Your First Hire Could Unlock Your Next Level of Growth

Karlton [00:00:00] what you don't wanna do is, "I got four deals. I'm spending all my time now on transaction management."

Karlton They close, and guess what? I'm out of business because I spent all that time closing those deals and I stopped meeting new people. I stopped following up with my database.

Lauren Hi everybody. Welcome back to the Reside Platform Podcast. I am Lauren Rathgeb Holland, the director of client experience and operations here at Reside, joined with the wonderful Carl, Carlton Utter, our head of development and training over here.

Lauren most days you'll find us somewhere in the middle of, client health trainings,and figuring out how to build the infrastructure behind the scenes so that agents and team leaders can solely focus on growing. Carl leads our training division here at Reside, so if you have been through any of our agent training programs or worked with Carl in the past, there is a good [00:01:00] chance that, his fingerprints have touched whatever we're teaching our agents.

Lauren So he spent a lot of time thinking about what actually makes training stick versus what just, you know, checks a box, and that's exactly what we're gonna get into today. So Carlton, welcome. We're glad to have you on.

Karlton Always great to be on with you, Lauren. And saying that Reside Platform Podcast, that's, that's a hard one trying to say that a few times quick, huh?

Lauren It is not easy. It is definitely a tongue twister. so awesome. Carlton, we have had so much going on behind the scenes the past couple of months. I mean, it's August, I think it's the last 60 days we've been talking about a lot of different things that we've been rolling out, and, a lot of just getting in front of, solo practicing agents and team leaders.

Lauren So, one of the most common ob- objections we've heard a lot is, they know they have to leverage and, hand something off in order to scale and run their business at the rate that they wanna grow at. but it's really hard because they're the ones that have been doing it this entire [00:02:00] time. So I'd love to get into some leverage best practices today, and just let the conversation go from there.

Karlton Yeah, that sounds good to me. It's, it's an important topic because especially when you start getting into 15 plus transactions as a solo practitioner Or even as a team, when you start elevating and growing, you start to develop these growing pains with your business. And you start to think like, "How much more can I take on and still have a work-life balance?"

Karlton And this is where that, when you hit that point, that's when it's like, "All right. I need some sort of support." And then where do I start when it comes to that support system, right?

Lauren Yeah. So I guess let's dive into the different ty- types of leverage here. Let's define it, that we're talking about. So, if we're looking at a foundational level and talking about the basics of real estate, you know, we have to pick up the phone and call.

Lauren that can be our sphere, the people that we [00:03:00] know, or maybe leads that are coming in from our website that you're either, generating organically or referrals or you're paying for them. we all know that we have to open a door sometimes, right? So, lock boxes, sign installs. once you get something under contract or some kind of agreement signed in, whether that's DotLoop or SkySlope, who's the one act- and like getting it to the closing table, who is the one that's actually doing this?

Lauren And with the way, rate that you guys all are, is it the best practice for you to be doing that anymore yourself, right?

Karlton Yeah. And they, they've made it so easy to get help. They, they really have. I'm thinking back to when I was an agent, we had, and I was an individual agent, and our company kind of got it and was ahead of the time because we had two in-house marketing reps that helped you build and create and order all of your marketing [00:04:00] pieces.

Karlton And then we also had In the office, we had two admins, or they called them processing managers. And these were folks that would help get basically transaction management, in the office. They would help put your properties in the MLS for you. They would help manage your files. They would help track the dates that you had to get stuff done and keep you updated with that.

Karlton And so it, it really made it a lot easier having those pieces in place as an individual agent. Now, that office that I was in, we had 125 agents when I was actively doing sales. So there had to be some sort of level of support to go along with what the manager was doing and everybody else. But today, like anybody can go and hire a transaction coordinator, and I think it kind of starts with that role because that's that behind the scenes administrative stuff.

Karlton Where you are going to be strongest and [00:05:00] best is face-to face, shaking hands, working with clients, putting deals together. And it kind of comes back to one of the things I teach in the first day of Amplify, which is as an agent, you wear four hats. You are the salesperson, you are the marketing person, right, you are research and development, and you are the administrative side or the operations side of your business.

