The Agent Who Quit Selling 100 Homes to Build Something Better with Brandi Fugate

[00:00:00] It took growing our agent count by 370% to make up what I had been doing in production. Not only did we make up for my production, but we even went up a unit count increased 15%. Volume went up about 30%. GCI went up about 30%, so it worked.

Suneet Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Reside Platform podcast. I'm your host today, Sunni Aderal. I'm super excited for our guest today, Brandy Fugate, the owner and managing broker of Private Label Real Estate in Tulsa. Brandy, how's it going?

Brandi Doing great. How are you?

Suneet Oh, I'm super good. you guys, if you don't know Brandy, she's been in real estate in mortgage for decades and has built an incredible independent brokerage known for a concierge level service, strong values, and [00:01:00] real leadership.

Suneet and when we talking to Brandy today, and not we, but when me, it's not me in the mouse, in my pocket, it's just me. Brandi's done something pretty incredible over this last year, so make sure you stay tuned to hear all about it. Alright, Brandi? Yes. How would you get into this fun, wild world or real estate in the first place?

Brandi Yeah. Funny story. So really I was in mortgage lending for 21 years. that's all I knew was mortgage lending, banking side the last several years. then I started flipping houses and was a little disgruntled that my buyer's agent wasn't giving me the opportunities. Quickly enough, and I was missing out on some deals, so I thought I'm just gonna get my real estate license on the side and continue my day job as a mortgage lender.

Brandi And then, what I underestimated was my ability to do business on regular retail real estate business that [00:02:00] first year. So I sold 36 houses, accidentally, I didn't mean to, and ended up, leaving mortgage and going into real estate full time.

Suneet So when was that?

Brandi That would've been, 2016.

Suneet Okay.

Suneet So you were in mortgage during all the ups and downs and the craziness.

Brandi Oh, yeah. I saw several from the nineties to, 2008. I saw several of the ups and downs in mortgage for sure. Yeah. I was in subprime back in those days, which I know that's a dirty word, but

Suneet I got a mortgage in 2002.

Suneet Okay. I sold a lot of option arms, let me tell you that.

Brandi Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Suneet I used one those option arms.

Brandi If you had a 500 credit score and less than a 60% DTI. No money down, no PMI. Easy peasy.

Suneet So now, where were you geographically when you started in real estate?

Brandi Yeah, so I'm born and raised in Oklahoma, but I started in real estate, in Chicago.

Brandi I moved to Chicago in my twenties, and, I stayed there for about eight years and then came back to [00:03:00] Oklahoma, 25 years ago.

Suneet Okay. so you were in Oklahoma for the real estate part? Correct. something really cool for everyone listening, Brandy. Phones and runs a successful indie brokerage.

Suneet And on this, podcast, we don't talk to as many indies as we used to, so I'm really excited. I've noticed. When did you decide to open the brokerage?

Brandi Yeah, so it was right about two and a half years ago. I opened it September two years ago. And, it was really just because I couldn't keep giving myself excuses not to.

Brandi as a small team leader, at the time I had my own office space. I had my own tech, I had my own, admin team. I was buying leads for my small team. I really didn't need. A broker.

Brandi other than the legal protection. But I never got sued. I, and I thought, you know why?

Brandi I'm just, I'm not opening a brokerage out of fear. It seems silly to give up 20% of every penny that [00:04:00] we earn just out of fear. So finally, about two and a half years ago, made the decision and opened private label real estate September, 2023.

Suneet That's super cool. I remember when I opened up my indie, I kind of had the same thought and also I just wanted to have the opportunity to work with more agents.

Suneet That was irrelevant of where they were in their career. did you ever think about that when you were opening up the brokerage or was it more financial?

Brandi I mean, it was both. honestly, I would've never opened up the brokerage. if there were a brokerage that existed in my market that offered everything that I knew a brokerage should.

Brandi I had no ambition. I had no desire to be a business owner, to be in leadership Zero. but it was really out of necessity that there, it just didn't exist. So I had to build it.

Suneet And was that the first, like LLC or business that you started?

Brandi yeah. Yeah, it was.

Suneet Wow. That's so cool. He just jumped [00:05:00] right into the fire.

Brandi I did. And, I'm not a natural leader. it, it took a lot of a learning curve. reside helped out a ton with that, with systems and processes. But, I'm a high c. Personality type. I'm not your typical D or I that most team leaders are. set me in a corner and give me a checklist to follow, and that's my natural jam.

Brandi but I've found that it's actually been really rewarding and I was missing my calling. I love to train, I love to teach. I le I love to lead people, but it took 50 years for me to figure out that's, that's my new jam.

