Secrets to Team Longevity in Real Estate with Ethan Beute

[00:00:00] Ethan: the path. From a 12 or 13 or 14 person organization to a 60 or 70 person organization is ripe with opportunities to burn out, get messed up, lose a lot of money, et cetera. I mean, a lot of people refer to it as the messy middle and there's an interesting path in there.

[00:00:18] Ethan: I think you can figure out a way to be somewhere in between those two things But those are the two spots where it really makes a lot of sense

[00:00:32] Nick: Welcome back to the reside platform podcast. I'm really excited to have our next guest, Ethan Beute. He's the chief evangelist at follow up boss and check this out. I started getting on this guy's LinkedIn for his profile and it just goes, it's a lot, there's a lot more depth to Ethan than I realized.

[00:00:50] Nick: I'm not surprised one, but you guys are going to be surprised. And you're, you're really going to enjoy this because I've been a guest on his podcast for follow a boss and it's the real estate team OS. And we're gonna spend a lot of time on that. Real estate team operating system, because he has some amazing guests and he's been doing it for over a year.

[00:01:05] Nick: And I want to extract the principles and what he's learned so that you guys can implement in your business. But not only that, he's had two other successful podcasts. Chief evangelist is still going. And I want to talk about that. I mean, that's your title, Ethan. Don't talk about it now, but that's your title.

[00:01:21] Nick: Not only that, follow boss has been acquired by Zillow. So he's part of The Zillow ecosystem, the Zillow empire. And I want to learn more about that. He's the principal brand marketing strategist. and part of that is follow up boss, Ethan, welcome to the show.

[00:01:35] Ethan: Thank you so much, Nick. I'm really excited to be on this side of the mic with you. So thank you for the invite.

[00:01:40] Nick: Yeah. You know, I don't just say this, but you're one of the best podcast interviewers in the space.

[00:01:47] Ethan: Appreciate

[00:01:47] Nick: And I don't say that lightweight at all, at all. you do your research, you come prepared, you have amazing guests. You have a great cadence and tone and you get the most out of your show.

[00:01:58] Nick: So if you haven't checked out real estate team, OS, you're going to want to check out that podcast and get all of the downloads started at the beginning, go all the way through some of our favorite people. Sunni Preston, John have been on the show, right. And a whole litany of other people. But give us a little bit of a background about who you are and how did you end up where you are today?

[00:02:19] Ethan: Sure. I'll give you a quick go and then feel free to redirect me or reset me. , Midwesterner by background. I've been living in Colorado for 18 years. First half of my career was running marketing inside local TV stations in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in Chicago, and out here in Colorado Springs where I live now.

[00:02:35] Ethan: got bored of that. Knew a couple of guys who started a software company called BombBomb, which some. Viewers and listeners might know video email video messaging and real estate was a very great product market fit we can spend time on that if we want to essentially because it's a service based space that is completely commoditized and who you are is Fundamental to the service that you provide.

[00:02:55] Ethan: And so communicating more often in video rehumanizes that increasingly faceless digital experience. So that's what got me, deeply steeped in the real estate space in general, while I was growing a software company, you know, one of the first handful of employees, I think we peaked out around, I don't know, maybe 125 employees or so, and like bootstrap that thing to, a pretty nice, annual recurring revenue number. I had the opportunity to join follow up boss because a long time friend and team member there had since jumped over. Steve Passanelli had jumped over to follow up boss to run sales, marketing, and events. And he and I kind of put together this idea, it was his idea, but like we kind of like pushed it forward, to give a reason to join.

[00:03:35] Ethan: we'll certainly get into that. It is real estate team OS, by the way, that's kind of the core function. in my role at follow up boss, but, in general, a pretty simple person. I like to keep things pretty simple. I do like to do my research in all things, including as a host on shows.

[00:03:48] Ethan: like you, I love spending time outside, but instead of, on a bike, I do a lot of running, walking, hiking, , which is all, as I know, you have great access to trails, down the street from my house. I have immediate access to things which by the way something you don't get in Denver , so it's an advantage of living in a smaller town like colorado springs.

[00:04:04] Ethan: It's like it's literally five minutes down street

[00:04:06] Nick: so, I mean, I think for a lot of people, I remember when bomb bomb came into my consciousness, I think I was working with boomtown at the time. I was a longtime boomtown user, , Greer Allen and the whole crew over there. Amazing culture. I think one of the first specific CRM website IDX with lead capture when I found out that people would search a website and then something would pop up and force them to register.

[00:04:37] Nick: I was sold. I was like, are you kidding me? I've been working so hard to lead generate and try to get names, numbers and emails and build relationships. I can just drive traffic to a website and I can call them. And email them and text them, it was groundbreaking in 2011 and I think a ride around maybe 2013, 2014 maybe you can correct me.

[00:04:58] Nick: Ethan is when bomb bomb hit the scene. I'm not so sure. I don't know how early, when

[00:05:03] Ethan: joined joined fall of 2011. The first real estate conference We went to is keller williams family reunion in february of 2012 And then it was all of our discretionary time and money were invested in building relationships and growing in that community. So that was like a, there's a five year run where I was at every Keller Williams event, every REMAX event,

[00:05:21] Ethan: NAR, NAR,

[00:05:23] Ethan: events, all Ferry stuff.

[00:05:24] Nick: yeah. So they were using like market leader. CRM

[00:05:29] Nick: day, Keller's remember market leader was a leader in the IDX space and IDX internet data exchange searching websites where agents had to get that. I mean, that's where teams were forming.

[00:05:41] Nick: They were okay, let's build a team because now I can generate all these leads. And there's actually a software, a SAS service where I can actually distribute those and we can, I can oversee them. think that was really how teams were evolving,

[00:05:57] Ethan: Yeah. A hundred percent. I

[00:05:58] Ethan: yeah, I was just going to observe that, Greg Harrelson, mutual friend, episode 37 talks a lot about that, but then also Dan Corkill, founder of a follow up boss. I had him on episode 40 of Real Estate Team OS, and we talked a lot about the parallel rise of online leads. Team formation and follow up boss the timing of follow up boss and his Just default operating mode of customer intimacy is what I would call it customer intimacy and customer led education Or why follow up boss is the company that it is and he set the tone for that he really breaks down really nicely how those three things really worked in tandem and Fez has a fun dive into that topic, which you lived I get to learn

[00:06:38] Nick: I mean, yeah, the emergence of leads and then software and then the experience and building the teams and, led to conversion.

