The Secret Behind 1,000+ Applicants with Michael Gillies

[00:00:00] Michael: I worked like 160 days in a row and didn't take a day off. And, in some ways it's like, well, I can be proud of that. I can show my agents that I did it, you know, that, that it's possible. But in a lot of ways it took its toll on the family side of things.

[00:00:15] Michael: And there was points where I was like disappointed in myself and, breaking down a little bit.

[00:00:27] Suneet: What's up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Reside Platform podcast. My name is Suneet Agarwal and I'll be the host today and a lot of days I am usually hosting this, podcast. I, get the honor to talk to great guests like our next one, Michael Gillis from the Gillis Team, real Estate in Northern Virginia.

[00:00:51] Suneet: I'm looking forward to chatting with Michael. Guys. Michael, what's up?

[00:00:54] Michael: I'm glad to be here.

[00:00:55] Suneet: Yeah. What's been going on in a real estate world for you, Michael?

[00:01:00] Michael: Lots of recruiting. lots of conversion work, trying to get all these signed clients under contract. Lots of training. we're in growth mode, so it's gonna be a fun year.

[00:01:12] Suneet: Yeah. So What is the goal for the year? let's say agent count.

[00:01:17] Michael: Agent count. So at. I was gonna say 12, I think it's actually it's 13 or 14. The goal is to be closer to 30 by the end of the year.

[00:01:27] Suneet: What are all the things you're doing to get to that 30,

[00:01:31] Michael: Yeah. So. the biggest thing that I'm doing is I'm running twice a week Zoom meetings. Lots of indeed ads, trying to find people that are interested in real estate. 'cause everyone's kind of interested in real estate, right? And, you know, we've got, got a scholarship program that we run and that's really successful.

[00:01:48] Michael: And the idea is I just wanna get people on this webinar or on this Zoom meeting and talk to 'em about real estate. Talk to 'em about, you know, kind of what the numbers are, why people are successful, why people aren't successful. And I'm pretty real with them because like, I want the people that are gonna work.

[00:02:05] Michael: I want the people that wanna learn how to sell, that, wanna learn how to convert, that aren't afraid of the phone. and we can teach all that. But part of what I go through is, you know, these are our values. this is what it takes to be part of our team. And the first one is hunger and hustle. I just tell 'em like, if you don't have that, like it's, it's not gonna work at all.

[00:02:23] Michael: And so the meetings are good, takes a little bit, nurture these people and get 'em through the real estate classes and, you know, get 'em to the point where they're ready to join. But it's, definitely working.

[00:02:35] Suneet: So you're doing two zooms a week, Tuesday, Thursday.

[00:02:38] Michael: Monday at 6:00 PM Thursday at 9:00 AM

[00:02:41] Suneet: Dude, that's a good idea. Those two different times are solid too.

[00:02:47] Michael: Yeah.

[00:02:48] Suneet: so you said lots of Indeed ads are the Indeed ads looking for realtors licensed or not. Check out this video or tune into the, webinar.

[00:03:00] Michael: so. There's a couple of different versions of our scholarship ad. You know, we have too many leads, we'll pay for your license, real estate scholarship for, that sort of stuff. And the idea is, I just wanna talk to 'em. it's not that hard, you know, or it's not that expensive on their first deal.

[00:03:16] Michael: We'll cover the cost of your, license class, which by the time we get discounts with the CE shop, I mean, comes out to be less than 200 bucks, depending on what our discount is at that point. And so, it's like a proctor thing. The goal is I just wanna talk to 'em and once I talk to 'em, I can get 'em excited and get 'em interested.

[00:03:33] Michael: Try to weed through the ones that, that aren't gonna make it through the classes. and it's worked well. I mean, I've had. Probably not quite 20 people on a call, but I've had upper teens, and then like this morning, I think I had four people on the call, which was fine.

[00:03:47] Suneet: doesn't matter about who doesn't show up if one person shows up, that's great. Right. I mean, have you ever done a one of those where nobody showed up?

[00:03:55] Michael: I haven't done a single one where nobody showed up. that was my fear. In the beginning. It was, here's the idea. I think I can make this work. in my head, I was like, how many weeks am I gonna go through where nobody shows up and I'm just like, you know, I have this time planned.

[00:04:09] Michael: But every single call twice a week, except I was away one week and then I got the flu since October I've only missed, I think, three calls. And I've had people on every single call.

[00:04:21] Suneet: Yeah. But so people are seeing the invite or they're seeing the ad

[00:04:26] Suneet: on, Indeed.