Suneet So I'm thinking about all the pain that I had when I opened up my brokerage.

Suneet And I remember like. Sitting there and check started to come in. I was all, and my Adam was, all we gotta do the compliance. I was all compliance. What did you ever have any of those moments when he first opened?

Brandi As a high C I'm all about compliance. Are you kidding? I can't think

Suneet about it. Yes. Audit

Brandi contracts for eight hours straight and I'm in love.[00:06:00]

Suneet So you were ready for that stuff.

Brandi It's put me in front of a room full of new agents to host. Hello? Week for four hours a day for an entire week. That's where. I start to get, a little nervous, not in the compliance part.

Suneet Yeah, that's so funny. I am the opposite, which is totally going into what you're saying about disc profiles.

Suneet so you start your brokerage. And in the beginning it was fairly just like any new business, smaller Right.

Brandi Yeah, sure. We just had a handful of agents, the majority of which were, doing real estate on the side. Either they were stay at home parents or stay at home caregivers to disabled loved ones, or had full-time jobs.

Brandi I only had a couple of agents that were actually looking to do this full-time, and my definition of full-time in this business is about 30 hours a week. yeah, we started off really small. It was mainly me. I was selling for the last several years. I was selling a hundred homes a year personally.

Brandi the business was very much ran by my personal production.

Suneet [00:07:00] Okay, great. A hundred homes a year for many years is a lot.

Brandi It was a lot.

Suneet It's a lot. And I know from knowing you and coaching and working with you through Reside is that you really went deep on online leads. is that fair to say?

Brandi Oh, absolutely.

Suneet Yeah. what was the moment that you decided to get into that game?

Brandi Honestly, I'd been a realtor.com subscriber since back in the mortgage business. I had realtor partners that I was co-sponsoring or co-branding with them on realtor.com. and I bought mortgage leads. there were a handful of different online lead companies for mortgage, back in the lending tree days and whatnot.

Brandi So I'd been an online lead company, subscriber since the beginning. So it was just natural to do the same once I jumped the fence from mortgage to real estate.

Suneet I love that. And I have the same moment as during mortgage. We used to spend about a million bucks on mail every month. So a lot of mail, and it would just be calls so our [00:08:00] phones would always ring, right?

Suneet Mm-hmm. And then when I got into real estate, my story. I was penniless. I didn't have anything. one of my buddies. Who had gotten back into mortgage. He said, Hey, there's online leads for real estate too. I was like, oh yeah, of course there are. I'm all, when it's a website, he goes, dude, it's Zillow.

Suneet And I was all, duh, looks like the cheapest zip code is like 400 bucks a month. I had no money. I was all. Can I borrow 400 bucks? And he loaned it to me and that's what led there. So it's cool, right? Like when you come in, having that little bit of experience with the leads, which we both had, I think it definitely helped both our success.

Brandi Absolutely. And when I moved over to real estate, I didn't wanna invest anything in it because again, I just wanted to have MLS access for my own flips. Yeah. I didn't wanna invest anything in it, but I'm also not a. Person who practices moderation. I'm either all in or I'm all out.

Brandi I would get up in the morning and look on Zillow for sale by owners. [00:09:00] And that first year I would just call FSBOs and offer a a full service, 4% listing, 3% to the buyer's agent, 1% To me, the only. Caveat is that they had to let me work as many open houses as I wanted and I would do five open houses in a weekend.

Suneet Yes. And,

Brandi I found that I developed 2.7 average buyers for every listing I took by hosting the open houses. So I wasn't making a killing on those 1% listing commissions, but the buyers I was generating off of those, worked. So after I did that for. A year. I mean, that's how I did really the 36 units my first year and then 48 my second year.

Brandi And that's when I decided, alright, let me start putting some money into this and go back to the lead generation online. So signed back up with realtor.com and Zillow.

Suneet Do you remember those old school like realtor.com leads that came in Just like an email. It was just some typed in there.

Suneet It was so funny. I'm like, this is a lead. Like this looks so janky, but mm-hmm. But they were there. There was an agent in my office who didn't want 'em, but paid for 'em. He would just give them all to me. [00:10:00] You go, if you get something, gimme a referral. I ended up getting a bunch of 'em, so it was cool.

Brandi It kills me how people think that these leads don't perform.

Brandi Like, are you kidding? these leads do. You'd have to know how to work them. You have to have a good action plan in place. You've gotta have good automations in place, but these leads are fantastic. You just have to work them.

Suneet Yeah. You just have to work them. Yeah. so when we connected. at, was that at a Zillow unlock event?

