In the second episode of the Realvolve Podcast, Dale chats with Jared James, one of the industry’s most in-demand keynote speakers and real estate trainers.
Jared’s discussion covers topics such as:
- How to build a successful real estate team (and why self-awareness plays an important role)
- Why the old brokerage model doesn’t work (Spoiler alert: Today’s successful teams focus on the consumer first, not the agent.)
- What new agents should be doing (“Fail in front of real people.”)
Check it out now!
Listen now on iTunes
Listen now on Stitcher
Dale: What’s up, Mr. Jared James?
Jared: What’s going on, man? How you doing?
Dale: I am doing very well. Thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast, really appreciate your time. I really wanted to have you on, because I’ve been following your stuff for years now. You and I met—I don’t know if you remember, I remember very well—you and I met in Cincinnati at the Dotloop headquarters at a bootcamp.
Jared: All right. That’s going way back.
Dale: Yeah, so you were emceeing the whole event and I was there with BombBomb and I was just sitting in the back of the room just observing.
Jared: That’s awesome, dude.
Dale: The thing that I remember about you back then was you were hustling. You were going up on stage, and talking, and doing your thing up there, then in between when somebody else was training, you were in another room in a hallway with your laptop out talking to coaching clients.
Jared: Yeah, those were the days, man. You’re going way back. People don’t realize or didn’t know that I had an endorsement deal with [Dotloop] back in the beginning, way back before they sold to Zillow, where my job really was to bring attention to them, and my job was to help hook them up with a lot of my contacts in the industry, and that kind of stuff. God, I almost forgot that I had done that. That was going so far back.
Dale: That was a fun trip for me. That’s the first time I met you. Yeah, so now we definitely bump shoulders every once in a while at events and things like that.
Jared: Yup.
Dale: I guess then, the last time you and I really actually hung out then was in Nanaimo at a Real Estate Webmaster’s Conference.
Jared: With who? Was that with Chris and a couple others? Was that the … I think if I remember correctly, that was a fun night.
Dale: Yeah, yeah. We went out to this club, they had a glow in the dark night, or something like that, and there was glow in the dark paint everywhere. I came back and I’m putting my clothes away out of my bag, and there’s glow in the dark paint all over my sport coat. My wife’s like, “What the heck were you doing up there in Canada?”
Jared: How can you forget that? That’s insane. Yeah, good times.
Dale: Those were the couple of times, you were emceeing both of those events. But, again the thing that stood out to me was, how much you hustled. There was something I was thinking about the other day, because you were … I know from doing a few small events, how much energy it takes—physical, emotional energy it takes—to stand on stage for an hour, just an hour, and talk to a live audience. It’s totally different than a webinar. A webinar takes a lot of you, and a podcast, like this, takes a lot of energy. It’s like you have to be an athlete, right? So, you get up on stage, it’s all this energy.
I was just thinking about this, because I met a guy years, and years back. I don’t know, 10 years ago. You remember those success summits? There were these tours of all these big speakers.
Jared: Yeah.
Dale: Yeah, it was like Tom Hopkins, and astronauts would be there and all this kind of stuff. There was this guy, so it would be a famous person doing a 90-minute keynote, then another guy would get on stage right after him, and pitch a product for an hour, and that’s how they made their money. So, it was free to go to, but they were pitching products.
Jared: Yup.
Dale: Half entertainment, half sales. This guy got up there, and sold … When he got up there and he pitched this product, there were lines out the door for people to buy his product. I called him afterward, I looked him up and I tracked him down, and called him, and I basically said, “How do you do it?” And he said, “I practice dozens, and dozens, and dozens of times in front of a mirror, just by myself.” I don’t think people understand, I think people would see a guy like you, and they just think, “Oh, yeah, he can just get up on stage and just like do it.”