[00:04:27] Michael: we ask them to apply, so we tell 'em what it is and we talk about the scholarship and all that. But then I don't give them a link until they apply. And then Denise on my team goes through and she sends this templated email. It says, real estate's an amazing career. We wanna talk to you about it.

[00:04:44] Michael: You know, here's our day in the life of a successful real estate agent. We'd love for you to join us. It's a 45 minute zoom call. You'll get all the information you're not gonna get anywhere else sort of thing. and then people sign up and they register through Zoom. And, some classes for some reason are, have a higher show up rate than others.

[00:05:02] Michael: But it's just like anything else. percentage of people won't show up. but it's consistent man. There's people on every single call.

[00:05:08] Suneet: That's awesome. Have you ever tried to run like, paid traffic at that from like meta.

[00:05:14] Michael: no, we, our Indeed ads have money behind them,

[00:05:18] Suneet: I wonder what the cost per lead on it, a cost per application on Indeed is versus cost per application on meta.

[00:05:27] Michael: That's a good question. Yeah. I mean,

[00:05:30] Suneet: I know a guy that could help you do that, and someone who'd have fun looking at it.

[00:05:36] Michael: I have no doubt of.

[00:05:39] Suneet: Well, it's frigging me, right? Like, I would like to test that because, I don't know, like So you just said these are paid Indeed ads, right?

[00:05:49] Suneet: So if it's paid, if you go in the backend, and for everybody listening, in fact, another reside team leader brought this up to Mia yesterday she was surprised at the cost per application on Indeed.

[00:06:05] Suneet: and if you're in Indeed for recruiting. Number one, good job. You're exactly what you should be doing. If you're not well, you better get on it. But you can see what the

[00:06:14] Suneet: cost per lead is.

[00:06:16] Michael: I think we've gotten over a thousand applications since October.

[00:06:19] Suneet: Sweet. Far, how much,

[00:06:21] Michael: I don't know, maybe it's like 600 bucks a month,

[00:06:24] Suneet: Yeah. Good it's all with a headline, right? Gary Halbert, one of the godfathers of copywriting, said, you know, 80%, it was David Ogilvy or Gary Halbert that said it had 80% of your. Copywriting is spent on the headline, so that's where you should focus. All right, good. Dude, that zoom thing's a good idea.

[00:06:45] Michael: Just like everything else, I ripped it off from someone else.

[00:06:48] Suneet: oh, you did

[00:06:50] Michael: yeah, I, I talked to Mike about it and. you know, he kind of gave me a little bit of a blueprint and then I just sort of put what I wanna talk about. And it's not hard to do, like for team leaders that are listening to this.

[00:07:04] Michael: You're probably a lot more engaging and personable than I am. So if I can, do it, then it's not that difficult.

[00:07:11] Suneet: Absolutely. I love that. Number one, shout out to Perna Perna if you're listening. You were supposed to be on this podcast two a while ago, bro. So what's going on? And Michael. Yeah, I, you know, I worked with the Perna team for like three, four years. Great. There's a great team to talk to about that stuff.

[00:07:28] Suneet: Mike, Austin, Sadie, charity, everybody. I love them. Yeah. So before we got started, we were kind of talking about your story and how I find it interesting, right? Because you took over your parents' real estate business. Can you break that down for everybody and more for me too?

[00:07:49] Michael: I'll give you the, the quick history. So I was in, wholesale mortgage, I worked for a subprime company. Somebody that we both know, we found out. and that was awesome. It was great. It was all. B2B stuff. I was talking to a ton of brokers. But then I graduated from college in 2005 and so, 2007 hit and the company I worked for closed, we actually, we played ping pong in the kitchen for months because we had no product to sell.

[00:08:19] Michael: But then that company closed. . It was immediate. I got a little bit of a heads up because a buddy of mine called me. He got there little before I did, and he heads up like, you're cleaning everything out today and you're in.

[00:08:30] Suneet: Well, dude, that's what was happening. Like I remember like I had half my pipeline with one subprime bank and half my pipeline with a paper for those pick pay for the option arms. The, five year prepay arm and the bank with the a paper shut down with half my deals, half my frigging money.

[00:08:52] Suneet: Right. And then the other one was the subprime bank where you worked and they shut down. So I went and found a new home for the a paper, found a new home for the subprime, resold it, and then they shut down and.

[00:09:06] Michael: It was terrible. One day we were funding loans and then next day, halfway through the day, some loans got funded and some didn't. And that was it.

[00:09:15] Michael: Just over.

[00:09:16] Suneet: I was waiting on paper like, Hey, where's my docs? No one's answering this phone.

[00:09:20] Suneet: Where's my docs?