Suneet or Tahoe

Brandi maybe? No, I, it was Tahoe. It was Tahoe. So Paul started reaching out to me, well, actually I started following Che Black Online, and I did one of his discovery calls, I think six months earlier. He said, honestly, I would love to take your money, but you don't need me at the level you're at.

Brandi What you need is reside. And I kind of felt like, well, I don't know what reside is and I feel like this guy just blew me off. So forget that. So six months later, Paul's been [00:11:00] following up with me every month and he says, come out to Tahoe. Just check us out. And that's where I met all of you guys and signed up on the spot.

Suneet So what was going through your head when you first even reached out to Shep? Yeah.

Brandi I just knew that I needed something different and I was a big advocate of coaching. I've had coaching since I first started. Okay. since day one in 2016. I've always had a real estate coach, and they were great to get me to the levels that I was at, but I knew.

Brandi a year ago, a year and a half ago when I started with Reside, I knew that it was time to make a change and,I knew that I was turning 50 soon. the days of working seven days a week, 12 plus hours a day, that was in my rear view mirror and it was time to make a change. So. I felt like Reside was probably a good tool to help me make that transition from producing agent and not just producing agent, but a hundred a year.

Brandi Man, that's a lot.

Suneet That's a lot.

Brandi It's a lot. Yeah. and it worked. This 2025 [00:12:00] is. a huge blessing. I mean, we accomplished exactly what I set out to accomplish with your help with you coaching me and all of the systems and the playbooks. We did it

Suneet well. I mean, that's the thing guys, and this is what I was talking about to all the listeners and viewers, is Brandy was able to get out of production due to personal reasons, right?

Suneet How was that? Dude, that's the story right there. I mean, everything else was just a little warmup, like Yeah. What, get into that.

Brandi Yeah. I mean, glory to God, really. I mean, it's been a huge answered prayer. So to dig in a little bit about the personal story, my grandmother will be 97 in April and she has dementia.

Brandi And about a year and a half ago, we got to the point that we knew we were going to have to put her in a nursing home, and she did not want to go into a nursing home at all. She lived about two hours away and we made the decision to move her to Tulsa and my mom moved my mom to Tulsa as well. The [00:13:00] three of us moved in together and we're her in-home caregivers.

Brandi And,it was too much to expect my mom to stay home with her in nine to five while I'm at the office. And then also me run out showing homes and listing appointments on evenings and weekends. So I knew something was gonna have to change and I needed to come outta production to be more present for my family.

Brandi And, Now with the intentional time blocking and eating the frog first thing in the morning. I'm here at nine. I'm usually home by three and I don't usually leave the house after three. I am there and available and present for my family

Suneet it seems. Wow. Wow. So you moved your mom and your grandmother.

Suneet Did you guys buy another house or did they move in with you?

Brandi Yeah,we bought a house in Tulsa. we had to find one that had no steps and wide hallways and things like that. So we found one, it's a mile from my office, so the location's Perfect.

Suneet That's awesome.

Brandi three blocks away from the hospital.

Brandi So yeah, we found the [00:14:00] perfect home.

Suneet and then, so I gotta get out of production family first. Absolutely. So what was the first step?

Brandi the first step was really you guys, and knowing that, or being taught by you guys that it's all about recruiting. to make up for my a hundred transactions a year, I've gotta recruit.

Brandi And, if you remember in the beginning, I was stubborn. I thought I do, I'll recruit another brandy, someone who's gonna come in with a hundred transactions a year. And, so then I, that didn't work. So then I thought, well, let me get two 50, unit a year. And then it, kept going and, not, there's not a lot of people who want to sell a hundred homes a year.

Suneet Yeah. There's not, and that's okay.

Brandi And that's okay. That's perfectly fine. and I came to accept that and appreciate that. But, it, it took growing our agent count by 370% to make up [00:15:00] what I had been doing in production three. And that's okay. They're all happy. They're hitting their goals. And, not only did we make up for.

Brandi my production, but we even went up a bit. Our unit in, unit count increased 15%. Volume went up about 30%. GCI went up about 30%

Suneet all great.

Brandi And our brokerage, GCI went up 37%. So it worked.

Suneet It worked. So let's go back to those recruiting days.

Brandi Yeah.

Suneet What did he like? So you talked a little bit about being stubborn, like what was the mindset shift?

Brandi well, I mean, it was you getting me outta my comfort zone and explaining that to find another unicorn. Who wants to sell a hundred homes a year? I mean, I'm even a unicorn in my market. I'm in the top 0.01% of the market. I mean, there's just not a lot of people who wanna do that kind of business. So, it, it took, a just meeting people where they were [00:16:00] and really getting to know the agents and what fueled their fire and what their motivations were.