So, I wanted to talk to you about a couple of things today. One thing I want to talk about is prep. The other thing I wanted to talk about is teams, because I know you work with a lot of teams, you work with a lot of real estate agents. So do we. I wanted to talk about teams and the current issues facing teams. I wanted to get your take on it, because you definitely have a different perspective than us.
So, the reason why I brought up the Dotloop thing and the Nanaimo thing was because I saw how hard you hustled then, and I can still see you hustling now. When you’re speaking—when you’re up in front of an audience or when you’re doing a webinar—there are things you say that … I can tell that you’ve worked on them. You have little sayings and things that have evolved over time.
Jared: Right.
Dale: Talk about that for a second.
Jared: It’s simple man. So, my life is not … it’s really weird, man, because I don’t usually talk about this stuff. But I’m a purebred entrepreneur that is now running a company. It’s an interesting dynamic, because you have people who work for you that are employees, yet I want them to have an entrepreneurial mindset. I don’t think like a normal person, like 9 to 5, you know what I mean? I will legit come in the office from 6 to 11, go do stuff from 11 to 3, work from 3 to 6, have dinner with whatever, put my kids to bed, and work ’til 1:00 in the morning. I don’t work on a normal schedule. In my mind, I’m always working and I’m always not. It’s this really weird pull from two different sides that’s always going on.
But, when you talk about preparation, I think that what separates me from so many people who get up and are professional speakers and professional whatever, is that I’m literally actively doing it every single day, to the point where there are better speakers, there are better looking people, there are more funny people, but there’s something that happens when somebody gets up with an audience and connects with them. Because they know that what you’re saying, you really believe. There’s this passion that comes through you. And the reason that happens for me is because everything that I’m talking to an audience about, I’m having to do.
So, we have a big thing we say all the time: You marry the principle, you date the model. You marry the principle; principles are true. They last forever. Getting in front of a potential client, at the time they need you before someone else does, is a principle that remains true forever. Then there are models and strategies that change.
I look at my business and the real estate people that I teach all the time the exact same way. The same principle it takes for me to be successful in what I’m doing, are the exact same principles for them, the content just changes, right? So, when you hear a lot of the sayings you’ll hear me say, they don’t come because I watched a good YouTube clip, or because I read a good book, or whatever. They come because I think like that.
Literally, I was talking to a guy two weeks ago, and I was talking to him about something, he was talking about my end goals, and whatever, and I said to him, “Look man, you’ve got it all mixed up right now. I don’t commit to the climb to get to the top, I commit to the climb because I love the climb.” I said that, and he goes, “Oh, that’s like a Tweetable moment.” And I write that stuff down, man, but I say it because I absolutely mean it.
There’s another part to it that you have to understand. There’s a lot of crap, there’s a lot of whatever, there are natural abilities, natural skills, natural talents too that I have, that other people don’t have. Then they have ones that I don’t have. That happens as well.
Dale: Sure.
Jared: But, then also, I have to take into account that for what I do for a living, some people’s minds just work differently. The reason why I’m able to use examples time after time, and constantly create new content, is because I view the world like a stand up comedian. I’m not a guy that looks at the world, like everybody else looks at the world. I’m able to do what I do for a living, and able to do it well, and able to constantly create new content, because it’s how I view the world.
Dale: So, how much of that do you feel like is just something that was born into you, and how much of that are you pushing to try to get better at?
Jared: Okay, so, Tiger Woods is a naturally great golfer, but if he never spends the time on the course, he’s no longer number one in the world, right?
Dale: Yeah.
Jared: So, in my mind it works like that. Knowing that there are certain gifts and abilities in those places, if I don’t put the time aside to actually work on those and work that muscle, so to say, then it doesn’t get any better. The trap that you fall into is that once people want your attention, you get into a thing where you do nothing but get paid to go to events, or work with coaching students. All of your time, every day, is completely taken up, and the very reason why people wanted your attention to begin with, you no longer have, because you haven’t made the time to create new content or to think creatively. So, literally, my office will tell you, I leave the office all the time. Alone time, to me, is crucial. Because the moment I stop making time to actually work that gift, and to actually think, and actually stop and go, “What’s going on?”—that’s when I lose what it is that attracted me to people to begin with.