[00:06:47] Nick: And I think that's where BombBomb came in and was like, bringing video to the, the experience

[00:06:52] Ethan: I mean, that's how I really to know the real estate business was, you know, as I was looking to teach use cases and I was learning from our real estate customers what they were doing. I learned that's how I mean, the customer lifecycle is about the same in a lot of businesses with nuance. But I really got into the nuance of, obviously speed to lead, lead follow up.

[00:07:11] Ethan: What do we do if someone says they're nine months out? How do we stay in touch with them? I was teaching it from a video perspective, but you could take video out of it and the same principles still apply. Video just makes it more personal and human and allows you to explain things in a different way than you can in faceless typed out text or, charts that some people can't read.

[00:07:28] Ethan: some people are very chart friendly and some people aren't. whereas if you, the expert, get to own your expertise and explain things in layperson's terms, that was the power of video. So I was teaching all the way through, like, how do I stay in touch with someone who I did business with four years ago in such a way that they, continue to reach out to me when they have questions or opportunities or referrals or whatever.

[00:07:47] Nick: yeah, a lot of that technology was just embedding it into the email and being able to deliver it by email now with, phones, the technology on phones, even how do you recommend you deliver? Video and face to face messaging.

[00:08:00] Ethan: Yeah. I mean, a lot of apps have it natively embedded, So if you have clients who are on like a, Oh, And there's a far reaching with one of these, but like, you know, WhatsApp or Marco Polo or whatever, like it's inherent to the app. you can certainly text videos phone to phone, but if you're going like iPhone to Android, it still can get messy.

[00:08:17] Ethan: If you're going or iPhone to, I don't know what they have, it can get messy in the way that it's delivered. So, the other benefit of using a third party, whether it's BombBomb or another service similar to it, is that you can also track it. So do I know if my video got played?

[00:08:31] Ethan: I don't know that if I just record it on my iPhone and send it, I don't know if I send it via, Facebook Messenger or LinkedIn message or however I'm communicating directly. I don't know if it was open, how much of it was consumed. Did they watch it multiple times? That's to say, did they share it with their spouse or another decision maker or with a couple of friends saying things like, hey, check out how my new realtor, communicates with me.

[00:08:51] Ethan: I don't know. Cool. or check out what this person explains to me. And so there are a number of benefits to using a third party. I mean, it's really, your choice if you're going to do it infrequently, I think just use the native platform, but if you really want to integrate it including, you know, a direct follow up boss integration, something like BombBomb could be really, really helpful for that.

[00:09:08] Nick: I think so. Well, I've just been really reflecting on the evolution of teams through the years. And you mentioned Dan Corkle episode and Greg Harrelson episode. Highly recommend checking those out on Real Estate Team OS. Because a lot of the teams that have formed over the last For even 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 years.

[00:09:32] Nick: I don't think they actually understand what a team is. I think they think a team is something other than what I think a team is. And I think the definition of the team and the reason for having a team needs to be rediscovered for a lot of these people. I just shot a podcast with Dustin Runyon is probably out by the time this one comes out.

[00:09:51] Nick: And we really dive into the reasons for building a team. But what are the fundamentals of a team? In your world, based on your interviews with some of the top team leaders, what may, what are the core components of a team?

[00:10:05] Ethan: I'll start with where you just were, and maybe we'll dwell on this because I think it's really interesting. you know, a team is a lot of different things. I think, you know, I had a chance to write a short piece for Inman news and I opted to go with like the, you know, five myths about real estate teams debunked in the first one, one your goal is to build a mega team.

[00:10:22] Ethan: so different people have different aspirations and I think some of the confusion, it was interesting what you started saying there about, folks who've, started building a team one, two, three, four years ago. my hope was that you're going to go in the more in a different direction, but, you know, you're talking with.

[00:10:35] Ethan: team leaders and aspiring team leaders as often or even more often than I am, is that they're, standing on the shoulders of giants that they're learning what the real pioneers, like you who've been doing it for, 10, 12, 14 years in earnest, are doing. It's still a messy description, I guess is where I'll land.

[00:10:53] Ethan: And, you know, for me, yeah, you could argue that, the single most profitable thing you could do is real estate agents. I don't think this is arguable. but the piece that's arguable is whether or not this is a team, a super productive agent with one or two or three W two employees around them, helping them be super, super, super productive.

[00:11:11] Ethan: You could call that a team. I would prefer to go into the camp of, More than one agent together is where we start talking about is this team or or is this not a team? when I had a chance to kind of break down my first year of learnings at a conference recently, I just did a quick walkthrough of something.

[00:11:27] Ethan: It's a little bit, simplified, but that's what we have to do with something that's so ill defined. I'll just walk through this really quickly and give it back to you to redirect. But, you know, of course, there's a small team and I think the small team starts with like, you, And a buyer's agent or two and maybe a part time assistant or a full time assistant, you know, then you bring on someone either help with marketing or Transaction coordination kind of like getting a little bit more specialized in admin or support or assistance, whatever that you know However, you're defining that or describing that in terms of a role and you just kind of grow from there and you start, you figure out what are our best lead sources Are we doing this profitably?

[00:11:59] Ethan: Do I have the right people around me? Do I have the foundation in place to start both growing and scaling? Those two things are not the same thing. and, easily confused and often, used interchangeably, but they're different. , and we can get into that if you want to as well. So I think the small team maxes out at what's popularly referred to as the seal team, where the team leader and owner of the team is still in production.

[00:12:21] Ethan: and that's going to be where the team leader makes the most money. Or is the most profitable at least, because they're still in production. They have, six, seven, eight, nine great agents around them. Just enough staff behind them, that they're lean, mean, still a family feel, still benefit, still benefiting from the rain maker.

[00:12:39] Ethan: I think that's, whether they're handing some of the deals off, by side, at least, or holding onto them, like That's a great, great team. And that's where some people should stay. If you want to press on and get to 50 agents, which is where I think you make more money than you would make in that scenario, you're going to probably need to leave sales production.