[00:09:21] Michael: yeah. So I wanted to propose to, my wife couldn't do that 'cause I kept losing my job. And so my parents were in real estate they said, Mike, like you kind of know the industry, why don't you come work with us?

[00:09:31] Michael: And then when things calmed down, go back to wholesale, do whatever you wanna do. So I got my license in two weeks. I did nothing but just, I studied for the test, took the test, and started working with. And that year we grew, that was spring of 2008. I got my license and we grew like 30% that year.

[00:09:50] Michael: And so I was like, all right, well let me, I'll hang out here. Like the mortgage industry is still kind of, still kind of crazy. And then we kept growing and we kept growing and you know, and then we got to the point where we hired our first agent and then we hired other agents and we made every freaking mistake in the world, that team leaders make.

[00:10:05] Michael: They try figure this out. I don't know how long it was, but at a certain point, I became the, the team leader, right. Which I, I don't know that I was qualified for. I was a good tactician. I could, close clients, I could close buyers, I could close sellers.

[00:10:19] Michael: I was great at that, but I had no leadership skills. And it

[00:10:22] Michael: showed in the people. I look back at some of the people that, left us and I think, man, if I hired that person today, they'd probably still be here. And so that leadership journey is kind of crazy to go through and it's, weird when you.

[00:10:37] Michael: When you're in it at the early side, like my confidence, I was like, how do you learn to become a leader? You know, you like watch stuff for you, listen to stuff. And one of the biggest lessons that, I learned, and it took me a long time to figure it out, was you can't lead like anyone else.

[00:10:52] Michael: Because that's what I was trying to do. I was like, all right, this person's a great leader, so I'm gonna run my stuff like them. Everyone just kind of thought I was an a-hole because like it wasn't really natural and I was trying to do this thing that wasn't me. And so that's been a whole journey.

[00:11:06] Michael: But then my parents retired. I guess my mom was a little over a year ago. She had been kind of backing out of things over, over time, my dad a couple years ago. And so now it's all on me.

[00:11:16] Suneet: Yeah. And how was that transition to take over that business like that?

[00:11:20] Michael: it was interesting because there was. There was a period in the middle where I think the team didn't know who the leader was.

[00:11:27] Michael: and that was difficult. Right. And I don't think that's anyone's fault because, you know, if I ever transition this business to someone, whether it's my kids or, or someone else at some point, like, I'm not gonna be ready to let go.

[00:11:39] Michael: there's not blame in that necessarily, but, it was a long transition. And I think at, some point. We might have been better off if there was a hard cutoff and eventually there was a hard cutoff right at, retirement. But there was this long transition of, you know, Michael's the team leader, you know, but then there's still a, a boss, right?

[00:12:00] Michael: and in some ways I was sort of comfortable with it, you know, it's like, well, I wanna do things my way, but like I still have this crutch of, my folks and the fact that they started a business and all that, that I could lean on, but it probably wasn't the best thing for me.

[00:12:15] Michael: and you know, I have to be careful with, kind of how all this comes out. 'cause I don't want it to ever be perceived that like, you know, well I just wanted my parents outta the business, you know? My mom was a stay-at-home mom before she got into real estate. My dad was an airline pilot, got into appraisals. The reason why they were successful is, one, they're both very smart, but two, I still don't think if they decided today to get back into real estate, I still don't think, that there's anyone that would outwork them within a hundred miles.

[00:12:48] Michael: And, I say everything that I'm saying, it's real experience, but there's also, a ton of respect but I think I was forced to come into my own when they really started backing out of things. And it's actually been great there was no one to lean on.

[00:13:03] Michael: the decisions are mine. the environment is mine and, you know, the direction is mine. And I think there's probably more of a clear mission now, and, I think the vibe is clear because it's not coming from two directions. it's all gotta come from me. And so, since that cutoff, I think some of that's gotten a little bit, a little bit easier for, for the team.

[00:13:24] Suneet: Good dude, good stuff. And you know, and that's like the natural, like in my perspective, I would say you probably have an advantage over many by getting to experience that with your parents. When, like for me, I just decided one day that I should start a team.

[00:13:41] Suneet: Been an agent for two years. I got like an extra 20 leads and said, I'm starting a team.

[00:13:47] Suneet: I've said that story on this podcast of lots of times, right? And it, it was not very well thought out and I bludgeoned my way through it, learning the same lessons as you. Right. And I think everybody. When they get into leadership, like I don't think there's very many natural born leaders. I think that people screw up a lot and learn a lot because you deal with your expectations, you deal with other people's idiosyncrasies, and it really becomes like more than you thought.