Dale: Yeah. Go ahead.
Jared: From the hustle mentality, everybody just thinks that means you’ve got to be like go, go, go, go, go all the time, and yet, part of knowing yourself, is knowing that part of hustle, sometimes is stopping.
Dale: Yeah.
Jared: And just going like, “Okay, what just happened? What’s a different way to look at that? How do I communicate that to other people? How do I make sure that I’m paying attention to what’s going on around me? How do I…”
If you don’t do that, then you lose every bit of value that you have with people, in an effort to look like you’re constantly moving, you see what I’m saying?
Dale: Yeah, it’s a badge of honor—If I’m always busy, and everybody sees that I’m always busy, that’s my badge of honor. I was thinking about that when you were first talking about a space. Because, you said, “Oh, I come in to the office, I leave at 11.” I don’t think a lot of people have experienced that, and I don’t even know how to describe what it feels like to do this day in and day out, to be hustling and to be pushing so hard with so much emotional energy, and still be able to create space that helps you create, and solve big problems in your business.
I feel like I get that a lot. I feel like I get stuck in execution mode, and I have to be head down, and we’ve got problems to solve, and I’ve got stuff to write, and I’ve got employees to train, or whatever. So, how does, let’s just say, a real estate agent, create that in them? Is that a schedule thing? How do they create an environment where they’re pushing so hard, but they’re still creating and solving problems?
Jared: It’s easy. So first off, you have to be aware of yourself. Meaning that you know that, first off, I’m created like that. I recharge when I’m alone. I’m a natural introvert. Other people don’t. There are other people that, what I’m talking about I do right now, would not work for them. Like, they need to be around people. They need to be head down all the time, with their crew doing whatever. For me, I know there’s some of that that has to occur, but there’s also the away time that has to happen. Otherwise, I’m not good to them. So, all it is is building around those weaknesses, right?
So, the reason why I’m able to do that is because I’ve hired people around me who do the things that I don’t get excited about. Who do the things that don’t fit my skill set. Yet, they have to be done. So, there was a period of time where I was the great Oz behind the curtain, I was everything. I was customer service, I was sales, I was tech support, I was everything. I was marketing. Then, what you do through that self awareness, you start to realize, which ones are you greatest at? Then you build around yourself.
That’s why the whole team structure in real estate, I always get a little bit leery when I see people put the structure of what every structure is supposed to be for a team into real estate, because the truth of the matter is, that head person is not always the head person. Sometimes, that head person, in order for that team to function correctly, has to be the head marketer. Sometimes they have to be the COO, sometimes they have to be the main salesperson. It depends on their skill set. This idea that only one type of personality can run a great team in real estate, and that’s when they’re the head honcho, is such utter bull crap.
You can run a real estate team, be the team leader, and you’re the head marketer. You can run a real estate team, be the head in your operations. You can run a real estate team and you’re the head ISA. It depends on your skill set. You understand what I’m saying?
Dale: Oh, yeah.
Jared: There’s no one size fits all, it’s really about just figuring out who you are, where you fit into that cog, so to say, then go and, “Okay, how do I build around me now?”
Dale: Yeah, because you … So, if you’re just trying to fit yourself into a mold that you don’t fit into, then you’re holding yourself back, and you’re holding everybody else around you back.
I remember-
Jared: Have someone else do it.
Dale: Yeah. I remember about probably a year ago, this is a recent epiphany for me, I feel like. I feel like my personality is being shaped by an epiphany I had maybe about a year ago. There’s always these people in my life that I thought were my heroes, that I thought was somebody that I could look up to. And it’s not that they weren’t deserving of my admiration, it wasn’t that they weren’t good examples, they were great examples, they’re great people. But, what I realized was I was trying to stretch myself to be like people that I could never really be like.