Brandi And not only the what, but the why they do what they do, and just wanting to help them succeed. And then as I would recruit one agent and then they would have a goal of. 10 units a year, I think. Okay. Gotta keep going. That's not gonna do it. So recruit another one. They wanna do five a year. Okay, that's not gonna do it, but yep.

Brandi Bring them on. let's support them. Let's be their cheerleader, but let's keep going. And so now we're at, 37 units, or I'm sorry, 37 agents, with an average tenure on the team of only five months. So most of them are very new. and most of 'em are brand new, just newly licensed outta real estate school.

Brandi but altogether they're projecting 500 units for next year.

Suneet Wow. Awesome. So, what's the recruiting process look like?

Brandi so I still use your Indeed ad. I've not edited it whatsoever. It's the same one you started me with, a year and a half ago. I [00:17:00] did, I am running an a and b test. I've been doing that for the past few months.

Brandi One with the award experienced and there in one, without the word experienced. and I get probably, a dozen resumes a week. I would say more than half of them are not licensed and not willing to get a license. They don't really understand that they have to get a license and what the costs are, especially this time of year in January, you have to pay the entire year's dues.

Brandi So it's pretty hefty. But, yeah, we get a few good ones. I probably interview two a week. and,that's what's taken us to 37 units. Or 37 agents.

Suneet What do you look for in those interviews?

Brandi Yeah, it's all about, culture. So when I wrote our mission, vision, and value statement two years ago, I was really intentional about that.

Brandi I was really intentional about who we were going to be and what kind of business we were going to do, and love that, where our character would show through. So, and our mission, vision [00:18:00] values are everywhere. It's posted on boards in the lobby. It's in every single one of our handouts and our listing presentation, our buyer presentation, our recruiting guide.

Brandi It's everywhere. So I kind of. When I'm interviewing someone, I'm looking through that filter of are they gonna fit with our culture? I could care less what their production is, could care less. because I know even, an agent who only produced a few deals and have been in the business for a few years, they're gonna completely outperform what they've done in our, in our system.

Brandi Our system's totally different. It's been tried and true. They're gonna skyrocket when they come over here. So I don't care about production, I just care about their character and their personality and their willingness to be collaborative. And if I feel like they're a good fit for the team, then I give them a shot.

Suneet Yes. Good. Do you think it's more about feelings and vibes or do you have any like specific ways to like understand

Brandi it's feelings and vibes? To me it's gut feeling and feeling in my heart. [00:19:00] I mean, I wish I had the magic eight ball and could tell, right off of the bat if someone's gonna be a good fit or not.

Brandi and I hired two last year that were not a good fit. but that's, I figure that's not bad too, out of, 39 that we hired. That

Suneet ain't bad brandy.

Brandi That's not bad. but you know, it became pretty obvious right away. They were not, they were not buying into our culture at all, and it stood out. so they ended up finding a better place and I wish them well.

Brandi Absolutely. But,we, and one of them was a surprise. I really thought she would've plugged in more. The other one, though, I gotta tell you, I felt it in my gut. and I think as a team leader, sometimes we start thinking about numbers and we want, we wanna recruit. And I just, I wanted another number and I wasn't thinking clearly and it bit me in the rear because I spent about 90 days really investing in this person and, got nothing out of.

Suneet Yeah. and that [00:20:00] happens, right? And maybe it'll, that person will come back with a newfound hustle and respect for everything that he did. So you brought in all these agents and many people are bringing agents in. And you mentioned something about a hello week, which is onboarding week. Yep. how do you get all these agents you're recruiting productive?

Brandi Well, hello Week does it, hello week starts out Monday morning. First thing, just getting their technology set up, getting their email set up, getting their f login set up, their email signatures, you name it. And, by Friday at noon, they have their leads turned on and they're in the rotation.

Brandi They're starting to get leads immediately. So, and then we've got a requirement that they have to complete the very next Rise class with Mia, which is huge. so a combination of Hello Week and Rise. they're in.

Suneet So how many hours a day is the Hello? Week?

Brandi it's just nine to noon. Monday through Friday.

Suneet And what is that, once a month?

Brandi Month? it's, well, it just depends. it, [00:21:00] I, once I have a handful of, of new agents, then we'll do one. So just depends. Theoretically once a month. Sometimes it's every six weeks, sometimes it's eight weeks. Just depends.

Suneet And then you are the one that's doing that, obviously.

Brandi I am doing that, yes. Now I have recorded, the last two hello weeks. So if I have a new agent that comes on, and I am not intending to bring anyone else on for the next few weeks, I'll set them up in the Google Drive to watch the recordings of the last hello week. and they kind of self

Suneet onboard.