[00:14:21] Michael: the cool thing about it, and I tell recruits this, I tell our agents this, is that I was an agent on our team before I was our team leader. And so I've got that perspective where I can say, Hey, look, I, you know, I've had things delegated to me, I had to prospect, you know, I, all these things that I'm asking you to do.

[00:14:43] Michael: I did. And I did it from the standpoint of not being, you know, the independent single agent. I did it, you know, coming into this environment. And so I've been there. I've had the mentors. you know, I've had that experience of having someone to go to and having someone that, you know, that was further along than me.

[00:15:00] Michael: And so, you know, that's where I'm at. That's where I'm at for you. I just have kind of kept climbing that, so

[00:15:07] Suneet: So let's talk about, Tech and tools and all the stuff that you're using right now. I'm sure it's a lot. You wanna share something about that?

[00:15:15] Michael: The thing that I've been most excited about recently is ciso. we had a, virtual team that we really liked. They did a great job that was running our agent accountability and our conversions and all that, but it was still pretty manual. And when something's on a spreadsheet like that and it breaks and you need the information, there were times where it wasn't ideal. And so we started searching for other options and Sisu integrates with Follow-Up Boss, which is, you know, about as key to what we do as anything. And it's given us these immediate insights into where we're at. And so we can see these holes in, whether it's an individual agents training or whether it's the entire team or whatever.

[00:15:58] Michael: So and it was a good fit because we've always tracked appointments set. Met signed contract close. And what CISO lets us do is it, it lets us plug in the idea of follow up boss conversations, which is a huge metric for us. And the percentage that those follow up boss conversations are converting to a set appointment.

[00:16:18] Michael: And then we have all the conversion metrics in between. And

[00:16:21] Michael: so for example, right now, we've signed a, ton of buyers and sellers, probably more than we ever have, and a lot of that's because we're having more conversations than we ever have. Some of the gaps we probably need to set a little stronger appointments because our set to met is lower than we'd like it to be.

[00:16:36] Suneet: . Cool. So Sisu, what else are you liking right now?

[00:16:39] Michael: Well, we haven't been with Follow-Up Boss that long. We've been with Follow-Up Boss about six months.

[00:16:44] Michael: and when you change something big like a CRM, agents are gonna complain and I include myself in that, like I would complain. It's

[00:16:51] Michael: terrible trying to change a big system like that.

[00:16:54] Michael: Our agents. We're fine with the whole transition. They were so happy to be in the system and they really like it. And so follow up Boss is great. The integrations are good. We're having pretty good luck with fellow. We use fellow to, to identify sellers in our database. We use fellows landing pages we run ads to 'em just to get home.

[00:17:15] Michael: Ow cash offer leads, those sorts of things. And so we're having pretty good success with fellow.

[00:17:21] Suneet: So did you just get follow up Boss when you joined Reside? Was that the first time?

[00:17:26] Michael: Mm-hmm. I had, I had some friends that have been trying to convince me for a while,

[00:17:29] Michael: and I just said, I just, I don't want to go through a CRM transition. But yeah, finally did, and it really wasn't that bad

[00:17:38] Michael: when it was all said and done a little.

[00:17:40] Suneet: part of the great stuff about it is, uh, it's simple for people to, to understand, right? As long as you can get your filters, then it's simple. Let's go back a little bit. Think back to when, you had a smaller team, right? So for the team leader who's stuck at like three to five agents and they're spinning their wheels, what do you say to 'em?

[00:18:02] Michael: So I'm making the biggest recruiting push now that I ever have, and I've been in situations before where I was sure that the team I had Was strong and they were committed and, you know, I didn't wanna maybe dilute the pool of leads for them, you know, I had committed to them.

[00:18:23] Michael: And so it was important that, I kept that. And then a couple people leave and it's usually the ones that you're not expecting, and sometimes it's not even that people, I've had people move

[00:18:31] Michael: like, Hey, I gotta go to Florida. Okay. and so the idea of always having a pipeline of recruits is so big.

[00:18:41] Michael: You know, because it's a sort of thing where I had a couple agents, leave, what's today, Thursday? They left Tuesday. I don't love it, right? And it's not like the, there was a ton of production or, or anything like that. I don't love that, but I have the confidence that, you know, there's another couple that are starting this week, you know, so, the idea of sort of top grading and, you know, keeping the pressure on sounds sounds wrong.

[00:19:03] Michael: It's, it's not exactly that, but it's the idea that if we wanna grow. There's a certain number of transactions or a certain, here's an idea that I'll put out there. So there's this idea about someone's financial thermostat.

[00:19:16] Michael: So, we say, you know what, this agent is awesome.