Jared: Yes.
Dale: It would take all my energy to change my personality to be like that person. What I did, what I’ve done over the last year, is try to find people that I feel like I have much more in common with that I could be like, or are a little bit more successful than me, or whatever. Maybe they’re not more successful than me, maybe they just do something better, they have a talent that I see in myself, but I want to develop a little bit more, and I’m focused on those people rather than trying to focus on whoever it is. Like, whoever’s around me that’s just doing awesome.
I look up to you a lot, but I’m never gonna be like you. We have too many personality differences, I just wouldn’t … Why would I even try to be like you if it doesn’t even fit?
Jared: Here’s the thing, though. It’s such a waste of talent and a waste of time. I saw someone recently who was a Britney Spears impersonator. And, technically, they’re successful. Technically, they’re going around on tour. But they’re still never gonna be Britney Spears.
Dale: Yeah.
Jared: There’s only one of those. I am such a believer that the world makes room for talent. There is always enough talent, you know? There’s always enough room. There’s another trainer in our industry who I’m very good friends with, that I think people would be really surprised that we’re really good friends, because they’re just like, “Well, aren’t you guys competing? You guys have some of the biggest programs in the country.” We say it all the time: “We help each other.” We’re texting back and forth, we’re doing whatever. We’re like, the industry’s big enough. There’s always enough room for talent.
That’s why I don’t focus on what this person’s doing, what that person’s doing, whatever. Bottom line, when I find my groove, and I trust my talent, and I’m in the right place, and I’m in my lane, there’s always enough room. My business took off when I finally stopped trying to be the icons that I looked up to in the industry.
I found that, look, if you went into a speaking course 101, they would probably check off thing after thing that I’m doing wrong. And yet my audience engages with me. Because I’m there leveraging my skill set, my talent. It’s not the ABC of when you’re supposed to pause, but it’s when I feel I’m supposed to pause.
There’s a certain amount that’s preparation, there’s a certain amount that you learn from other people. Then there’s a certain amount of very successful people who don’t follow the 1-2-3 steps that you find in a book. Because their talent is enough that that manual wouldn’t fit them. They’re custom built. You can tell me how to put a door in, but once that door is a different size than what the hinges are gonna fit, those 1-2-3s are not gonna help me any more. That’s a custom door. When you understand talent at a certain level, you understand that 1-2-3s work for some people—show them how to get through life, show them how to be somewhat successful—but people with a certain amount of talent, they’re custom built. There’s no 1-2-3. You follow that custom build and the world makes room for that talent. And that’s really how I look at it.
Dale: I love that thought. So, last week actually, Wednesday, I flew into California, and I went to a two day event. I got to sit in the audience and watch this coach. It was a small event, there were like 30 agents in the room. And everyone kept talking about the speaker’s energy. The comments were like, “Oh my goodness, I could never…she has something that I just don’t have. Look at all the energy.” It was all “her energy this, her energy that, I can’t do that.”
Jared: So they felt like that wouldn’t work for them because she has all this energy?
Dale: Right. So, she’s similar to you in that you’ve actually done real estate, you’ve run real estate companies. She’s like that too. So, she’s saying, “Well, here’s what I did to be successful.”
So what do you say when agents look at you and they say, “Of course, Jared, that’s gonna work for you, but it’s not gonna work for me.”
Jared: I say, “You’re right. Because if you’re not in your own corner, you’re screwed.” You understand? Those people with that mindset, that inner narrative, will always fail. Because no matter what you put in front of them, no matter what they’re searching for, their bandwidth is sitting there going, “Why doesn’t it work? Why doesn’t it work? Why doesn’t it work?” Okay.
You’re right, it won’t work for them, because they-
Dale: The self fulfilling prophecy.