[00:12:58] Ethan: Probably for the most part, you might hold on to a couple of deals a year or something to stay in touch. But what I've heard from a number of folks is that I did the math. When I was at essentially some version of a seal team where I was still producing, I had a bunch of agents around me. I had a really good, financial arrangement, which was equitable and profitable, profitable for me and equitable for everybody involved.

[00:13:18] Ethan: personally was not going to make the same amount of money until I got to about 45 or 50 agents and the path. From a 12 or 13 or 14 person organization to a 60 or 70 person organization is ripe with opportunities to burn out, get messed up, lose a lot of money, et cetera. I mean, a lot of people refer to it as the messy middle and there's an interesting path in there.

[00:13:42] Ethan: I know you've been through that path. So I'd be curious to know what you would observe about that, but, I think you can figure out a way to be somewhere in between those two things But those are the two spots where it really makes a lot of sense and from that, 40 50 agent scenario you're really laying the groundwork to have true economies of scale.

[00:14:00] Ethan: and to be able to deliver on the three types of agents you need if you're going to build a massive organization and that is the agent who truly needs you I need everything you have I need your training. I need your coaching. I need your leads. I need everything. Then the next layer of agent is the, I'm not sure if I need you.

[00:14:18] Ethan: That's the, I've been taking your leads. I've been converting. Well, I'm a good performer. I'm starting to get some referrals and some repeat business off. , the online leads you've been giving me, I'm starting to build my own reputation and book of business and database. , and my next, , solid seven figure listing might be when I really start to run the numbers again and maybe peel off on you.

[00:14:36] Ethan: and then there's the other agent, which is I straight up don't need you. I've talked with a number of agents on these large scale teams, which you need to get there and stay there they could literally work anywhere in town. Anyone would love to have them. They're sharp, they're competent, they run a great business, they're really good at what they do, they like to mentor people formally or informally, and they're going to make whoever is housing them money while they make a ton of money themselves.

[00:14:59] Ethan: And so how do you keep all those three types of people engaged properly, that requires. An infrastructure that a smaller team can't afford. so anyway, that's where some of the economies of scale start to get in play. And that's how you can afford to push on to some of these other levels, of course, teams at this point could get to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of agents.

[00:15:20] Ethan: so anyway, I said a lot there. Feel free to jump in wherever you want there.

[00:15:24] Nick: Well, it's, Well said Ethan.

[00:15:28] Nick: And

[00:15:29] Ethan: disagree

[00:15:30] Nick: well, I don't disagree with it as much as I want to put up some perspective on this because the Navy SEAL team for some reason became what you don't want in the industry. And I'm trying to figure out when that happened, because I remember I was at a mastermind group and.

[00:15:50] Nick: Mastermind in 2014 and a very, very influential person who built a team up to 450 transactions in back then, which is like doing 4, 000 now. And he had 50 agents and it all burned down on him, came crumbling down on him. He said, I'm never going to do that again. I'm going back to five or six, seven agents and I'm going to pour into them and we're going to do deals like we did before.

[00:16:16] Nick: You know, our per agent productivity is going to be 24 plus for every single person. We're going to dominate the marketplace. We're gonna be highly profitable. We're going to be lean and mean. So it's almost like that hero's journey. He had grown, you know, or Icarus and he gets really close, too close to the sun and they burn down, But for some reason people, I think it's through modeling, maybe Ethan, where they, if you're starting a team now, you want to, model success. So you look at the most successful people. And when I was starting my team, the most successful people were doing 300, 400 deals. And they were very lean.

[00:16:49] Nick: they were tracking every lead. They were tracking every appointment. They had their conversion rates dialed in. their agents had really close proximity to the rainmaker. The rainmaker may not have been going on appointments, but they were helping them negotiate, helping them convert listings, helping them convert buyers.

[00:17:05] Nick: And so I modeled those people. Those were the people that I modeled those people. I looked up to, like, I think you had Andrew Duncan on your podcast one point, like the Duncan duo, Andrew Duncan in Tampa Bay was one of my early, like, Whoa, I can, I mean, follow your lead, Andrew. And I reached out to him and, you know, he ran an amazing team, top five remax team.

[00:17:23] Nick: And for many, many years in Tampa Bay, it's a great, great, leader and operator. but now it's like, you look on stage and people are doing 2000 transactions, 3000 trends or something crazy. And they've attached themselves to a cloud based broke brokerage and expansion. And they can show numbers through their downlines that are just astronomical.

[00:17:45] Nick: And so maybe you think that's what you want, but you don't know what they did to get there at all. And I want to get your take on it. I've seen so many people skip the Navy stills. Step and completely crash and burn. they start hiring marketing managers, social media V they have 18 VAs doing social media posts.

[00:18:09] Nick: they're building their YouTube channels clips and tick talks, and they're doing all this massive influencer things that you do when you become the chief. At the top of this giant pyramid you built, but they have no pyramid. They have no base. What's your take on that? I think we're going back.

[00:18:25] Nick: I think, with 7 percent interest rates, we're going back to that guy in 2014. That was like, I'm going back. To the Navy SEAL.

[00:18:33] Ethan: Yeah, I'm going to knock out three things really quickly. One, the main problem with the seal team that I've heard is that if you are in production and you're lean and mean and you lose one of those people, you just lost, you know, 14 or 24 percent of your revenue, top line revenue, but you still have this infrastructure to support that.

[00:18:53] Ethan: So that means you have to take your eye off the ball because you can't, you're, you're not structured to bring a brand new agent And if you do, then that's also going to exacerbate what I'm about to say is anytime you need to replace one or two people in order to replace, 10, percent of your revenue, which you need to stay as profitable as you work because you are lean and mean, that's going to take attention away from your own production.

[00:19:15] Ethan: And or it's going to lead to your own burnout. and if you take, if you do wind up bringing on a new person, you need to give them even more time and attention, which means that it's going to be a further threat to your own production, which, like, that's the main frustration there with that model is that you still need to be involved in a way that's going to cost you money one way or another, because no one stays forever.

