Introduction

In Episode 44 of The OT Only Teams for Real Estate Agents podcast, host Daren Phillipy sits down with Jay Schmidt of the Jay Schmidt Group in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This insightful conversation dives deep into the strategies behind Schmidt’s high-performing real estate team, exploring his team structure, lead generation techniques, market penetration methods, and the innovative administrative leverage that sets his team apart. Whether you’re an aspiring team leader or a seasoned real estate professional, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you scale your business.

The Power of a Lean, Effective Team Structure

One of the key takeaways from Schmidt’s success is his team’s structure. Unlike many large real estate teams that rely on a bloated administrative setup, Schmidt operates a “lean and mean” model:

• 19 Selling Agents: A mix of experienced agents and newer talent.
• Head of Sales: A producing partner who leads and supports the agents.
• Executive Vice President: Handles back-office functions like payroll and operations.
• Operations & Marketing Team: A team of six salaried employees and a staging specialist.

With this structure, Schmidt’s team has achieved 341 transactions in the past year, totaling approximately $175 million in volume—a testament to the efficiency of their model.

Growing Through Strategic Mergers

The team’s reputation for success has made them a magnet for other high-producing teams. Schmidt shares that another team closing 100 transactions a year is now joining them, reinforcing the strength of their value proposition.

Mastering Lead Generation: A Sphere-First Approach

Schmidt’s business thrives on relationships, with 75% of their transactions coming from sphere of influence (60%) and past clients (15%). This emphasis on personal connections and repeat business showcases the importance of trust and reliability in real estate.

Key Lead Generation Strategies

• Six Client Events Per Year: Hosting events like Date Night, Portraits in the Park, happy hours, and pumpkin giveaways to maintain engagement.
• Robust CRM Usage (Lofty): Despite CRM challenges (only 20% of agents actively using it), the team stays in touch through consistent outreach.
• Hyper-Local Market Penetration: Holding a 12% market share in two key Milwaukee neighborhoods (about 20,000 households), largely built through open houses and personal branding.
• Minimal Reliance on Sign Calls & Internet Leads: Only 12% of business comes from these sources, showcasing their focus on direct relationships.

Recognizing a Weakness in Lead Gen

Despite their strong referral-based business, Schmidt acknowledges a need to diversify lead sources. Their focus for the next year is expanding beyond their sphere, using Google PPC ads and organic search to reach new prospects.

Market Penetration: The Importance of Knowing Your Territory

Schmidt emphasizes that deep market knowledge is a game-changer in real estate. He prides himself on knowing his local Milwaukee market “like the back of his hand.”

“I can walk down the street to the grocery store, run into someone and say, ‘Hey, what’s up with that white house on the corner?’ And I can tell them everything about it.”

This hyper-local expertise not only helps him serve clients better but also reinforces his reputation as the go-to real estate expert in his area.

Administrative Innovation: The Agent Partner Model

Schmidt has restructured his administrative team, moving away from traditional roles like transaction coordinators and adopting an Agent Partner model:

• Each agent is paired with a licensed Agent Partner who assists with listings, transactions, and client communication.
• Agent Partners work in-office, Monday to Friday, ensuring seamless client support without being bogged down by on-the-ground tasks.
• Compensation includes a base salary plus per-transaction bonuses, incentivizing quality work.

This system has led to:

• Higher agent satisfaction and reduced turnover
• Improved client experiences with a dedicated support structure
• Increased efficiency, allowing agents to focus on sales and relationships

Winning Listing Strategies

Schmidt’s listing approach is strategic and transparent, setting clear expectations for both clients and agents. Key elements include:

• Pre-Sale Inspections: 98% of their transactions include a pre-sale inspection, reducing buyer contingencies and streamlining closings.
• Standardized Marketing Approach: Consistent photography, open house schedules (Thurs/Sat/Sun), and coming soon marketing.
• Transparent Commission Structure: Offering sellers multiple commission options (e.g., 6% if using a buyer’s agent, 5% if they bring the buyer, 4% if the seller finds the buyer).

Team Leadership: Learning to Let Go & Focus on Culture

A major takeaway from Schmidt’s leadership journey is understanding that “you can’t teach hustle.”

“I am no longer the motivator. I’ll be the coach and the leader, but I am not a motivator. You can’t teach hustle.”

Key Leadership Lessons

• Hiring for Hustle: Actively seeking agents with natural drive and ambition.
• Protecting Team Culture: Addressing negativity before it festers, ensuring a positive work environment.
• Recognizing Performance Plateaus: Bringing in fresh talent when growth stagnates.
• Adopting “Profit First”: A financial model ensuring sustainable growth and profitability.

Unique Initiatives That Set Schmidt Apart

Beyond the traditional real estate strategies, Schmidt has implemented creative community-building and networking events:

• “I Got a Guy” Party: An annual event connecting clients with home service providers, with vendors sponsoring the event in exchange for referrals.
• Top Agent Cocktail Party: Inviting the top 100 agents in his market to celebrate successes and build industry camaraderie.
• Showcasing Personal Renovations: Using his own home renovation projects as lead generation tools, inviting prospects to see his work firsthand.