Jared: Yeah. Because they suck. Nothing’s ever gonna work for you. That’s how your life is, you understand? And yet, there are other people, like myself, who grow up in single parent households, with brothers that don’t graduate high school, with whatever, and who go, “I’ll tell you how this is going to work.”
So, really, it has absolutely zero to do with the content coming from the stage, or the fact that someone else did it that way, or whatever, and has everything to do with that person right there that’s sitting there. It’s no different than when I go in front of an audience, and especially now that I’ve been around for over a decade, and I get people that come up to me, who are from an event 6 years ago, and say, “I did everything you said to do, and I’m number 1 in my state. I’m number one in my province.” Someone else at that same event goes, “That guy sucks, that doesn’t work.” Come on.
If you’re not in your own corner, you’ve already lost. That’s it. As soon as you tell me it’s not gonna work for you, I’m like, “You’re right, and neither will anything else. You’re in the wrong business.”
Dale: Yeah, one of my mentors told me early on in my career that you have to think about what you’re thinking about. You have to examine your own thoughts. As Socrates said, the unexamined life is not worth living. You definitely have to think about what you think about, because if you let those kinds of thoughts float around in your head—and I think all of us are susceptible to that, until we really habituate that out of ourselves, to just self doubt.
But, again, like you said, it’s a self fulfilling prophecy. If I think that there’s nothing I can do, then I’m right. Because, I’ve already lost the battle.
Jared: Those people excite me. You know why? Because the fact that such a huge percentage of our population thinks like that, is why I have such an advantage. Because I’m such an eternal optimist when it comes to myself, I will bet on myself every day of the week. Because 95 out of 100 other people are going around saying why things don’t work. There’s my competition.
I win at times when it doesn’t look like I should win. I win at times when I probably shouldn’t have won. Because everyone else disqualifies themselves, and that is one thing that I will not do. Anything that you’re in, anything that you’re trying, anything that you’re going in, saying that it’s not gonna work the moment you go in—just stop wasting everybody’s time. Okay? Because anything that I’m gonna exert my energy to, it’s going to work. Why else am I doing this?
By the way, if I get in and it doesn’t work, it probably wasn’t that thing’s fault, it was probably my own. When they came out with smart keys, and I got into a car, and I’m going, How do I make—it’s not—there’s nothing to turn?! The car wasn’t the issue. The implementation of how to turn the car on was the issue, so, now I had to be educated, and I had to learn what I did wrong, but the car wasn’t the issue. When you’re trying to implement any kind of new thing and it’s not working, stop looking at the thing first. Because you can’t control the thing.
Right here, you control this. Make a change. If it’s working for someone else, it can work for you. Period. While you’re saying “This strategy doesn’t work, teams don’t work, this doesn’t work,” I can point to thousands and millions where it does. Everything works when done correctly, you can mow a lawn with a pair of scissors. That sucks, but it works. It’s just implementation, that’s it.
Dale: That’s a great thought.
Let’s change gears for a second, I wanted to talk a little bit about teams, with the few minutes that we have left. So, again, you deal with a lot of teams, we deal with a lot of teams here, and there are a lot of people in our audience who are looking for information on how to get started with a team. They’re an agent that’s doing really well, and they’re growing quickly.
You’ve got some great YouTube content that addresses that. I want to encourage anybody listening to go look that up, if you’re in that position.
So, for those who have small teams that are growing, what do you feel like are the big issues facing these teams right now? What are they gonna be facing in the next few years?
Jared: The biggest issue right now is that brokers have to come around. (And, by the way, this is also responsibility on agents, and teams, and we have to have structures that really fit a team structure. Because, when you look at most of the structures, which are old school structures, of how brokers are running their businesses, they’re not even profitable for them, and they don’t work for anybody who wants to grow a team either.)
So, the team really only has the option to stick around for a while, until it’s just not conducive enough, then they leave and go out on their own. It happens over and over and over again. I keep watching it happen, we keep having it happen with our students and otherwise.