[00:19:34] Ethan: no matter what. and if they do, then, that might not be worth it. The second thing I want to plus up is what you said. Like, I don't care what size team you're running if you don't have your lead conversion broken down at at least two or three stages, right? Because all know what leads up to from, you know, initial contact, whatever that is, came in through a Facebook ad or, you know, came to one of my in person events me by referral.

[00:19:49] Ethan: so, you know, I don't care what size team you're running if you don't have your lead conversion broken down at at least two or three stages, right? Because we all know what leads up to from, you know, initial contact, whatever that is, you know, a Facebook ad or, you know, came to one of my in person events or, you know, came to me by referral.

[00:19:56] Ethan: Or, I'm buying leads pay up front or pay at close. However, I'm doing that no matter how they're coming in, you know, like the multiple steps to actually getting to a contract and getting to closing. If you're not tracking conversion at least two or three of those steps and working on that, you're not building a foundation for scale.

[00:20:13] Ethan: You're just building foundation that you're going to, continue to. You can put money in and make money on it, but it's not going to be efficient in a way. And I guess I'll talk about growth versus scale real quick. Growth is about, output, and this sometimes this turns into what is easily looked at as vanity metrics and appropriately so in a lot of contexts.

[00:20:29] Ethan: that's volume. It's units sold. It might be agent count, etcetera. It's like outputs. What are we outputting? That's growth. Like I want to grow these things. Scale is so much more about inputs and efficiency. What's going on behind the scenes? And am I getting Growth numbers on the same inputs.

[00:20:45] Ethan: That's efficiency. That's profitability. That's a good business. I don't care what size you are what you said there about being able to know your numbers and not just you know the key numbers but what are the numbers behind the numbers? not that you need to fixate on them But if you're not looking to improve on those things, you don't have someone who is equipped and motivated to focus on those things Then you're not building something for the long term, and you're not going to squeeze out, from an efficiency standpoint, what you should be.

[00:21:13] Ethan: So, with that, I'll say, yes, I am seeing people. And this is, what I was referring to earlier on, like standing on the shoulders of giants. You can plug into one of those cloud based brokerages where you have the, let's just call it the Mount Rushmore of that brokerage. the people that are, you know, tend to get a lot of national attention.

[00:21:30] Ethan: They're at the conferences, like, These are the, you know, when I think of this brokerage, I think of these four or five different people and depending on what region you're in, those faces might change on this pretend Mount Rushmore of the brokerage that I somehow I'm doubling down on here as a metaphor.

[00:21:44] Ethan: But, you can learn from what those people are doing and you can go behind the scenes in a way with people who've actually done it. Like, You, Nick, and a whole bunch of other people, including Andrew, who you mentioned earlier, Duncan, you know, pioneered this thing that now is normalized in a way that wasn't normalized a dozen years ago.

[00:22:01] Ethan: So some people might look at a show like Real Estate Team OS and be like, Teams? We've been talking about Teams as long as I've been in the business. I'm like, you've been in the business eight years. The NAR, for example, is almost 120 years old, so we're talking about very recent history here, and so we are now in a position where this kind of second generation of today's style of team can fast track themselves based on some of the models and teachings is one of the things that I love about the industry, and it was one of the reasons I was so excited to kind of double back into it like a really hard way by joining follow up boss and launching deep into hundreds of hours of conversations with team leaders.

[00:22:38] Ethan: Is, you can do this any way that you want. And if you choose to follow someone else's path, a, you still need to figure out what's true for you on that path. You're not going to follow it exactly. There is no one right playbook, but there are ways to fast track into. I'm at 50 agents. , and I did it at, double or triple the speed.

[00:22:59] Ethan: And with, at least 80 percent of the effectiveness as someone else who did the same thing. six eight ten years ago and it's because The industry is so open because you can pay not very much money and go to a maverick mastermind and see True masters of the industry in 2024 2025 Out there sharing their secrets openly now, not every community is that way I've been privileged to host people on the show that are open with real strategies.

[00:23:26] Ethan: And I know reside is too , podcast very regularly Real numbers real stories real examples. And so as long as you're Finding yourself in the right communities at the right masterminds on the right podcasts in the right rooms Then you can fast track This work in a way that you couldn't six, eight, ten years ago, because it just wasn't well known.

[00:23:48] Ethan: Everyone was still like experimenting wildly and the ones who had their heads on straight and knew that I need to build a real business. I don't just need to grow this thing. I need to grow and scale simultaneously as much as possible are the ones that are gonna, really have the best ideas for you today.

[00:24:04] Nick: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's the advantage of a new team is they can, they really can get to where I'm at today. That's taken a decade. They could do it in two years. Totally.

[00:24:17] Ethan: way, I didn't on your social media thing. There's some people who want you to believe that they got there, but like, they're not there. They just look like they're there.

[00:24:24] Nick: they do. They look like they're there.

[00:24:26] Nick: it won't take very many questions. By someone like myself for you to, and just asking them about lead conversion, asking them about their numbers and they will change the subject very quickly. Either they don't know it or they don't want to tell you.

[00:24:41] Nick: And so it's just, I think early in the teams, you know, my agents would have to give me their numbers every day in writing. And I love technology. I love follow a boss. We use follow a boss. But because I had a system in place to report your numbers, it doesn't matter. Now it just happens to be electronically.

[00:25:03] Nick: I still have the expectation as a team leader that you report your numbers. It's just a follow up boss. That's just an amazing job to just capture it. Automatically, if you use the app, but that doesn't mean I don't have to call that agent and review the numbers with them or a sales manager doesn't have to review the numbers with them.

[00:25:19] Nick: I love real things and I also love technology and I love that. I know. How it evolved from a piece of paper to someone like Dan was like, Hey, I can code that into a form. I can track it on the phone.

[00:25:34] Ethan: What's the most painful thing you're facing right now? I could build that. You know, that's how we built it.

[00:25:40] Nick: Yeah. So, over the last year and two months, you've been doing this podcast. What were some of your favorite episodes and why?

[00:25:51] Ethan: Oh, man, that's a really good question. It's a really hard question, too. I mean, a couple of a couple of reasons why one, every story is unique. and two, as someone who's been doing creative work his entire life, you do, even though you're always cautioned not to, you know, you tend to fall in love with, , a lot of your work in a lot of different, in a lot of different ways.