Karlton Each of us as an agent, whether you're an individual agent or on a team, you still have to wear those four hats. So it's a matter of how much time are you dedicating to each of those four aspects of your business. And if you find you're wasting too much time doing research and development and administrative stuff and writing offers, and not as much time in front of clients, which is what's gonna make you money and build your business, then leverage that stuff and hand it off to somebody that's gonna be able to take that on and let you do what you do best, which is [00:06:00] talk to people and put deals together.

Lauren I think this, this is such an important conversation. I always have the opportunity to be around about 15 or so solo practicing agents and, I hear, we hear this all the time with our team leaders at Reside in terms of leverage, right? And you just hit it on the head. f- you're four different hats at all, all the time.

Lauren and it's the best way, and I, I learned this from Suneet over the last week, it's how do we determine what we need to delegate? And so I wanna get into a couple of practices so that you can actually internalize what you're doing during the day. So he suggested to these, amazing agents, "Hey, have a timer."

Lauren Like, he- Suneet went out and bought, like, two 10 do- dollar on Amazon, those kitchen timers that are obnoxious, because you can't hit snooze on those,

Karlton right? Every

Lauren 30 minutes, [00:07:00] what were you doing, right? And that's gonna really hold you accountable and say, "Am I, being productive, proactive?" Or, you know, excuse me, "Am I wasting my time?

Lauren Am I actually doing money-making ge- activities?" And when you start to look at where you want your volume to be and your hourly rate, are you doing $20 an hour tasks that you could leverage off or delegate to somebody else, where you should be, could be doing $500 tasks or $250 tasks depending on where, do you wanna be at a million dollars grossing each year?

Lauren a qu- half a million dollars grossing each year, you know? That's the mindset shift we need to start looking into. And, with that said, it's okay, now we gotta start learning how to let go and actually delegate those things to somebody else.

Karlton Yeah. And I mean, you have VAs that you can leverage if you don't like to do the administrative stuff, or you just need somebody to help keep you on track and on pace and manage your calendar.

Karlton AI,you could really leverage Claude. I've learned a [00:08:00] lot in the past couple of months of being part of Reside and with the growth and emergence of AI and how that helps automate your system. and then, you know, one of the most basic things that can help folks stay on track is just using Follow Up Boss or your CRM, which so many agents don't leverage that enough, and to the point where when you wake up in the morning, it's gonna tell you what you need to do to move your business forward.

Karlton But it takes a little bit of time to put that all together and get it in a place, and you need to put enough people in there for it to really operate the way that you want it to. There is no shortage of opportunities to bring people on. I- if you're a team, who do you need to add next to support your team that's gonna make a difference?

Karlton But, and if you're a single agent or a solo agent, like it's the same thing. Like what is going to have the most ROI on your business? [00:09:00] What is going to support you the most? It's not just what I don't like to do, it's what is going to help me spend more time generating clients that will help me make more money.

Karlton And for some people, i- if you're not a good marketer, then invest in a marketing company. Invest in somebody that is going to assist you with your social media and handle that and manage it and drive lead flow through, through that avenue. It's just identifying where those holes are in your business and letting you focus on the things that you like to do that are gonna help you be most successful.

Lauren Couldn't agree more. and for anybody listening, a VA, we refer to those virtual assistants. So that, is typically is someone outside of the US, you know, we can hire South America, Philippines, Canada. it really just depends on, the geographic [00:10:00] location that you're in and the kind of job that you want them to be handling.

Lauren it's super easy to post on, different sites, hire out with a third party. you- But there's just so much that we can do. what I would love to encourage you all is you should always be investing in your business, especially if you don't have the money for it. Because if you don't have the money for it, you're likely trying to do it all, and we can't be at, at everywhere at the same time.

Lauren You know what I mean? So, when we're wearing multiple hats and we're starting to get to that leverage point or that breaking point of, "Holy crap, how do I do it all?" We all have 24 hours in a day. How do some of these mega agents, solo practicing or team leaders do it? They have leverage. They have leverage behind them.

Karlton Yeah, you, you gotta spend money to make money in this business. it's like anything. Like if you were to... You were gonna start a food truck, you still have to go buy the food truck. You gotta [00:11:00] buy all the equipment. You gotta go get everything in order. You have to load up on supplies, and you have to be ready to go.