Suneet And now, is that in person or Zoom also?

Brandi It's in person. Yeah. they've gotta bring their technology in, their iPads, their, their laptop, their phone. We set up their calendars, we, sign them up for Rise. We sign them up for all of the meetings. it's all in person

Suneet now. is there any component of like.

Suneet Picking up the damn phone and calling through the pond.

Brandi Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We start calling, day one. We do not, but starting day two, we're on the phones. We're going through the smart filters, we're calling [00:22:00] leads. I will plug myself into the lead rotation during hello week so that I'm getting the live notifications when a new lead comes in.

Brandi I'm showing them, right there live, how I claim it, how I call them, how I talk to them. LP mama training is one of the things we do. We still go back and watch Nick McLean's, LP mama training from over a year ago. and that's what we go off of is, is LP Mama. so yeah, we're doing that right there in hella week because they need to know that's a huge part of their job is making phone calls.

Brandi So, especially in a lead team like us, so may as well just jump into the fire immediately. 'cause that's a lot of the job.

Suneet So you are bringing in these new people and on day two you have 'em picking up the phone. Yeah. How do you help people overcome the reluctance? The phone aversion? Yeah. It's big, right?

Suneet And I get it.

Brandi Yeah, it's big. You just have to get over it. I mean, just do it. Just suck it up, buttercup. You just have to do it, and the more you [00:23:00] do it, the less reluctancy you'll have. You just have to get used to it.

Suneet Yeah. So like what's the message though? What do you tell these guys?

Brandi Just keep doing it.

Brandi You'll get better as you go. and we do, I do audit the phone calls. I have time blocked from 10 to 11 every day. My executive assistant and I are going through all of the phone calls from yesterday, and we create a note and f and we market L-P-M-A-M-A. And we say, you know this, you did, or this, you could have done better.

Brandi And so we're constantly listening to calls and critiquing. Helping improve the agents. So, and I just tell them right up front, you're gonna suck at the beginning. I mean, you are, you're gonna say the wrong things. You're gonna stumble, you're gonna sound like you're reading from a script. But, before long, you won't even need the script.

Brandi You'll just be thinking in your head. L location. Let's talk location, P price. Let's talk price. And you'll get better, and then you'll get to a point to where you'll get lazy and you'll forget and you'll go backwards and I'll start beating up your call audits again, and then you'll get back into the groove.

Brandi It's just, it's practice and it's [00:24:00] accountability.

Suneet I love that you're talking about LP mama, because I feel like in this portal lead world that many of us are in, people forget about LBA and go straight to something like A LM.

Brandi Oh, that's. I think such a bad idea because especially if you're not buying exclusive leads, getting them off of the phone real quick in a LM that just gives time for another agent to get them on the phone.

Brandi No, spend half an hour on the phone with them. They, after that, they're not gonna wanna answer another call thinking they're gonna have to spend another half hour with a different agent going through the whole process. Again, I disagree with the a LM

Suneet that is so money and so valid. Is, some of the portal lead providers, they make it a quick phone call.

Suneet Mm-hmm. And just get 'em to, to the appointment, which I assume if it is maybe a flex lead or is it a lead where it is [00:25:00] somewhat

Brandi exclusive? Sure.

Suneet We think it's exclusive. However, that same. prospect, that same lead could have also gone to realtor.com. Oh, that's website, right? Absolutely. Yep. but LP MAMA is really built.

Suneet everyone watching and listening to this take notes from Brandy right now. 'cause LP Mama is built to build rapport and have a deeper understanding with the prospect. Absolutely. And for our realtor com lead, I was just telling a coaching client this yesterday far. For like a realtor.com lead, which Brandy and I both love and build our businesses on.

Suneet We get the shared leads, meaning it goes to us and who knows how many other people, right? Like we don't really know.

Brandi Right? You think three more, but maybe more.

Suneet Yeah. I mean maybe three more. Unless that person's clicked on another house.

Brandi Right.

Suneet And then it's three more. They took another house, then it's three more.

Brandi Zip code specific so they could be getting three by clicking this zip code [00:26:00] and three more in that zip code.

Suneet Yeah. Yeah. So when you call that lead, even if you do, set a callback or let me get more information and get back to you, they're getting another call.

Brandi Yeah.

Suneet And you are missing the up brandy.

Suneet That is so good, what you just added. Yeah. Good job. It's huge. so, private label real estate. Yeah. I love the name. Thank you. You guys are known for like aptly named known for a white glove concierge style service.

