction coordinator and have a listing manager so that they are supported.

[00:17:33] Lauren: Because when we're talking about generating repeat and referral business, We need to allow the agents time in their day to generate said business. And that is what we call lead generation. Um, they should be doing that, especially if they're not busy enough, minimum three hours a day, best time, eight 30 to noon, and then go do your appointments.

[00:17:52] Lauren: a really good structure to run scalable plays is setting up your team as a business, Monday through Friday, your title companies, your attorneys, your lenders, everything. They're all working nine to five, eight to five, and if you have a really important question, and they're not working, it's going to have to probably wait until Monday, unless, you know, you have that really good working relationship with your vendor.

[00:18:12] Lauren: so what that's going to look like then is a lot of people come to me and say, all right, who is my first hire? I want all these people in place. Well, the beauty is if you get one really strong person, You don't need five people in place, to run your operations. You need one person, who's the who, that's going to get you from 30 to 70 to 100.

[00:18:33] Lauren: And then after 100, you might want to get them a virtual assistant. to go back, first hire is going to be that, operations specialist, that person who can run All of your client care, that person who's going to run a transaction management, listing, managing a management, your marketing, agent onboarding, helping you structure your weekly sales team meetings, helping you plan out events.

[00:18:57] Lauren: and this might sound like a lot for one person and it can be. So that is why you hire them a virtual assistant. them directly online jobs. Dot pH. That is the tiered model. I would start with one state side, in office, hybrid person, depending on where you're at in your business. and just Google the average salary.

[00:19:16] Lauren: So you're competitive depending on how great, you know, if you're hiring at the lower end, then. You're likely going to have to really work and train and mold that person to who you want them to become and that might come with more frustrations. but it really meet yourself where you're at to and that person and develop them No matter what you're going to have to develop somebody. or if you do hire at the top, you're going to get somebody that is qualified and you're not going to have to train as much. I wanna, unpack, because I know this also leads into the who, which is step two, but I'm gonna keep it in the listing management TC realm here for a second, in the step one. So, we see this a lot what seems we worked with, present day and in the past where that can be 1 of the hardest tires that you make.

[00:19:59] Mie: and sometimes it comes from being inexperienced and making a hire in the 1st place and, like, going through a process. think there is a place for trusting your intuition and your gut when you meet somebody, but oftentimes I don't see that working out well. And maybe I'll save that conversation for the who, but in terms of like all the things that they do, my friend, Amanda price, who is like one of the amazing team leaders ever.

[00:20:23] Mie: she told me this a long time ago. She said, when you were in, Your passion place, your capacity is expanded. And when you are not in your passion place, your capacity is diminished. The other thing that I learned, from her was that talent will never give you the job. so, you know, when you're, listing all these things, that might sound a lot to a team leader who doesn't have a passion for those things, but if I were to give you that job, someone who is operationally minded and you are fulfilled by the constant momentum and all of the tasks.

[00:20:52] Mie: and outcomes that you get to play with. That would be like a walk in a park for you. That would be like Christmas day for me. I could put marketing and TC and listing management and client events and, running team. I could put all of those things managing my email. I put all of those things on your plate and as someone who is like talented and passionate about that role that would not be overwhelmed for you.

[00:21:15] Lauren: Right.

[00:21:16] Mie: so when you have someone in that seat that is feeling really overwhelmed now, don't get me wrong. They're not going to be a marketing expert. They're not going to be an event coordinating expert. You may get lucky with someone who has like, niche for, that sort of thing.

[00:21:30] Mie: but, they will be able to execute on the instructions given. And so you can put all of those operational things. You can put TC and L. I mean, tell me if I'm right with this number, but a solid TC. Can run 80 files at a time. Is that high?

[00:21:46] Lauren: Yeah, I would say yes, I would say 50, 50 plus all

[00:21:50] Mie: plus options.

[00:21:52] Lauren: all the other things. Let's say 50. Yeah.

[00:21:53] Mie: maybe I'm thinking of some of like, the elite, elite I've worked with in the past where I'm like, they've got 80 files and they're good. But 50 files.

[00:21:59] Lauren: I say that because I've handled it and that was that like, okay, I need help. And that's when I got my really great VA. so

[00:22:06] Mie: not saying without support either, for sure. Between, cause you would also need automations in your software. You know, like you would need the right tech, you would need the right support, but like a solid TC or LM, transaction coordinator or listing manager, I'm not sure.