[00:26:11] Ethan: , I guess a couple of things I'll say, I really enjoyed getting to know all four of you, co founders of reside in this way. I mean, you know, we can connect at a conference, but like everyone's got their own thing. You can have a good five minute, 10 minute conversation, but being able to just carve out an hour of the day and really spend time learning how someone built her or his business, is a joy and a privilege.

[00:26:30] Ethan: I really did enjoy my conversation with Greg, who I met in a Maverick mastermind. one of the things I really enjoyed about the freedom that I have to pursue this is that, I've been able to make up some new formats. So, I made up this concept of, going inside the team, which I don't know has been done in the industry before.

[00:26:47] Ethan: Tell me if you've heard of anything like this, what I was hearing from some of the, and I know you've heard, I know you've definitely heard this before, which is, yeah, it's a really good question, Ethan, but you'd have to talk to so and so in my company. to tell you how that really happens.

[00:26:59] Ethan: You know, I haven't handled that or touched that, or I don't really understand it in a way that would answer your question or satisfy the people who want to know the answer to that question. So that led me to the idea of doing an inside the team series. So the first team I went inside was the Lawton team in Phoenix.

[00:27:14] Ethan: And so the main people I'm interviewing are the team leader and or. the primary operator, whether that's a COO or the director of ops, or, the integrator to the visionary, however you want to describe that role. Those are the two main, I'm probably do, I probably done over that first 80 episodes that we've released about a five to one ratio.

[00:27:31] Ethan: So it's mostly team leader. So yeah, we did have the team leader, George Lawton. Yeah, we did have his, multi year COO, Billy Hobbs, but we also got their head of agent productivity, their operations Two of their top agents, each of whom are building their team inside their team, their team leader who runs the team leaders at their five different offices.

[00:27:50] Ethan: So, You get the vision and the strategy from the top But then we also walk that all the way out in the course of an eight episode series to understand How that plays out to the agent on the street. and we're in the middle as we're recording this we're in the middle of releasing, the second one that i've done which is inside whistle realty.

[00:28:07] Ethan: So of course you get team leader kyle whistle you get coo chris vanderbilt But you get the director of operations, director of sales, agent, success manager, head of media, head of marketing, and there are two top agents, each of whom has been there less than three years, both of whom are brand new to the industry.

[00:28:24] Ethan: And one of them did 15 deals a year, the first year, 30 deals, the second year, just shy of 60, In, his third year in his pacing right now, to double that number again. and all he's doing is running the plays that are called, he's just doing what he was taught to do by the team. And so this idea of getting inside an organization to understand, not just theoretically, or not just historically, how do I think about this?

[00:28:48] Ethan: How do I set this up? But like for the people who are actually doing the things, coaching the people, setting up the systems, iterating on the processes, I've really enjoyed doing that as well. So, I know that wasn't a direct answer to the question, but it's really hard to pick because each story is so unique and there's something, last thing, I guess, did some end of year episodes where I invited viewers and listeners on, and so I did these 15 minute interviews with, Eight different viewers and listeners who replied to one of the emails.

[00:29:17] Ethan: If you subscribe, you can reply to the email on the other side of all of them. and so, one of the guys I brought on, for example, is a guy named Jonathan Campbell up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Number one team in Pennsylvania for several years running about two dozen agents and they're averaging 45 to 50 deals a year. And he said, I can learn something from everyone. That's why I like this show, so he's got people who are five or 10 steps behind him on their team building journey. And of course, some people who are air quote ahead of him. The thing is, you can do whatever you want, however you want. And so you have something to learn from everyone around you.

[00:29:48] Ethan: And there's no one right way to do it. And so there's no, there's different energy on all of them, just like they're different. There's different energy in any conversation you have with anyone. but they're all, there's something to learn from everybody

[00:30:00] Nick: Yeah, I love the insiders here. you call it the

[00:30:04] Nick: insider

[00:30:05] Ethan: inside the team. Yeah. So inside the Lawton team, inside whistle realty.

[00:30:08] Nick: because here's what's, as we've been building reside, we started with John Preston, Sunit, myself, we start adding very talented people from within the industry and from outside the

[00:30:22] Nick: industry.

[00:30:23] Ethan: That's a great theme to talk about too, by the way, bringing people outside the industry to build, organizations like yours or like a real estate team

[00:30:31] Nick: Yeah. I mean like C suite level stuff, like Curtis is our CFO. He's a CPA. He ran his own accounting firm. He helped a corporation. he was the CEO of a corporation during a bankruptcy. The judge assigned him as a CEO. He had over 230 people assigned to him.

[00:30:51] Nick: Right

[00:30:51] Ethan: wild.

[00:30:52] Nick: You know, and so it's like, it's really cool.

[00:30:54] Nick: So what happens is people are interested in reside because of us, but then they get in, they get within reside and we're like, no, you need to talk to Curtis. You need to talk to Lauren.

[00:31:04] Ethan: You need to talk to me, uh, who I've enjoyed hearing on the

[00:31:07] Nick: You need to talk to me about agent. They're like, really, can't you just tell me about agent training? I said I could, but we got Mia and she's phenomenal, right?

[00:31:15] Nick: And so it's kind of cool to see that teams as teams have evolved, they are becoming more of a corporate structure. they're a real business. It's not just a team. It's a real business, a real corporation and talent matters at that level.

[00:31:31] Ethan: hundred percent. Yeah. that was another thing that I taught, when I had an opportunity to have a stage at unlock, which was, what we're seeing today. I said, I called it building something new slash not new. Yeah. I mean, it's absolutely new to the industry. The industry has never seen an organization like Robert slack, 20 years ago, the imagination for that, like it didn't even exist.

[00:31:50] Ethan: So it exists today. So it is new to the industry, but at the same time, if you think about, the leverage that a team provides agents, it's just like any other business. You don't have us in no other industry. Besides maybe a sole proprietorship or something else which by the way Individual real estate agent is functionally a sole proprietorship do you have a salesperson who also does?

[00:32:10] Ethan: All of the marketing, all of the bookkeeping, all of the customer service and customer experience, all of the product design and development. You know, what is this thing going to be right? Sales people sell. And so when you look at this organization, when you look at the leverage that's going behind.