We have to adjust to the fact that in a modern day world, people do not call a doctor to set an appointment, show up and have the doctor check them in, have the doctor tell them to wait in the waiting room, have the doctor bring them to the second waiting room, which is just another waiting room with no magazines, have the doctor come and take their weight and height, have the doctor do the surgery.
Teams are what real estate is supposed to be. Now, you may look at the definition of a team, and you don’t like the definition that’s in your head. Maybe you think it’s a 37-person team, or whatever, but you and a spouse is a team. You and an assistant is a team, by definition, right?
Dale: Right.
Jared: What cannot happen in our industry long term, as far as what you’re looking to build towards, is the idea that 30 years from now, you’re still gonna be solo-preneur. That is stupidity. That is like, you are setting yourself up to hate your life. You are setting yourself up to be afraid to go on vacation, and you’re having to convince somebody that’s selling the largest asset they’re ever gonna own, that because you went through real estate classes that taught you how to be an attorney and an appraiser, you’re now an expert marketer, an expert negotiator, an expert communicator … It’s such bull crap.
When handling somebody’s purchase or sale that’ll be the largest asset they ever buy or sell, the idea that you’re not working towards having people in place, who, based on their personality profile, are great at that thing, is insane. People who love to follow up and communicate. People who love to convert on leads. People who love to go out and meet with people. People who love to do marketing. Not just when you’re slow, that listing will get the marketing it was supposed to get. But if you’re too busy, they don’t get the same service from you that someone else got, during a slower season. It’s insanity.
Teams are where everything’s going, it’s where they should be going, it’s better for the agent, it’s also better for the consumer. And when I get brand new agents who say, “What should I be doing? I’m brand new, I just started out.” I say “Go to a team that gives you leads. Take a very low percentage, but at least you’ll be dealing with real buyers and sellers every single day.”
The greatest way to learn is to screw up in front of somebody real. They’re like, “Well, this place is gonna give me 85%.” I say, “Well, do you want the whole grape, or do you want a piece of the watermelon? Because right now, you’re fighting for the whole grape. Stop worrying about the percentages, look at your overall income.”
It’s not about the highest percentage, it’s about where your income is gonna be at the end of the year, and how much of your time is gonna get focused on doing what you’re great at, and what you love, instead of having to act like you’re great at all these other areas that you really can’t stand.
Dale: Yeah, and if you only have 6 at-bats a year, you’re getting a high commission. You’re not growing. Right, you think you can sit around at the office and talk to everybody in the office, and learn everything about real estate, and about negotiating, and about whatever, but like you said, you gotta get out there and fail in front of real people, right?
Jared: That’s it. When you mess up on your objection handler the first time and it’s not in a role play in your office, but you do it in front of a client, I promise you, you’ll never screw that up again. It’s the quickest way to learn. It’s to feel humiliation, to throw yourself in the pool to learn to swim. The quickest way that you will ultimately learn is by actually getting out there and meeting with real people, and getting some real world experience, and doing it from day 1. It’s the absolute quickest and easiest way to learn.
Dale: What do you think would be your advice then to brokers and team leaders? When I look at the industry, we definitely see some companies that are growing really quickly. I know a few teams that are just killing it. Like you said, we’ve seen some big teams leave their broker and start an independent brokerage of their own. For some big dogs, that’s a lot of revenue that goes out the door for a brokerage. What’s the advice for the broker then? You said they need to change. How should they be thinking about this problem?
Jared: I’m doing this with some of the biggest brokers in the country right now, where we’re changing their model. They’re keeping their old school model going on one side of their business, and then on the other side of the business, they’re hiring ISAs, getting leads that come in, converting the leads, giving them out to their agents on a lesser percentage basis, and just saying, “Hey, if you accept these leads, you’re only gonna get this percent.” And they’re testing and proving the model, and going, “That’s the way we need to go in the future.”