[00:22:19] Mie: Could run 80. Yes. So if you're scaling your team, if you're 20 to 30, and you're trying to get to 50 to 75, chances are you're not 50 to 80 units yet. So you could make that year at a time. Exactly. So you could make it's very unlikely that you're doing 50. So this hire can handle the workload and then the marketing, the, having a

[00:22:43] Mie: break

[00:22:43] Lauren: Sales meetings,

[00:22:44] Mie: you.

[00:22:45] Lauren: the recruiting, the recruiting we haven't even talked about. Beautiful.

[00:22:48] Mie: Oh yeah. We might have different opinions here. I'd love to share with you. That's good. so systematically you can scale with one person for a while

[00:22:57] Lauren: Mm

[00:22:57] Mie: and get to the VA eventually.

[00:23:00] Lauren: hmm. I'd scale. This is just me, but I would scale between 150 and 200 units. You can do with one really strong person and a B. A. T.

[00:23:10] Mie: So you don't need to have four hires, in order for you to get your business to a hundred million.

[00:23:16] Lauren: Right and this is not me saying if you are there and you currently have four hires and they're amazing, get rid of everybody. That is not what we're saying at all, but if you're somebody that is starting from a lower unit count and you're looking to Start scaling, or if you're hitting that roadblock right now, and you might be there, but you're like, I don't have the right people in place for this, let's audit like you would your database audit, your team and expectations and who you now are and is the person next to you growing with you?

[00:23:42] Lauren: I think that's also, our friends, have written a really amazing book, the founder and the force multiplier. and that book really teaches you how a founder or. Um, with the right strategic partner, they call it a force multiplier cause they wear many hats, it's not just, if you have someone that needs to know, I need to do this every single day.

[00:24:02] Lauren: That's just not the right role for you because real estate things change and you have to be okay with pivoting not saying that your day is going to get if you get thrown off because your day gets completely derailed being an admin that's running scalable plays that might not be the right fit for you and that is okay it's just getting really honest with yourself going off on a tangent here but

[00:24:23] Mie: No, no, that was good. so, I think that when a team is building and this will be an easy segue into the who, because we're very much on it, but I have some deeper questions around the who we're talking about scalability. I think the other thing that team owners have to keep in mind, or what are the other things you're committed to right now that are outside of your real estate business?

[00:24:41] Mie: Because I see team owners also trying to wear multiple hats sometimes. Whether it be through, you know, an investment arm or, you know, joint venture, trying to do mortgage or to handle or something to that effect, if you're trying to do a lot of things at the same time.

[00:24:54] Mie: then if you might need another hire I think also someone has to pour into the people that you're paying to scale your business and that person really should be you, until you can afford it not to be you and actually be able to pay someone highly confident at doing it. That is not you. And, you know, I look at Nick and I look at Cindy and I look at Preston and even though they have multiple thing and John too, even though they have multiple things going on, they're connected.

[00:25:22] Mie: They are highly connected leaders.

[00:25:24] Mie: Now their scale beyond, they're not 20 million teams, obviously, they're massive teams, but like. There are poor people in your world that you never disconnect from, and those people may shift and change over time, but in order for you to get to a level of scale, you also have to be fiscally responsible about that so that you're not, you know, running a business for the sake of saying, I have a business, but you're not seeing any profit from that business because, you're outsourcing everything.

[00:25:49] Mie: And so there is. A tremendous amount of sweat equity that is going to go, into things even after you make a leverage higher, but you have to raise that higher up. You have to lead them, make sure that they're accounted for. they can be the person who, takes you to the next level.

[00:26:02] Lauren: Mm hmm. to recap all this? I know your biggest question has been what is every real estate team need to run scalable rate plays? And we've determined the who. So a who would be a listing manager or transaction coordinator who can really take those team operations, team inventory, team management, onboarding, and run everything into a workflow or an S. O. P. Whatever you want to call that having checklists is a beautiful thing. If you don't like running by a checklist, not everybody does. Like Mie said, if you have the right person in place, who's thinking operationally, They're going to thrive and continue to make it better having programs like we in our business.