Final Thoughts: Key Takeaways from Episode 44

Jay Schmidt’s approach to real estate success is built on efficiency, relationships, and innovation. His lean team structure, hyper-local expertise, and emphasis on referral-based growth serve as a model for agents looking to scale their business. Additionally, his leadership philosophy—focusing on hiring for hustle, protecting culture, and leveraging administrative support—highlights the mindset needed to build a long-term, profitable real estate business.

If you’re looking for ways to optimize your real estate team, this episode of The OT Only Teams podcast is a must-listen!

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Transcription

Announcer  00:00

Welcome to the OT only teams in real estate.

Jay Schmidt  00:16

At some point, if you don’t love what you’re doing or who you’re working with change one of the two things, and I didn’t want to change, selling real estate, so I had to change I was working with

00:28

last 12 months. I think we’ve come to learn that we can’t teach hustle. I am no longer the motivator. I’ll be the coach and the leader, but I am not a motivator. You can’t teach hustle.

Daren Phillipy  00:44

Here’s your host, Daren Phillipy, everybody welcome this week’s ot only team for real estate agents. My name is Daren Phillipy. Phil your host, and like always, got another great guest. We’ve got Jay Schmidt from Jay Schmidt group from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Yes, you start off talking about cheese. Don’t worry, I get it, and we learn a couple things from Jay. Number one, how would you like to build a team so good that another team that does 100 units wants to join you? Jay’s going to talk about his team and the structures behind that, and how he was able to make be able to make that happen and be able to attract that talent. Second thing too, is he restructured his whole admin just so his team, the people who were on his team, the agents, they were well taken care of, so taken care of that. They’re like, I don’t want to go with anyone else. They see so much value from what Jay brings to the table as a team lead, he has a massive reach in his community, and he owns that market crap. He he closed over 341

01:57

transactions in the last 12 months. This guy is a guy that you want to be paying attention to and listening to, so you’re going to love it. Do me a favor. Follow me on YouTube, follow me on Instagram, follow me on any of those podcast listener things, and listen to us on a regular basis. Every single week, you’ve got another ot happening, where you can hear from great people who do a ton of business. They’re sharing how they did it, and they also, I’m not sure if you guys have ever made it to the end of one of these things, but they provide their contact information for referrals. But of course, you can pick up the phone and say, Jay, I heard you on the OT and have questions about this, and this that’s available for you, but you gotta, you gotta listen on a regular basis and hear what these guys have to say. So

02:49

follow, follow, subscribe, and all the other stuff that it takes that’s pretty much it can’t wait to share with you guys. Jay Schmidt and I’ll see you guys at the end of the OT, alright, guys, so glad you guys came to the OT today. I know, I know it’s a busy week, but I’m so glad that we were able to get this guest. I was stressing, because I’m like, What am I going to do? I’ve got to make sure that we got the OT coming. And Jay Schmidt from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, it is exactly what you’d expect from someone with from Wisconsin, I hear you guys are just as nice as the Canadians. I got your back, dude. So Jay said he’s going to go ahead and step up. Just a little side note. He kind of knows what he’s doing. 341 units in the last 12 months, and 100 and 170 7 million in volume. And so super experienced producer just finished, I think, his 11th year. Jay, tell us a little bit about your team, and thanks for hanging out with us. Thanks for having me. Yep, so I’ve been with Keller Williams for 11 years.

03:52

Our team, we’ve got 19 selling agents on the team, and again this year, we’ll do right around 175

03:58

million. Can’t seem to break that 170 5 million number. Our average price point keeps going up pretty fast, though, so we actually will do same dollar volume this year as last year, but more units, with about 334 units,

04:13

pretty lean and mean from a structure standpoint, I’ve got a teammate who she and I are still in production and sell, she’s head of sales. And then we’ve got a executive vice president that handles all the unfund stuff, payroll, all the that, and we have an operations and marketing team that’s it. So we think I’ve got six salaried employees and then one quasi salaried staging person. Super, super cool. And who does? Does everybody who reports to you? Specifically Jay

04:49

the head of operations. So by the head of sales, I mean we literally sit next to each other. We’re on sales calls. You know, we go to listing appointments together, so no direct line report.

05:00

There, but it’s, yeah, lean and mean. Love it. It’s a good time to be lean and mean in this market. Yeah, like my, my expenses are creeping a little bit, so I gotta, gotta tighten it back up. Well, let’s talk a little bit about where you get your leads. Um, where do you get your leads? Jay, we are really dominated from by sphere and sphere referral. So almost 60% of our business comes from our sphere and sphere referral, and then 15% is past client. So 75% of our business, you know, comes to us. We do work our sphere, though we do, you

05:37

know, we have a robust database. We use lofty as our CRM. We do six client events a year, so we really do kind of hone in on our

05:50

on our database. We’re a little bit of an anomaly where we are in Milwaukee. Sure, none of you have been here, but the two communities or cities that we focus on the most you know, no school busses, everybody walks. It’s like Norman Rockwell, old historic part of town. Those two communities, we penetrate ridiculously, or I shouldn’t say, communities, their cities, about 20,000 households. We have 12% of that market. It’s about 51 million of our 175

06:20

so we really over penetrate.