Karlton And it's like anything, you have to put some money out because you don't wanna be a secret realtor. You need people in your local community, if they're thinking of buying or selling real estate, are they going to think of you? And it comes down to a couple of different things. And look, I, I get it.

Karlton I remember getting started, and I was counting that commission check because I had to pay my mortgage, and I had to put diapers on my daughter, and I had to do all those things. And it's like, it's real hard to be like, "Oh, I'm gonna take $600 and go put it into my business." But the reality is like, you have to bet on yourself, right?

Karlton You own a business. You have to bet on yourself, and you have to be smart about what you're spending money on and doing. So whether it's marketing piece, like if you're looking to invest in doing some additional marketing, like you should be asking questions and [00:12:00] setting expectations on your expected results from spending that money.

Karlton If it's putting it into a VA, well, what is that gonna free up for me? Right? How much time is that gonna open up? And then how am I going to best utilize that free time that I now have? It's not like, "Oh, now I got a VA doing this, so I got all this free time." It's, well, you're putting money into that, so now you can spend your free time prospecting, following up, generating more business.

Karlton Everything should be hyper-focused on growth. And if you're worried about a budget, guys, just start off small Think about it this way. What I like to do is I always said, "I'm gonna take a percentage of each closing or a certain dollar amount from each commission and reinvest that back into the business."

Karlton So let's say it's 300 bucks. I'm gonna take $300 out of every closing and put it back in the business. Well, if I have a month with three closings, that's

[00:13:00] $900. Guys, I'm telling you, I can de- I will definitely get at least one transaction if you gave me $900 to go market myself. And an average commission in my area is gonna be about five grand.

Karlton I would spend $900 all day long to make 5,000. That's a pretty fair trade-off for me.

Lauren Well, and you're the product of that success, right? You invested in yourself, and now look at where you are from, you know, when you started as a brand new agent to now building some of the top coaching and training,programs across the nation, right?

Lauren it, this is really just, we're talking about here the difference between losing yourself in your business and finally having enough space to be yourself in it. Because especially if you're a solo agent here, practicing, people want you. You want to be the face of your clients. So there's just, there's so much, data and success stories on this.

Lauren so again, we have, just to [00:14:00] recap, how do we decide if you're new to this or if you're at a place where you have to start thinking about this again? set that timer for 30 minutes, okay? Put two in your kitchen, like wherever you work. If you're in an office, wherever you can't stop it. But really digest what you've done, and those are money-making activities.

Lauren Is that a money-making activity that you can leverage off to or delegate to a virtual assistant or a stateside hire or a third party? Carlton mentioned, marketing company. there are, are amazing third-party TCs if you're not ready to just go on and put somebody on salary or hourly quite yet. there, also what I like to do is create your not to-do list, right?

Lauren Like, what fuels you? What gives you energy? Write those things down as you're, as you're doing this. if you love being on the phone and, prospecting and, generating your business, that is what you need to be doing, right? If putting in a listing inside of the MLS drains the crap out of you, that might be something that a virtual assistant [00:15:00] or, a listing manager could do for you, right?

Lauren So there's just a lot of avenues that, that we can do here, for data entry, going back and forth with title companies, attorneys, lenders, whatever state you're in. There's just so much here we could talk about

Karlton Transaction coordinators free up a lot of your time because, think about when you start putting deals together, right?

Karlton You got three or four transactions happening at any given time. That is a lot to coordinate, and if you have somebody that you know and you're paying and you trust them to help keep that coordinated and just putting on your calendar, "Hey, you need to be here at this time. You need to be here. This is what we're doing to move it forward."

Karlton Just having another set of eyes and ears on that piece, and even just interacting with the client on your behalf, it goes a long way and it frees up your time now to continue to prospecting. 'Cause what you don't wanna do is, "I got four deals. I'm spending all my [00:16:00] time now on transaction management."

Karlton They close, and guess what? I'm out of business because I spent all that time closing those deals and I stopped meeting new people. I stopped following up with my database. So that, that is a, a really, to me, that- that's one of the strongest ROIs and best opportunities, to invest in to, to keep your business moving forward

Lauren I couldn't agree more with you.

Lauren and, and another avenue that I wanna s- shift into is more mindset around this, because I wanna kill this myth that whoever I hire is just going to be a clone of me. They're not. No one is going to care about your business that you started more than you. We hear this from team leaders all the time, "Well, this agent's lazy," or, "This agent won't do this.