[00:26:40] Lauren: We use monday. com sunny loves Monday. We have grown. Yeah, we've grown to really love Monday as well because it's just a system that is, spreadsheets and charts and can run financials and can run automation. So if you are transaction coordinator like I was and love automation and you don't want to write every single email template or you want to just save yourself some time and have trigger points, You want a program like Monday, open to close, SISU, that is going to give you that, automation because the number one thing I see with teams, even at the highest level, if I ask them, how many pendings are you carrying?

[00:27:15] Lauren: They're going back and counting every pending.

[00:27:18] Lauren: They don't have

[00:27:19] Lauren: a dashboard that says, I have nine buyers and I have eight listings under contract right now. I have five active listings and we have 10 pre listings coming on the market or coming soon, whenever you

[00:27:29] Mie: pending GCI do you have coming up? Like, do you know what your business is going to actually look like? You know, it's so funny. I coach with teams all across the country and most of them don't. And this is something that I've been building out with a lot of the teams that I coach is, an interface that will show you that.

[00:27:45] Mie: So you can get that technology through click up. You can get that technology through Monday. You can get that technology through air table, which are all. Fairly affordable. They are not necessarily the most ideal for transaction management. That is, you would want something like open to close or, eventually CISU, but CISU is a massive investment that can hold multiple things.

[00:28:04] Mie: And you don't need all those metrics all the time, which that's a conversation for now. but, when we mentioned earlier, being fiscally responsible at scale is your tech stack will evolve. And so you also have to be in business, someone who can tolerate the evolution of the instability of systems of like that need to level up as your business levels up because your financials make sense now.

[00:28:25] Lauren: And having to be able to learn that technology, you need someone that's adaptable, and ready to challenge you too. I'd say it's okay if they push back a little bit, but they also need to hear the point and accept it if that's the decision that's moving forward with.

[00:28:38] Mie: Right. and to that note, this is just a very minor side quest here. technology is going to evolve. But it shouldn't be constantly evolving. You shouldn't be constantly adding tech, like more and more tech, more and more tech, There are things that make sense there. I have coaching clients that, I'm not going to name names because I know we have relationships with people all over the place.

[00:28:59] Mie: but we're like some technology would be really beneficial for their business, but it doesn't make sense right now. And so we put it on the docket, you know, okay. When we hit. This number. And our goal is to do that within the next two quarters or the next four quarters, then we will actually demo, you know, that technology, even knowing that it's, we, we want to make investments, but you don't need every piece of technology.

[00:29:20] Mie: that's a great way to go broke fast and to have no clarity in your business.

[00:29:23] Lauren: Yes. Okay. So two things here. what pieces of technology should you have and when, and then running through your P and L and determining what you need and what you don't need anymore.

[00:29:35] Lauren: So maybe let's.

[00:29:36] Mie: Raise your hand. Everyone should be looking at their P& L.

[00:29:40] Lauren: Like what I just said, do you have a dashboard? My biggest thing that I love to coach on is know your numbers. Cause numbers tell a story. And when you're having conversations with agents or your team or other coaches, the numbers don't, I mean, it's emotional no matter what, but you can have more non emotionally,

[00:29:58] Lauren: what's the word?

[00:30:00] Mie: because it's just the

[00:30:01] Lauren: yes. You know, it's not, it doesn't have to be an emotional conversation just because the numbers are right there. You can say, hey, you've been here five days out of the week. You have made this many calls and your conversions, this, and this is what your pending counts at. So this can be a positive conversation or coaching conversation.

[00:30:16] Lauren: These conversations do not have to be negative at all, either. but when we're talking about running through the PNL, it's Looking at each item, line item by line item and going through, do you need that mojo account? Do you need, that ad spend? Do you need X, Y, Z, you

[00:30:31] Mie: data. What's the usage on this technology you're providing? Like, do you have Vulkan right now, but no one on your team is calling expired? Take that bill off of there for now.

[00:30:40] Lauren: Yep. So let me know. So this can be a collaboration of you need a CRM. I'd say no matter what you need a CRM. We love follow up boss. That's what we coach our teams to, some kind of IDX, Sierra Interactive. Why? Lopo? great ways for leads to come into your website. You don't need a transaction management system right away.

[00:31:01] Lauren: I'd say that is a piece of tech that you add on once you've hit a certain level of profitability. so we have a CRM, we have IDX. This isn't a tech stack, but you need a who, you need a person, an integrator running these items.

[00:31:13] Lauren: So that's an expense. Facebook, which is free to

[00:31:17] Mie: Mm hmm.