[00:32:26] Ethan: The team leader, and then ultimately behind all of the agents, it is looking a lot more like a very traditional company as it's existed for a century, at least in every other industry, which is put specialists at every position. Have them work really well together, have a shared culture and a shared vision.

[00:32:44] Ethan: That keeps them aligned have some cadence, whether that's EOS or scaling up or some other model, to make sure that we have a regular cadence to keep everyone on the same page and make sure that we're doing the right stuff in the right order in the right way. pay attention to all the numbers.

[00:32:58] Ethan: Repeat, get up the next day, repeat, get up the next day, repeat. and so it's new to the industry, but it's not new. And so that's one of the reasons I I've been encouraging team leaders to look outside the yes. It's important. It is a hundred percent worth your time and money and investment and investment of time and attention and energy to get on an airplane and go, I don't know when this is going to release, but get on an airplane and go down to a new Orleans and hang out at the Maverick mastermind.

[00:33:26] Ethan: That is 100 percent something you should do. You should also, though, and I know a lot of people do this already, look outside the industry. Read biographies of people who've built companies you respect. Go to a conference or at least an event outside of your industry. Think about the friends that you know casually.

[00:33:44] Ethan: Maybe their, daughter plays on a soccer team with your daughter. And you know them casually, but then you realize what they do as a background and say, Hey, can we have lunch once a month for the next couple of months? I really want to share what I'm up to and learn what you're doing, If they're building a business in a different category, leading a division or like took a company through a bankruptcy as a court aside CEO, so there's so much to be learned from outside the industry to inform what this next level of.

[00:34:10] Ethan: Real estate team can look like and arguably should look like

[00:34:15] Nick: well, I think we uncovered what, is the linchpin to go from a Navy SEALs really, really charismatic or great producing team leader with a, has lots of leads and agents that he can, he or she can get away with not having procedures because they're in the trenches every day. Two, what does it take to get to 50 agents and be successful or a hundred agents or Robert Slack level teams?

[00:34:40] Nick: It's business acumen, it's business acumen and people with business acumen. It really is. I mean, we talk about that at Reside and John talked about it. He's like, Whoa, we spent a lot of time on business. Just teaching business, and that's a big part of what reside does. we often a lot of the reside teams, when they go from a million, 2 million, they're in that million, the messy middle, the million to 2 million, they start, we start making recommendations, you need a higher. A director of sales, we call it what you want, or like a director of operations or an executive assistant. And they're like, Oh, really, really? And then they, we bring them in and then we're training those people. Real estate and the CRM and lead conversion. there's a fantastic team in reside Carrie Hinshaw and her director of operations is Lisa and she has experience in hotels.

[00:35:34] Nick: I mean, she ran like she was in charge of a region of hotels in like the Chicago area, Illinois area. I'm like, Whoa, this lady has so much talent. She just needs to know business and real estate agents. And the psychology of a real estate agent and the splits and the different things and the websites and, but she understands business.

[00:35:56] Nick: I don't have to teach her that that would take too long, right? Ethan, it would take me years to teach business and I might not,

[00:36:02] Ethan: that's

[00:36:03] Ethan: kind of the push in the pole That's one of the reasons at some level that someone can do what took you a dozen years to do in half the time or a quarter of the time, Because that's been modeled out and i'm now surrounded by people who understand business you understood when you started my understanding of your background is you super understood You Process and procedure and so your default mode when it came to organizing a real estate business for yourself and then ultimately for you know, all the people that you brought around you was very process and procedure based.

[00:36:35] Ethan: I don't think that's the norm Although i've heard all kinds of different backgrounds I just had a nice conversation with jessica boswell who I think is a reside Client as well, she's a scientist With art history degree, right? So when she came to the business, she brought a unique perspective.

[00:36:50] Ethan: but you know, when we think about, some of the other pioneers in space, like a Chris Lindahl, for example, will tell you, was just an absolute sales monster. Who wanted to get out there and build as many relationships as possible, do as much business as possible. I think in his last year of full time production before really going into his team in earnest, he did something like 174, , units with a part time assistant.

[00:37:13] Ethan: but he was really honest with me in that. And I think that was episode six, of, All of the challenges he had trying to put it together into a business and an organization that other people could effectively participate in. And so what you get when you bring someone in from hospitality, you're talking about multiple units, each with their own different cultures.

[00:37:33] Ethan: In this case, we might think about, the Lawton team's five different offices across the valley in Phoenix. each one has their own subculture. But they all need to roll up into whatever, corporate brand, that hospitality brand was. So you need to manage those different cultures.

[00:37:47] Ethan: You need to manage those different books. We have a really good manager at this operation. So I don't need to pay them as much attention as I do over here. And so we can think about a real estate organization. Very very similarly and it's it's so it's a push and a pull it's the push of these amazing real estate agents and real estate sales people pushing and figuring out How do I turn this into?

[00:38:10] Ethan: A business that can grow in scale Beyond what I could ever do myself at the same time you have the pull of bringing in these outside experts into the organization and saying look this is how we do it I've been at three different companies in three different industries. This is how this applies in your space Just you know, trust me and give me some opportunity you stay in your lane make this be my lane and i'll get this part of the organization on the rails with you

[00:38:36] Nick: yeah, yeah, it's, it's well said. I think it's also exciting for a lot of people to understand that the goals to build a business and it's, it's a little cliche, it's a little cliche, but you gotta, you're building a business. And with that, you need business people to join you and. You're going to hire them and they're going to come equipped with years of experience.

[00:39:01] Nick: And so that's what you're paying for. So I wouldn't go cheap. I think you're getting a steal. So let's say some, let's say you can get an assistant for 40, 000, but you can get an executive assistant for 80 and he or she had already worked underneath a CEO. Or a seat or COO been in board meetings, been in strategy sessions, Maybe work for a politician or a hospitalist and was scheduling people's like work for somebody that had like. 200 reports, by the way, our executive assistant, Brittany at reside work for somebody that had like 70 reports and she was the go between and she's phenomenal. So I think, you're actually getting a steal a lot of times, if you think about it in terms of what they're bringing to the table.