Lauren I've tried. I've done X, Y, Z." You- Doctors tell you all the time what you need to do to change in order to survive. People do not cut out the bad things that they need [00:17:00] to, or not even bad, but peop- they don't cut the things out that they're instructed to, okay? So like, it's self-motivation and what your priorities are.

Lauren so your job is, or the third party's job is someone who's excellent at the 70%, so you can be exceptional at the 30%. Or if you wanna go the 80/20 rule, whatever it is, you get the point, right? You might not be the best person for that job anymore, and you're creating an opportunity for somebody else to step in and grow in their career and their life as well, right?

Karlton Yeah.

Lauren Yeah. sorry.

Karlton You said it all right there. I don't have anything to add. I mean, that, that's it.

Lauren I get on a, like a huge... 'Cause, so we're really- my, one of my biggest passions is building this. I truly believe that our operators are the backbones of our business, whether we're solo practicing agents or whether we're a team leader trying to, take all the market share and build this massive team.

Lauren No judgment on either. Both are beautiful, and it's whatever [00:18:00] your, in- definition of success looks like, right? I would say the best VA is almost, excuse me, never someone that is brand new to this industry. it might be the burned-out agent who wants their life back, but still loves real estate.

Lauren So if you're looking for a showing assistant, someone that's actually licensed and can write those addendums for you. You know, they're coachable. They already speak the language. You don't have to necessarily b- explain the why behind anything. With that, though, I will say I was brand new when I started 10 year- almost 10 years ago.

Lauren I knew nothing, and I was self-taught, and now I get to work with the top leaders in the industry, like Carl and Suneet, and so many other people. And it's just so beautiful, because it's like if you find someone that's truly passionate about what they do, this isn't a plug for Raise My Eyes, just get them into these trainings.

Lauren Invest in yourself. Be around like-minded people, because what I have learned is the rooms that you're in matter, and people believe in you more than you believe in yourself, and [00:19:00] you need that. You need that reminder, especially, you know, you might be going through a season of life, right? And you need these kind of people to bring you up, and your admin certainly can do that as well.

Karlton And I just kinda wanna go back and say, y- you don't have to do this. There, there's a lot of folks that are very successful without kinda off-boarding any, any additional activities. Some people just have that high D personality where they got trust issues and they need to own it, and you figure out a way to get that done.

Karlton And, and that's okay if, if that's how you are. but what I would urge you to do is kinda just look into some options and talk to some folks about it that may already be, be off-boarding some of the stuff that they're doing to get additional help. And, you know, find somebody that you do trust if you need it.

Karlton Because I will tell you firsthand, like, I remember when I got up over 20 transactions one year, and it was a lot, as a solo agent. And that was even with a marketing team and [00:20:00] a, An admin team, to help support me. But the transaction management piece really kind of got to me, and trying to wear all four of those hats, doing 20-plus transactions, it can be a challenge.

Karlton it's not impossible, but it, it could be, it starts to become a challenge where you start kind of thinking about your business approach. and I will tell you, in running Rise and Amplify, one of the things we do in both classes is we look at, you know, where do you wanna be in a year or two with your business?

Karlton And pretty much every single agent tells me the same thing. They wanna be up over 100,000. And if you're up over 100,000, it means you're typically doing 15-plus transactions a year. So you're, you're starting to hit that point where you're gonna need some help.

Lauren Well, I'm really glad we brought it back to the TCs.

Lauren One thing where you just said too, if you don't wanna do this, that's fine. Everyone has their own definition of what success is going to look like. I wanna also say, because I feel like the, in the past, people won't [00:21:00] talk about money, whatnot, like you don't wanna, you tiptoe around certain conversations.

Lauren It's okay to wanna make a lot of money. These are the pieces in place to get you there. Because if you wanna make a lot of money, that might actually be for a bigger purpose, to support the people around you, right? Like your family, your community, charity, whatever your big why is, m- money is that freedom to go do that.

Lauren it's discipline. a- and so back to the TC piece that Carlton was just talking about, there's just so much fear sometimes that I wanna work through, that peaks for team leaders and solo agents. and handing off the transaction feels like handing off the client relationship sometimes. Not always.