[00:19:19] Michael: You know, he or she has so much potential we're gonna get from, you know, from, 10 closings. They're easily gonna hit 20. But if their financial thermostat is. Pretty fine, you know, around what they're making. And chances are they're not gonna push that hard to get that much higher, even if they're saying with their words that they want to.

[00:19:38] Michael: And I think the compliment to that is, I think everyone also has kind of this work hard thermostat too.

[00:19:44] Michael: And everyone wants to make more money,

[00:19:47] Michael: you know, or have more success or however you look at it. But,

[00:19:50] Michael: Not everyone is willing to put the hours in or learn the new things or whatever.

[00:19:55] Michael: So if you're counting on everyone's financial thermostat to keep going up and everyone's work hard thermostat to keep going up, it's just probably not gonna happen, you know? And so then you're stuck. And I've done that too many times. Where, you know, I counted on our existing agents, you know, to all increase their production.

[00:20:14] Michael: It's like, well, I'm gonna provide more leads and more opportunities and better tech and better coaching and all these things. And so, you know, so everyone's gonna level up. But not everyone wants to level up and that's probably okay. Right? if they're happy where they are, then that's fine.

[00:20:27] Michael: But in order to hit our team goals, we're gonna have to add people, add opportunities, and it's like this cycle. Round and round. So that's kind where we're at right now.

[00:20:38] Suneet: Yeah. Good. Love that. Love that. So you're telling people have no excuse, just recruit, right?

[00:20:45] Michael: Yeah. KR, right.

[00:20:47] Suneet: Yeah. KFR.

[00:20:49] Suneet: If you don't know what KFR is, this is the first time listening to the Reside Platform podcast. So, .

[00:20:55] Suneet: you're a dad, would you want your kids to take over the business from you one day?

[00:21:00] Michael: Yes, with, a caveat. so my kids were young when I was in like the full on agent mode and then on the, early side too. So my kids right now are, going into eighth and ninth grade, so

[00:21:11] Michael: my daughter's almost 13 and my son's 14. And so as I was building, I was super busy and my work hard thermostat and my financial thermostat didn't have a limit.

[00:21:22] Michael: it was gonna be a hundred hours a week. It was, I worked like 160 days in a row and didn't take a day off. And, in some ways it's like, well, I can be proud of that. I can show my agents that I did it, you know, that, that it's possible. But in a lot of ways it took its toll on the family side of things.

[00:21:40] Michael: And there was points where I was like disappointed in myself and, breaking down a little bit.

[00:21:46] Michael: So to answer the question, yes, but with some sort of growth plan, right? Some sort of support plan what I ended up doing was I hired a partner agent and I pay him a base salary plus a piece of every single thing that I do.

[00:22:02] Michael: And it takes so much off my plate so that one, I can spend time with my family, but then two, I can focus on team stuff and that structure has opened things up so much. And so I would love for my kids to get involved in real estate. But I don't want them to go through, that piece of it, right?

[00:22:23] Michael: Where they're dealing with burnout and not seeing their kids and that sort of stuff, which I think happens a lot. And successful agents and team leaders, I think a lot of family sacrifice happens.

[00:22:35] Suneet: it does. And is any entrepreneur who works hard.

[00:22:39] Suneet: Like it is just a part of sacrifice, like growth. there's a price to pay, right? It's either spend a bunch of money by hiring a bunch of people to do the work or spend a bunch of time and sacrifice what you're doing this far. It's interesting, and I love that you brought this up as we wrap up, Alright, well, tell everybody where you're at again and how they can reach you if they wanna send you a referral or talk to you more or talk to you about anything that you.

[00:23:04] Michael: we're in Northern Virginia. Our office is in Stafford, little way south of dc. And We kind of cover north, south, east, and west from here. My, direct number 5 4 0 6 9 9 0 0 3 0 and my direct email that's not out on like all the marketing stuff is mj like Mike john@gillisteam.com.

[00:23:27] Suneet: All right. You guys hit up Michael and his team for your referrals out there in Virginia. Right? Safe to say

[00:23:34] Michael: Yeah, man. Yeah, Virginia for sure.

[00:23:36] Suneet: in Virginia. And thank you Mike for coming on. That was fun. That was a cool conversation. I know I took it to some places that you maybe weren't expecting, but that's, how we keep it fun, brother.

[00:23:46] Suneet: Everybody, thanks for listening to this episode. Mikes, like I said, once again, thanks again. Keep up crushing it. if you liked this episode, viewers and listeners, and I hope you did.

[00:23:56] Suneet: Share with a friend, like, subscribe, leave a comment for any feedback or any questions. I love the comments. I read 'em all, and we'll make sure to see you on the next episode of the Reside Platform podcast. That's my outro. All right, later guys.