[00:39:51] Nick: Now, that's why you have to hire the right person and figure out that balance in terms of their salary and their bonus and different things like that. But I think I, oftentimes at reside, when I, tell people to put an ad out, I tell them to raise the salary. And they freak out, I don't have the money, you know, you can't afford to get less than less than the best.

[00:40:09] Nick: And plus you want to see what the resumes are, That resume should scare you a little bit. Make you feel a little like a lot of the times I didn't hire those people. Cause I'm like, I don't know if I can bring anything to the table to them. Cause I was so used to having to teach everyone, everything.

[00:40:24] Nick: It was foreign to me to hire someone in there, bring their teaching me. Like you brought so much to follow Boston Zillow. Unbelievable, they gave you the autonomy to do your thing. I think this is what I've right. Isn't it? It's kind of They say, dude, Ethan, run with it. We know your background.

[00:40:41] Nick: We know your skillset. We know your resources and, just let us know how it's going. hearing what I said, does that inspire any thought that you can share too for team?

[00:40:52] Ethan: I think, you know, and again, like for staying on this push pull scenario, a lot of people are looking to solve, their next problem or capitalize on the next opportunity that's in front of them. and some of them are lucky enough to have that person alongside them. You know that assistant is ready for because they've been proactive.

[00:41:08] Ethan: They have been raising their hand. They've been solving problems before you Brought it to their attention or they're removing a bottleneck before you ever knew that it was going to you know, choke out a person or a process or a result but this idea of going outside I think is really exciting and I think that that Breath of fresh air and that fresh set of eyes is going to be really helpful to the industry And I actually you know one of the I haven't talked about this a lot because it's still just a really really soft theory But we're deep enough in this conversation that I think I can throw it out just to get your reaction on it I think you know So, so I, I, you know, I spent a dozen, well, a dozen year, 14 years now in the software business.

[00:41:48] Ethan: And, of course, when the cost of money blew up a few, years ago, that really changed the software business. So let's go back like five years in it. when it was still like flourishing and there's a lot of money in the space and people were, investing in, in growth. There's a lot of, if you wanted a really good, marketing manager, or you really wanted a really good inside sales leader, which by the way, just going back to, steel from outside the industry, the ISA is simply a business development rep or sales development rep.

[00:42:15] Ethan: In other companies, and they've had them for decades, it's set up your sales people so that they're not wasting their time doing some of the qualification and appointment setting. It's been happening for decades outside this business. So, in any case, like if you wanted a BDR or an SDR manager, you could pull them from, they're in dozens of.

[00:42:33] Ethan: Software companies, you could pull one over all the time in the real estate space that doesn't quite exist yet. I see a situation a decade from now where most markets have, a few really good, well run teams that made it through whatever ups and downs are between here and 10 years from now, they have paid attention to all of their numbers.

[00:42:52] Ethan: They have brought in some fresh faces and some fresh eyes from outside the industry. And at some point we'll have, the industry will have a bench of leaders and operators in a variety of functions who do have a deep background from outside the industry, but also now have done this at two other teams.

[00:43:09] Ethan: Let's say I helped this team from this point to that point. And I helped this team from this point to that point. That point to that point. and now this person is not that they're mercenaries. I don't want to create this, like, gun for hire moving in and out of different real estate organizations, because they are so local in nature.

[00:43:24] Ethan: I don't think that's going to be quite the same, as it is in like software was when all the jobs went remote, you could join another company tomorrow, even if they were based in, you know, the UK, Without having, I don't think real estate, you necessarily want to do that too much. although certainly, you know, real estate's as good as, any other industry in terms of outsourcing specific functions, but, can see a scenario where there is a bench of professional leaders and operators who have, who do have industry knowledge and a lot of outside industry expertise.

[00:43:55] Ethan: And there'll be available. to come help you take your organization to the next level. they just don't exist yet. Cause again, we're still in this kind of like, what is this really, do these numbers hold, you know, as the markets go down, are we going to overspend again as we go back up and like get fat and happy and, Revenue hides all sins, essentially.

[00:44:13] Ethan: So as that shakes out and we start to find out who's really running a really good organization. We'll start to sort out whether or not that can become a reality. What do you think about that idea of a bench of

[00:44:22] Ethan: professional operators?

[00:44:24] Nick: Well, yeah, I think as the mega real estate team matures into its corporate button up shirt and suit and tie for real, but you look at the tech space you're a good example of talent. You look at their LinkedIn profile and they've been at two or three different companies within the space and they've evolved to, you don't see that in real estate.

[00:44:46] Nick: You don't see that because there was a team leader. There's a genius and a thousand followers or 10 followers. But now we have these companies where, oh, you were, an integrator for this team leader. And now you're an integrator for this team leader. By the way, we have a new sales representative, who's, Core function is to add value to all the people that come to our webinars, listen to our podcasts, come to our events, because we're such a high ticket, high touch, long relationship sale.

[00:45:13] Nick: We don't sell anyone. We just add value, add value, add value. And eventually you might want to do business with us, And Marcia joined Marcia's work for, to your point, three of the top team leaders across the nation. I mean, that was her resume and I'm thinking that exists. You actually know that person.

[00:45:32] Nick: I know that person and you know that person, I mean, she went from, she's lived in three States and worked for three of the top team leaders that you would know. And I'm going to keep them anonymous. And now she's working for me, John, Sunita, and Preston. And so she's like, I love working for inspiring leaders.

[00:45:48] Nick: And I just happened to move around the country. And now I found my home with reside. And so. Yeah, and she's a BDM, she's a BDM business development manager, and she sets up higher level appointments for Paul Diaz on our team who's worked for bold leads and real geeks, VP of sales.

[00:46:05] Nick: And so, yeah, Ethan, you're, we're tapping into some talent that's been in the industry and a lot of it comes from your side of the. The industry, which isn't necessarily the sales side, but people that have helped other people build teams and have interviewed teams, and look at what the platform is that we do.

[00:46:22] Nick: So I used to buy, I used to buy software or lead gen based on the people that sold me the lead gen. if I was talking to you on the phone and I'm like, Whoa, he really, he knows things that I don't know about real estate. He knows things about business. I don't know. And he knows people that I need to know.