Brandi Yeah. To our agents, and to our clients as well. And a lot of brokerages I think, talk about this white glove concierge service to their clients.

Brandi And of course we all do that. Yeah. But we really roll out the red carpet to our agents. we spoil our agents. and that's something that I think makes us so unique in our. In our market. a there aren't a lot of brokerages that are provi. Well, a, there aren't any brokerages that are providing leads, but there's really only a few teams that are providing leads.

Brandi But, what our admin team provides to [00:27:00] our agents, that's been huge. you have to remember. I was selling a hundred homes a year, and you can't do that alone. You can't do that without systems and processes. You can't do that without leverage. With a really good tech, with a really amazing tech stack.

Brandi it's impossible to do that without a really good support system. So, when I pulled myself out of production and started recruiting, I didn't just. Let go of all the systems. So the systems are still there. If an agent wants to come into our brokerage and sell a hundred homes a year, systems are there, admin team is there.

Brandi It's built, it's ready to go. But, I, I've got a theory or a philosophy that an agent should really just focus on five key things and let our admin staff do everything else. From writing your offers to preparing your listing paperwork, to managing your inboxes in f booking appointments, sending out your bbsa, typing up your repair list, transaction management, doing all your marketing.

Brandi I mean, our agents are spoiled here because that's what I had to have to sell a hundred homes a year, and [00:28:00] that's exactly what I give to them. Same thing.

Suneet So what does the admin staff look like?

Brandi Yeah. so we have,we started the year with two VAs, out of India, husband and wife team.

Brandi One has been with us for almost four years, and the other almost two years. And they were doing everything. And then we started growing so rapidly that, just a couple of months ago, I went out and hired two more VAs in, the Philippines. one of them is our listing coordinator. The other is our.

Brandi Marketing coordinator, which has then freed up our initial two VAs to focus on transaction coordination and agent assistance. And then, we've also hired an executive assistant here locally in the office. So I finally have a local administrative employee that's really nice. And yeah, she helps stick a lot off of my plate.

Suneet That's so cool. I never hear anybody hiring VAs in India.

Brandi Oh yeah. Well, so it's funny how it all works. So my first VA back. Close to 10 years ago, eight years ago [00:29:00] maybe, was, from the Philippines and, well, I needed to hire a second one. And he mentioned his sister-in-law who was Filipino, but living in India.

Brandi So I hired her and then she was with me for several years and then she resigned to be a stay-at-home mom and said, but I've already hired your replacement. She's Filipino in India as well. Here she is. I'm gonna train her in my two week notice and you're gonna be taken care of. So, and then when we needed an assistant for her, she said, how about my husband?

Brandi So it's all been really organic.

Suneet That's So all these deals, all this growth with four VAs and one ea.

Brandi Yes. and three of the five of our admin team has been with us for less than two months.

Suneet Yeah, that's me being speechless right now.

Brandi Yeah.

Suneet Steve, how long has that ea been there for?

Brandi she started November 17th.

Suneet Oh, shit. So a month and a half.

Brandi Yeah. [00:30:00] How's that going? Yeah. Oh, great. Phenomenal. Phenomenal. we didn't have anyone sitting in the office. We had this beautiful lobby with this granite reception desk and all these nice built-ins, and no one's sitting there ever. Totally. So it's just nice having someone that's a friendly face that welcomes the agents when they come in and out and.

Brandi Her job description is honestly evolving more and more. As I'm learning how capable she is, I'm giving her more and more tasks. so it's been phenomenal.

Suneet That is mind blowing. Yeah. Everybody watching and listening like, what's your excuse? Brandy did this, a majority of it with two VAs.

Suneet Like so smart on saving money, right? Like your five admin staff, if they were all over here, it'd be probably 20 times as much minimum.

Brandi Oh, absolutely.

Suneet You probably couldn't [00:31:00] even do it.

Brandi Absolutely. And then, I hate to say this about my fellow Americans, but There's a different,

Suneet there's a different work ethic.

Brandi There's a different work ethic. There's a huge different work ethic and something about that Filipino culture that they want to be involved, they want to be part of the team, and it's prestigious to work for a US-based company. and they are, they're very much in the, in, in the system. As a matter of fact, I have a lot of co-op agents that say, I've never met Gina before.

Brandi And that's our main va. And I say, well, she lives in India. Local people have no idea. She's not, here in Tulsa. Everyone just assumes they are, they're in every single meeting. They zoom in on every single meeting we have. They are a beloved part of our team. I mean, I'm planning a trip to India soon to, to meet them finally, after all these years.

Suneet Oh, no way. When are you going?