I always say there are two businesses you’re in. There’s the business you’re in right now, and the business that you’re going to be in. You have to be working on both of those businesses at all times. Otherwise you fall behind, right?
Dale: Yeah.
Jared: So, a certain amount of your resources should be allocated towards where your business is going? You start testing and proving it now, showing that it actually works, so you can start to make that switch. But then, when you start looking at recruiting practices, a lot of the recruiting practices for brokerages and teams going forward are going to come outside of the industry. Because you just have too many jaded people, again, who are fighting for 85% and 90%. It just doesn’t work in the current structure, the way that real estate is done today.
So, you go take some people out of college. You go to a college fair, they’re gonna make $38,000 with their marketing degree. But you can promise them, “You’ll make $60K in the first year, on a 45% split, where you’re gonna get the leads, you’re gonna go right on with appointments, because our ISA sets them up for you. Once you’re done, it’s gonna get handed over to the closing department.”
You can guarantee them that they’re gonna make that kind of money, and they’re just gonna be doing the same things every day. Meeting with people, converting people. It’s a completely different way of doing it.
Remember, we coach some of the top teams, top brokerages, and top agents in the world. This is what they’re doing. While everyone else out there is going, “God, I hope my phone rings today with a referral,” these people are going out there and actually creating predictable businesses, because they’re putting money into the places where people are actually searching. They’re getting there first. Visibility trumps ability. They’re walking [their prospects] through and following up enough during that time when they’re in that part of the customer cycle, and then, ultimately, handing them off to the person within their company that does what it is they need at that moment.
By the way, this is just like every other industry. When you go buy a car, you are transferred over to the leasing or the finance expert. You’re then transferred over to the person who services your car, the service department. This is how every industry works. Somehow, we thought our industry was supposed to be where we’re everything. It’s just nonsense.
Dale: Yeah. So, I love to analyze the numbers. I’ll tell you, what I know for a fact: If you look at the top 100 or top 50 brokerages in the country, the ones that are blowing out the agent productivity numbers do not have really high commission splits. They have what we would call really low commission splits, but their agents are doing 30 transaction sites, on average.
Jared: Yup.
Dale: So, they’re really cranking out some numbers. They’re consumer-focused, not what we would think of as traditional agent-focused.
Now, this is not my analysis. This isn’t me being some prophet; I just look at the spreadsheets and I say, well, this is what this is telling me.
Jared: Yeah, at some point, the business doesn’t make sense the way that most brokers are doing it. They’re just not profitable, on any level. It amazes me how hard they fight for agents, because they’ve got to get them in, they’ve got big market share. Fighting for agents when they know the numbers don’t work, just to get them into their brokerage. It doesn’t work! When you’re bringing somebody into your company, 1) They need to make financial sense, and if they don’t, they don’t. Don’t try to make an apple tree a pear tree. It doesn’t work. That person does not work here. 2) They’ve got to make cultural sense. Do they fit our culture? Because one bad apple, and you could turn that place. You know?
But it amazes me how many people are fighting for numbers, just trying to get enough people in, trying to get enough signs out there, when they know behind the scenes, their numbers don’t make any sense at all. Yet they keep fighting for things and hurting themselves. They’re fighting for the knife they’re gonna jab themselves with. It just doesn’t make any sense. You know?
The new model is where you set it up to be better for the consumer, and it’s also better for the agent, and more profitable from the leader perspective. It’s just a matter of time. Again, we work with all these top people. It’s what they’re doing.
Dale: What about the team leaders then? If you’re the team leader, what do you need to be focusing on right now to stay relevant to keep growing? Do you think they’re on the right track over all?
Jared: Some teams are, some teams aren’t. The team leader structure is no different. What I said the broker should be doing right now, it’s no different than what a team leader should be doing. It’s just the model. It ultimately comes down to the consumer. Whether you’re operating as a team under a brokerage, or whether you’re operating as a brokerage as a team (which is what a lot of brokerages are doing successfully now), they’re almost taking that team model, but they’re doing it under a brokerage level.