Lauren A good TC is going to protect that relationship as well. They know, well, one, they're gonna get paid when the deal closes, right? And two, they also want to do a good job. People do, what I have found most, is they want to do a good job. they're gonna be the ones that are super [00:22:00] detail-oriented and making sure that nothing is gonna fall through the cracks that could actually damage or put yourself out of compliance and make a huge blow-up happened, right?

Lauren So, yeah. You s- you staying the, you're gonna stay the face of the deal and someone else is going to own that paperwork. That sounds incredible. Those are not in conflict, okay? it's the same goal, just from two different seats Okay. All right. I know we've talked a l- a lot about many different things.

Lauren if you're asking yourself, "Who is the first person I should hire?" I think that's actually a little different depending on where you're at with your business and who you are.

Karlton Yeah. You're, you need to kind of evaluate what your business is, where you need help. And I always say look at the stuff that you love to do and, and the things that are making you most successful in your business.

Karlton And when you get to that point where, "All right. I've [00:23:00] achieved a high level of production. I'm at where I need to be. What do I need to go to the next level?" I, I would say look at the stuff that you love to do and hand off the stuff that you don't love to do. There's a reason that usually the first team member that somebody brings on or, or the first partner or somebody that takes on, is usually a buyer's agent because a lot of realtors, they fall in love with the listing and they understand the listing creates marketing, the listing creates, long-term growth opportunities.

Karlton They control their own income. it, it, they like the listing side. They don't like working with buyers. Now, I like the balance. You have some people that rather work with buyers, and they don't like the listings. So you figure out like, what do you love? Where are you gonna be most successful? And then, who do you bring in to support you?

Karlton So, you know, in, in kinda growing your support staff, it could go in various different directions depending on your needs, who you are, your personality, your market area [00:24:00] All of that ties into it

Lauren Totally. Totally. All right. I would close us off, by saying that lever- leverage or delegation, it's never about doing less of the work that you love.

Lauren It, it's about finally doing more and having the space to do more of it. So just because someone else might be holding the parts that you, never actually want- might have enjoyed doing in the first place, that's exactly where you need to be. And if you feel like you're in that space right now, and I know a lot of us are, and there's friction, there's uncomfortableness, if that's a word, around it, good.

Lauren We want that to be your next step because that is telling you it's t- it's time to find somebody else.

Karlton Yeah.

Lauren Cool. Anything else to add, Carlton?

Karlton Just, it- for those of you that, that aren't ready yet, and you're still building your business, time blocking, [00:25:00] using the, the timer method that Lauren and Suneet talk about.

Karlton It... Get the stuff done in the morning that you need to. unless you work in corporate America where it starts at 9:00 AM, typically the mornings are pretty quiet. That is your time to get those things done that you need to get done, so the rest of the day you can go handle phone calls and go show houses and go preview homes and-

Lauren All the fires

Lauren do fun

Karlton stuff. Yeah, get all that. Get the s- the hard stuff done in the morning, and have it blocked out to do your marketing, do your follow-up, do your prospecting, do your operational piece, all of that stuff, your R&D, all of it. not enough people are time blocking and working in the mornings and you... I find realtors' time has gotten a little bit shorter.

Karlton You're not quite eight-hour days unless you have to with appointments, but if you put eight hours a day into it and you're a full-time realtor, you'll see a big [00:26:00] difference in your business.

Lauren Yeah. And even, you know, part-time agents too. we're s- we're starting to see more part-time agents, outsell the, the full-time agents because they're so, efficient with their time blocks.

Lauren And if you don't like the term time blocks or time management, you... If it's not on your calendar, it doesn't exist. And when we have way too much freedom, because our day is not structured, we are not winning because we're not going to do those money-making activities. And if you're not doing that, then you don't have enough b- business to get that leverage.

Lauren And I- if that is what you want to put food on the table for your family, you wanna go serve your community or whatever your big why is, let's get these money-making activities in place and then start setting up your org ch- org chart.

Karlton 100%.

Lauren Awesome. Okay. Well, Carlton, thanks. It's always so fun to hop on these with you.

Lauren Can't wait for the next one. We'll talk to y'all later.

Karlton Bye everyone.

Lauren Bye.