[00:31:18] Lauren: read your social media and your ads and creating a team page. What else would you say

[00:31:24] Mie: I would say like a Canva, something to put graphics or even videos together. things that you're going to use for your. Better consultation, your listing presentation, like if it's 13 bucks a month, I think that's like a very justifiable, having a tech stack that can do a lot for you with a little bit of money.

[00:31:40] Lauren: is some kind of newsletter that sends things out?

[00:31:44] Mie: Now, Suneet would also probably say, and Suneet if I'm wrong here, call me out on the next podcast, but I feel like Suneet would also say like a mail chimp, like something where you would start, distributing newsletters too.

[00:31:56] Lauren: Yeah, and press the news is one that he really likes Can't think of it off the top of my

[00:32:00] Lauren: head. Well

[00:32:00] Mie: it Flowdesk?

[00:32:01] Lauren: No, it begins with an S,

[00:32:04] Lauren: going to come to me after this call,

[00:32:06] Mie: Of course.

[00:32:07] Mie: some way to, do distribution of your emails. And I hope, maybe Cindy's already done a podcast on this, or maybe he can. But him and Preston, or he and Preston are so educated on how to send those, the emails out and which domain to send it from and how to get better open rate viability.

[00:32:24] Mie: And so there's a lot of things that go into that conversation, which we could probably spend an entire podcast talking about, but you be building up your, client list. And, you know, whoever you're selling to, whatever it is you're selling, you should have a client list that is regularly hearing from you.

[00:32:39] Mie: And hopefully your CRM can do a lot of the heavy lifting around that. But that also, I know that there's some potential clash depending on your, like what you're sending in the deliverability and who you're sending it to. So I'll leave that in Sydney's hands, but I do think having a way to send out emails, like a MailChimp is in there too.

[00:32:57] Lauren: really bugging me. I want to say serve pro, but I think that's just like a company.

[00:33:01] Mie: I think it's a strong company. Okay, so getting on the tech side, um, so we talked about the, listing and transaction management step one, the who was step two, and then you said step three was the systems and procedures.

[00:33:14] Lauren: Yeah, that's just creating the culture of productivity. So, the structure of everything is the admin running the plays every single day there in the office. They're making sure everyone is where they need to be. They're following up with clients. And, we could do a whole podcast on listing and transaction management and what that workflow is going to look like.

[00:33:34] Lauren: But, it's really powerful if you're getting even the admin showing up on those morning calls because again, if it's a virtual team or you don't have an expectations of agents to be in office until a certain time, it's always really powerful for people to be calling together. But if that is just not an option or life happens, everyone has a square.

[00:33:52] Lauren: that is a zoom call because you might have multiple office locations as well. You don't want those other people feeling lonely or on an island. So get everyone together on one zoom call, go through what you're grateful for, go through your appointments that you've set or met. What's your calling focus for today?

[00:34:08] Lauren: no agent left behind, who doesn't have a pending on the board? Again, it doesn't matter if you have one agent to 30 plus agents. How do we, what open houses do we have coming on that week? Everyone rallying around each other to help somebody get that client script with each other and then getting into lead generation.

[00:34:24] Lauren: And the reason I bring up this structure is because while the agents are lead genning, admin has time to go do all the minutiae and take the 80 percent off of their plate. So they can be following up with the title companies. They can be following up with the lenders. They can be calling past clients or they can be calling, the salaries every single Tuesday down a list.

[00:34:42] Lauren: And just saying, Even if they don't have an update, Hey, just calling to check in for really just that touch means a lot to people. they can be sending emails out and just following their checklist and doing their job. So the agent has one last thing to think about and can just go out. And be a good agent and building their brand and getting more business.

[00:34:59] Mie: Yeah, so good. Is there anything I didn't ask you today about how to effectively scale your business through operations and

[00:35:09] Lauren: I think the one thing that I didn't talk about too much is communication. Having a communication cadence. We talked about leadership with communication. but that cadence goes to agents that Kate reminders. Everyone needs a reminder. Nobody, how, no matter how many times you tell them, they're going to say, you never told me that.