Dale: Right.
Jared: It’s no different. It’s absolutely no different. People will say, “Well, when I’m a team leader, people want to work with ME.” Yeah, and everybody wanted Henry Ford to give them a test drive—until he didn’t.
Dale: Yeah.
Jared: Then they realized it was actually better to have Nancy give them a test drive because Nancy’s always available, and all she does is give test drives. What people really want in the third most stressful time in their life—third after getting divorced and moving—is certainty. You’ve just taught them that you provide that certainty.
Once you take that away, and they’re like, “Wait, I always work with Jared. Jared was personally coaching us. When I called the office, Jared picked up.” That’s what we used to hear. Now, they call and they go, “Can I just talk to Rachel?” “Can I just talk to Anne?” “Can I just talk to Michelle?” “Can I just talk to Alicia?” “Can I just talk to Britney?” “Can I just talk to Nicole?” Because they know, for this particular thing, that Jared’s not even gonna know what to do. People just want certainty. So, your model has to fit that. It has to give people certainty during the third most stressful time in their life.
Dale: And your ego has to fit that too, right? You have to admit to yourself that it’s okay to turn this over to someone else on my team, they’re going to do it differently, but it’s still gonna be great.
Jared: Different doesn’t mean wrong.
Dale: Nice. So, what I hear you saying is definitely consumer focused?
Jared: Right.
Dale: Right? A team leader, a broker needs to think more about the consumer than they have in the past.
Jared: That’s why Zillow won.
Dale: Right.
Jared: That’s why Zillow beat Realtor.com. It was because it was not an industry thing, where we’re like, “Well no, they’re not the cool kids, they don’t sit at this table.” “No, that’s the one we go to.”
When all was stripped away, and it was just mano a mano with the consumer to make a decision, and the consumer went, “Oh my God, they’re giving me everything, I can do everything right here…” and Zillow won.
You think the real estate business is any different in a world where they’re ordering packages and having them delivered that day to their house? It’s all consumer based. If you ever want to know what to do within your business, start by asking what’s better for the consumer? When you figure out what’s better for the consumer, you’ll win with your business. Even if it’s a little bit more different for you, if the consumer wins, you win. That’s just business 101.
Dale: I love it. Great advice.
So, any final words for growing teams?
Jared: Don’t focus on the wrong things first. Everybody focuses on leads first. I gotta create business, I gotta create leads. That seems to make sense, but it’s a terrible mistake. The thing you do first is focus on infrastructure. You focus on your systems first. You focus on your CRMs first. You focus on those things first.
It’s not different from when you build a beautiful house. The most boring, non-sexy part of that build is the foundation. Nobody’s even gonna see it. It’s gonna get covered by siding. But ultimately, it’s the thing that holds that house up for 250 years. When you’re building as a team, and you’re growing as a team, stop focusing on lead gen, stop focusing on the sexy stuff.
Go build out your infrastructure, your systems. Test them out, break them, fix them. Then you can start filling it with leads, because you have the infrastructure to handle it. Now you’re able to bring in quality agents because you’re able to prove to them and show them your systems work, and how it works every time a lead comes in. It’s gonna go to this person, it’s gonna go here, it’s gonna go there. And now you’re getting quality people. Because, like I said in one of those videos in the past, 9s don’t date 4s.
When your systems are a 4, don’t keep going after 9s and then wonder why they’re not staying with you.
Dale: Yeah, they’re not gonna join your team. They can see that you’re not ready for them.
Jared: You’re a 4 or a 5. Make your team structure a 9 or a 10, and you will get those 9 or 10 types of people. Period.
Dale: Awesome advice. That warms my heart. I agree 100%.
So, Jared, where can people find you?
Jared: Most people connect with me on social. Just go to connectwithjared.com. Send me a message, send me question, I’m always here for you guys.