Brandi I don't know, this year. This year I've got my going app set to track flights for me. So where do they

Suneet live in India? Huh? Where do they live?

Brandi [00:32:00] Bangalore.

Suneet Bangalore. Okay. Never been there, so I can't help you, but when you do, let's talk before you go 'cause there's some cool stuff.

Suneet Okay. If you're making the trek, like you gotta see some cool stuff too, right? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. That's so awesome. managing administrative staff, either locally or virtually, it involves I think, great systems. Oh, absolutely. Is there any specific tech that you use, dashboard or something that helps you with that process?

Brandi Absolutely. and that's another my tech stack was another thing that made reside feel like such a natural fit because, you guys' view on tech and my view on tech aligned so much. I was already using follow up bosses, my CRMI was already using Y lo o for website and IDX, and you guys have turned me on to AI voice and AI text through why LO posts.

Brandi I'm using that now. I was already using QuickBooks, already using Google Suite. and aside from that, you guys have turned me on to corded and go high level for, [00:33:00] recruiting. Those have been two really good additions. and then just last month I signed up with Easy Home Search for additional lead generation.

Brandi I kind of capped out with realtor.com. I can't get any more zip codes. I'm capped out there. So, adding, Preston's easy home search company. Yeah, naturally. Yeah, so we're going from about 25 leads a week to over 50 a week right now.

Suneet Nice. So no, like project management software, are you doing that inside of Google?

Brandi I'm using, I'm doing everything inside of Google. I am a, Google Sheets nerd. I love me again. Spreadsheet. So I was with CTE and Sisu for the longest and just thought I can build my own and I can do this better. So we use, we use Google Sheets. We use Google Forms. Our SOP all of our training, everything is in Google Drive.

Brandi we're Google through and through.

Suneet Yeah. That's awesome because, Once again, you're making smart financial business decisions.

Brandi Well, when you pull yourself out of [00:34:00] production and you're used to making full commissions on a hundred deals a year, all of a sudden you're not in production and you've got agents that you're paying out.

Brandi Anywhere from 50% to 80% commissions, your bottom line's going down. So you've gotta be lean, you gotta be lean,

Suneet you gotta be lean. I love that. So I've been using monday.com for a long time. I know that we talked about it. However, I'm not telling you to change shit because I love the fact that you're doing Google and it's working for you.

Brandi My new marketing director, she is a Trello fan, so when she came on again about a month ago, she said, I'm bringing Trello. this is how you're gonna approve all my social media posts. So we are doing a little Trello now. And then as far as internal communications, we use GroupMe, which is a free app.

Brandi And we've got a GroupMe for just our lead team. We've got a GroupMe for the whole brokerage. We've got a GroupMe with our, lender partner, and then we've got a GroupMe for our, agent leadership council. And then lastly a GroupMe for our events committee. [00:35:00] So, we're lean, we're pretty lean. Love

Suneet that.

Suneet It's so, we are making so many smart decisions, man. We haven't talked in a while. I'm super happy to have you on the episode right now. so,

Suneet It sounds like you're building future leaders, not just productive agents. Yeah. Right. Yeah. we kind of talked about the qualities that you look for, when someone joins, but then how do you make someone grow into like a leadership role over time?

Brandi Yeah. That's a good question and I don't know that I have an answer for that yet.

Brandi Being so new, I can tell you that my last three years in production, I ran a pod system, which I'd learned from my old mortgage days from a bank that I worked at. So I was the lead agent and I had one or two junior agents underneath me. and then our, a showing agent underneath them, or sometimes multiple showing agents, and then our admin team.

Brandi So I know the pod system works. I know it inside and [00:36:00] out. I ran it for three years. And I hope that one of our agents, and again our agents on average have only been with this for 5.3 months. So a lot of newbies, but I hope that some of them will get to the point to where they're ready to bring on juniors.

Suneet Yeah. I love that it's 'cause it gives you like kind of what you experienced more freedom.

Brandi Oh, absolutely.

Suneet Right. Yeah. Going.

Brandi Yeah. and how we operated that basically was as the lead agent, I went to every single first buyer showing and did the buyer consult there on the ground with the junior agent there, and then the junior agent followed up on all of the other subsequent showings until they found the one.

Brandi And then I would go back and, do a second showing and talk, offer strategy and talk comps in that second showing. just simply not having to do all of the showings on the houses that they don't like in the first place was huge. Yeah. Especially when you average 32 showings per client. that's, that was a huge time waster.

Brandi So, yeah. I'm looking forward to it. and I've already peeped out a few of these agents that are new, but I foresee them being pod leaders someday. [00:37:00] Absolutely.