[00:35:26] Lauren: So just do you have it going out in an email? Do you have it going out in a text message, a group, me, some kind of phone call, a Facebook post, how are you communicating with your agents? Of communicating where they need to be and when,

[00:35:38] Mie: Can

[00:35:38] Mie: we unpack that for the

[00:35:40] Mie: communication because Matt Smith said this at Maverick, and this is something I've subscribed to for a very long time, but I love that he, put a number on it. He said, if you haven't told him seven times, you didn't say it at all. And I don't know if that's the actual scientific number

[00:35:55] Mie: seven times, if there's, if it actually seven,

[00:35:58] Mie: I've

[00:35:59] Mie: never seen this, sentiment, the anecdote range true for me as well as the sentiment.

[00:36:04] Mie: I think it's really helpful for people to understand because that is a grievance that a lot of team owners have is like, I'm tired of repeating myself. I'm tired of saying the same thing over and over and over again. They don't listen. They never listen. I hear this from parents. I hear this from, team owners.

[00:36:19] Mie: We have to remember that there are so much noise and not just In general, we're in a generation where there is nonstop noise, whether it be social media, whether it be all the little fires that they have to put out their economic state, most agents that. business is not where they want it to be If they are financially struggling or financial, like it is, violating one of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, when they're financially it impacts all of the most, like the survival, needs that we have. we get into a parasympathetic nervous state, like our parasympathetic nervous state activates and we get into flight or fight.

[00:36:54] Mie: And so you have to understand that when people are struggling like that, most of them are in an emotionally dysregulated state and we have not been given coping skills on how to regulate in that place. most people don't even know what I'm talking about.

[00:37:06] Mie: so it's not because they don't want to, and it's not because they can't, and it's not because they just inherently don't like listening to you.

[00:37:13] Mie: And I'm not saying that that's never the case, but it rarely is the case. And it's really that there's so much noise and there are so many things being asked of them, not just inside of their business, but in their interpersonal relationships, their finances, whatever's stressing them, whatever's ailing them.

[00:37:30] Mie: There's so much noise. And so the repetition is not about. they're not going to get it unless I say it seven times, it is saying it enough times so that you can catch one of those opportunities where it will stick, you know, and that it will stay in front of them. You're being the squeaky wheel who's going to get the oil.

[00:37:46] Mie: And by the way, what you're also doing when you deliver that well. You are exemplifying that you care, which will make them feel connected to you, which will make them show up more because they want to be close to the person who they feel connected to. And so I think that it's a benefit all around. So just make sure that you're repeating the things that you want to see happen in your team.

[00:38:07] Lauren: And that is how you scale connection and culture. It is, it is. And production, it's connection, culture, and, production, because if you don't have productivity, you don't need a system to scale because you don't have clients to serve. So. The one thing I'll finish off with is, finding that really strong can take all this stuff off of your agent's plate so they can just focus on what they really need to such that if they don't do anything else, nothing else matters.

[00:38:35] Lauren: Lead generation so that you can have full leverage for, A fully functioning team and business to then generate, they're getting such good. I call it the ultimate client experience. They're getting such good client care that you're generating repeat and referral business. And what I mean by that, you're getting five star reviews on every single closing or about, I know that that's not always realistically going to happen, but, 30 to 70 percent of your closings, you're getting a five star review, which is going to boost your ratings.

[00:39:02] Lauren: When people Google and search you, you're posting those on your social media, and then also you're going to get repeat referrals from clients and they're going to, you're going to get repeat business from your past clients. So if you have production. You have a really good client experience. That is what is going to generate and boost sales on your team.

[00:39:22] Mie: So good. So good. there anything else that we should, unpack before we close off the podcast today?

[00:39:28] Lauren: I don't think so. Cause we could go into a whole nother podcast.

[00:39:31] Mie: know, I want to know, it was awesome. I mean, I love connecting with you in general, but it was awesome. You know, the operations around with you. you're so good at what you do and so

[00:39:45] Mie: confident. You're the best.

[00:39:47] Mie: Um, and

[00:39:48] Mie: thank you for letting us take over the podcast today. You will be seeing us again.

[00:39:51] Mie: We're going to do this every now and again. yeah, I think it's just fun to, you know, Talk about some of the background stuff that we're doing, um, day in and day out and reside and in the real estate world, but, we'll be back. he's still the leader of the podcast,

[00:40:05] Lauren: you want us to let us know, just kidding.

[00:40:11] Mie: but thank you so much for listening. We'll be seeing you on the next episode. Have a wonderful day. Bye.