[00:46:40] Nick: It was almost like a mini mastermind. I think follow boss building that community was a big part of that. You build that community, you get the software, but you save for this, you save, you stay for the community.

[00:46:50] Ethan: Yeah.

[00:46:51] Nick: Right? Yeah. and maybe that's part of your, and we can end with this chief evangelist. Is that part of that?

[00:46:57] Nick: Is that tying to that culture of the, you buy for one reason, you stay for

[00:47:03] Nick: another.

[00:47:04] Ethan: Yeah I mean, I'll just give a quick go at, the chief evangelist role. So it's a title I held at BombBomb after interviewing for chief evangelist, just as a fun side project, including Guy Kawasaki, who, uh, he left Apple over a TIFF, years ago and was hired back as chief evangelist by Steve Jobs.

[00:47:20] Ethan: And so a couple of key principles of that function is you're evangelizing the problem, not the product, So when you start talking about a thing that relates to everybody, and you're not just talking about product feature benefits, you're creating a much better, more valuable conversation. the other one is if you're innovating, then you must be evangelizing.

[00:47:38] Ethan: That's to say, you're solving a problem in a truly unique way, not just a, like a slightly iteratively better mousetrap, but you're truly solving a problem. In a unique way or better yet. And this is what I was doing at bomb bomb solving a problem. People didn't even know they had, No one woke up that day thinking like, you know what?

[00:47:55] Ethan: I just realized I'm entrusting my most important and valuable messages to faceless typed out text. wouldn't it be better if I sent myself explaining these things? Wouldn't it build more trust? Wouldn't it, you know, explain things more clearly. Wouldn't allow me to own the expertise in the mind and experience of the people I'm communicating with.

[00:48:10] Ethan: So. with those two principles, if you have someone free to operate in and around the community, like, I don't know how much this language has gotten into real estate, but you know, in software, there's a lot of talk about go to market strategy, right? Go to market, go to market. And it's like, develop a product, develop the messaging around it, figure out what, before you build it, ideally figure out what problems it solves for the customer and then develop a plan to take it to market.

[00:48:34] Ethan: Hey, have you ever faced this problem? Well, good news. We have this thing that solves that problem. An evangelist concept and an evangelist function is more about living in market, living in the market. I don't have answers to all of your questions as Ethan B hired as chief evangelist at Follow Up Boss, but I'm living in market.

[00:48:52] Ethan: I'm spending time at the events that you all are putting on. I'm listening to your podcast and other podcasts in the industry. I'm talking with some of our, most helpful customers about their honest problems and insights and hard learned lessons on their own journey and sharing it openly free at absolutely no cost in a variety of formats for anyone who wants to pay attention to it.

[00:49:12] Ethan: I'm living in market on behalf of. Not just our customers and our potential customers, but also our employees. There are a number of employees that aren't in customer facing roles. How do we get those people in touch with what the market is really thinking about, talking about, worried about, excited about, et cetera.

[00:49:28] Ethan: So, there are a number of different ways to apply, this concept in this function. but those are a couple of principles behind it. And I could, you know, I can monologue for an hour because again, I, for fun. Morning, nights and weekends, I created a podcast called Chief Evangelist. I've done 47 episodes of it so far.

[00:49:44] Ethan: I don't know how much farther I'm going to take it because I'm so in love with what I'm doing right now and the awesome people that I meet and, folks like you, like true hardcore entrepreneurs who are clever, who are constantly moving forward as a risk averse person. I find that very inspiring, so, uh, you know, I have mornings, nights, and weekends available, I want to use it not, of course, for my own, learning, growth, and wellness, and relationships, and things, but if I'm going to do, like, air quote work, it's really going to be more in this zone. So, I don't know where I'll go with that show, but, , that concept, if anyone ever wants to talk about it, I'd be happy to talk about it with anyone.

[00:50:17] Nick: Well, Ethan, it's been a pleasure meeting with you again on this podcast. And I love seeing you at the Maverick events and all the events that we get to see you at. I love what you're doing with the podcast. We'll put in the show notes so everyone can find it and favorite it. apple iTunes or Spotify, wherever they listen to it and download and listen to all your past episodes and the new stuff with your teams and you're diving deep into every position that is immensely valuable because it's essentially what we're building at reside.

[00:50:44] Nick: You just get to see. These bigger teams have it all in house where reside is kind of like, I'm going from here to there eventually. And we know that it resides at some point. You, we want you to get so big that you've replaced every one of our specialists, We hope you don't, we want you to stay and contribute.

[00:51:03] Nick: Maybe there's a path for you to work with us forever, but we get that. That's our goal. Our goal is to get you 3 million, 4 million, 5 million plus, but check out Ethan's podcast. Anything else you want to leave the audience with. Or how to find you.

[00:51:17] Ethan: Yeah, first, thank you so much. A joy to spend time with you, as always, and I appreciate the opportunity to share the work that I'm doing on your, show. Again, it's just Ethan Beute, so you can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on all the socials, including Instagram. The show is Real Estate Team os the Real Estate Team Operating System.

[00:51:35] Ethan: So it's Real Estate Team os on YouTube Real estate team os on Instagram, realestate team os.com. If you go to realestate team os.com/subscribe and you sign up, you get immediate access to seven subscriber only episodes, on a variety of topics. And you also get, we'll send you email exclusive insights every week.

[00:51:52] Ethan: and of course I'm on the other side of all those emails. That's how I wound. up, doing these viewer and listener episodes. I functionally have like 10 pals, every three, four episodes, someone will, I've got a handful of these folks, who replies, they, man, I really loved when they shared this or, Hey, why didn't you ask about that?

[00:52:07] Ethan: Like that kind of feedback. That's really hard to get through this channel. So, I love the direct communication that way as well. So, we'd love to hear from anyone directly, Via social, follow the show on social or and since if you've made it this far, which is we're almost an hour in You can just email me directly ethan at followupboss.

[00:52:24] Ethan: com be happy to hear from anyone that way too.

[00:52:26] Nick: Awesome, man. Thanks,

[00:52:28] Nick: Ethan

[00:52:28] Ethan: Yeah, man. Thank you so much