Suneet I love that. So. People are listening and they're all, holy shit. Brandy is a rock star. And they're thinking to themselves, I wanna build a business that supports my life, not consumes it.

Suneet I wanna be home by three o'clock

Brandi Word.

Suneet What do you want them to know about what you've created at private label?

Brandi Yeah. Well, as John says, KFR,

Suneet I mean,

Brandi you just, you've gotta recruit, you've gotta recruit to make up,what you're giving up,

Suneet I believe I'm hearing you say that.

Brandi I know.

Suneet It's so great. I feel vindicated. Yes,

Brandi I know. I mean that's and under and get out of your own way from. Your own expectations of what kind of agent you want to bring on. So good. 'cause I only wanted to bring on the brandies who wanted to do high business. And you know what? Honestly, I probably wouldn't have liked a brandy [00:38:00] if I would've brought a brandy on.

Brandi but instead I've got 37 individual agents who I adore. And my goal is just making sure they hit their goals and their goals range anywhere from five to 40. they just turned in all their goal worksheets after going through Mia's, 2026 goal training clinic, five to 40. our top agent wants to do 40 next year.

Brandi And you know what? I'm thrilled with that. I am happy as can be. And, and people keep asking, how many more agents are you gonna recruit? Answer is I don't know. I mean, honestly,if I end 2026 with the same 37 agents and they have closed 500 units, they've all hit their goal and they're happy and they've got a good work life balance, maybe I don't recruit anymore.

Brandi But having said that, I also, what

Suneet I mean,

Brandi I and I say that, but on the other hand it's been pretty easy to recruit with your Indeed ad and. we developed a really good recruiting handbook that really goes into who we are and what we do, and [00:39:00] explains the value proposition that we offer. Another person that we hired this year is a content creator, so he's putting out lots of content about why someone would want to come to our brokerage.

Brandi So we're starting to get some social media traffic there. it's been kind of easy, knock on wood, so I mean, if someone walks in my door who I think is of good moral character, I think would fit in well, I'm not gonna turn anyone away, but

Suneet sure. I

Brandi also really wanna see these 37 succeed. I wanna see them hit their goals and be happy.

Suneet What's next for private label real estate?

Brandi Yeah, I think just making sure they hit their goals for this year. I think that's next. Keeping those recruiting funnels open. I mentioned I hired a marketing director, one of the VAs in the Philippines. and she's just now getting turned into corded and go high level.

Brandi We just got her on Indeed about a week and a half ago. So she's trying to build that recruiting pipeline and then just focusing on the agents and helping them get to where they wanna be.

Suneet [00:40:00] Awesome. So, any advice for anybody listening?

Brandi Well. Join reside. Can I say that?

Suneet Thank you. That was not planned.

Suneet Thank you.

Brandi I mean, honestly, I mean, honestly, I had been with 1, 2, 3 different coaching programs over the past several years, and they were great in that season, but to get me from where I was. September, 2024 to where I am today. I mean, it's you guys a hundred percent. And those coaching programs were fantastic, but they never could have gotten me here,

Suneet Thank you for that. But it's also you. So we can't take all the credit Brandy?

Brandi Well, R Ross does tell me that,I can't remember how he says it, but he says, of all of his coaching students, now that I'm with Ross, he tells me that I am the biggest implementer. So he'll tell me to do something and within 24 hours, it's done.

Brandi I,I'm a doer. You

Suneet are a doer,

Brandi but I need the guidance to tell me what to do because you [00:41:00] guys have been there, you've done it, you've got so much exposure to all these other brokerages that are doing huge numbers, much bigger than what I'm doing. And, you guys tell me what to do and I trust you and I do it.

Suneet Ah, that's so great. Yes. You guys, everyone listening, watching that information without implementation is like worthless, right? One of the tricks to life. Success in life and anything is mass massive frigging action. Right. And the implementers will win. if somebody wants to send you a referral in Tulsa, and they should because you're the only person out send a referral to in Tulsa.

Suneet How do they do that?

Brandi Yeah, websites private label realtors.com. So look us up, fill out the contact information and you'll hear from me immediately.

Suneet Awesome. You guys. This was so great, Brandy. I had so much, I think we could have gone on for hours.

Brandi This was good.

Suneet This was great. So everybody, I hope you got something out of this episode with Brandy.

Suneet [00:42:00] She's just positive and success story. Even when things are harder in her life, she figured out ways around it. So I hope that that inspires you guys watching and listening if it did. Like and share with a friend. Make sure to send Brandy your referrals in Tulsa and we'll see you on the next episode of the Reside Platform podcast.

Suneet Thank you. Nice meet.