06:23

So back when the market was stronger, we had a lot more of those. Hey, come list me calls. I see your sign everywhere. Those aren’t as robust. Only about 12% of our business this year came from, you know, sign calls or internet awesome so that that is freaking awesome numbers, by the way. And I want to know how you were able to penetrate a market. I mean, you said about 20,000 people in that area, 20,000 households. Okay, how do you penetrate get so much market share from that? What do you

06:57

do? Back when I started, I wasn’t actually at Keller Williams, I was so I’ve been licensed for 13 years. So the first year and a half I spent didn’t have any training, so I did open houses. I have been flipping houses on the side, so I’d live in a house for a couple years and then sell it. So I’ve just kind of always been, you know, committed to real estate and housing. Had a corporate job and decided, you know, 13 years ago, had my Jerry Maguire moment, and I was done, and walked out the door. I had a house we were renovating, and I thought, you know, if I sell this, I’ll have enough money for two years worth of salary in the bank. So we got accepted offer, and then I went and put bought three houses, all with mortgages, closed on all three of them, and then quit my job, so lived in one, flipped the other two, and then kind of just started running from there. But how I built my business back then was I was at open houses all the time. Nobody was teaching me how to touch my database and touch my sphere. So it was just, you know, word of mouth, people knew, you know, see your sign, see you at open houses. And that’s just kind of how it started building. So, so you started penetrating by doing open houses. Yep, how do you keep the penetration? Because my guess when’s the last time you’ve done an open house yourself? Ah, I can’t remember months. It’s been months. Because, okay, yes, our listings sell so damn quick that, you know, I kind of let the team have the leads for open houses. Yeah, only 9% of our business is coming from open houses this year, where, you know, my first, my first two years, it was over 60% of my business was from open houses. So it just, it’s changed in the Milwaukee market is very, very strong. Our average days on market is, you know, we go live on a Thursday, and we’re looking at multiple offers on on Sunday.

08:47

So is your sphere of influence and your database really based around that? Since you have a deep part, you really work that database with farming and and stuff like that too. We do. We have been doing more postcards we do. We do just listed and just sold postcards. I do a month, once a year, kind of state of the market mailer that I send out. But we aren’t getting the, you know, Hey, I saw this. Come talk to me. So we’re not seeing as much of a spend on that.

09:19

Really, it’s

09:21

we we have a point set event coming up, and it’s not about getting the client to come pick up on a point setup. It’s to touch them with an email, touch them with a text, touch them with a phone call, and that’s where it’s

09:35

you’re getting so many strong Hey, come look at my house. Hey, my mom’s thinking about downside, like, those are the calls that work really well for us. Okay? And so you said you’ve got six client appreciation events that you do, yep. And my guess is, majority of your touches are based around those six events. Is that right? Correct? Okay, we what are, what are those six, six events that we’re talking about?

10:00

Off. So February, we do date night. We do a take and bake pizza and a cheap bottle of wine, which, when my teammate brought that idea up, I was like, Really, we’re gonna offer this up. My most affluent client who bought a very, very multi million dollar home with me. She comes every single year. It’s not about the pizza, it’s about, you know, being able to chat. So we do peak date night in February. We do spring we do portraits in the park, where we have a photographer do 15 minute mini shoots, and people sign up. Now that we’ve been doing that for years, we get clients that come every single year,

10:36

we’ll do some sort of like dog event in the park. We do just a good old fashioned, we’re from Wisconsin. Let’s rent out a bar and have, you know, a happy hour. Can you say bar again? Just

10:51

and then we do.

10:53

We used to do a shredder, shred and toss event in October, you know, kind of purge your paperwork. That was kind of dwindling. So we did a pumpkin giveaway and take a picture and hashtag tag us and enter in for $200 that was really good as well. What am I missing? I

11:13

think those are the six,

11:15

awesome. So tell us a little bit more about you were going to say something, of course, I’m a genius, and decide to cut you off. What do those touch touches look like when it comes to got your events? How are you using those and how do you convert to i i get you want to do good, but how do you convert those suckers? My best conversion is when they don’t actually pick up the item that we’re giving them. But it’s I get the exchange over a text, and that’s most of my clients, since they’ve been getting it for me from for nine years, a lot of times aren’t even taking advantage of it anymore. But it is the Oh, hey, by the way, do you have a painter? Oh, by the way, do you have a referral for this? So I’ve just always established myself as that connector for them, and that’s why people keep reaching out. So we do a first email out. So you email your database the kind of invite, and click the RSVP, then you find out who’s opened it. You found out who’s responded, and then you just kind of keep going through maybe it’s a text for my top dogs. I’ll definitely pick up the phone and call them, but those the agents on the team will really double down on it. We don’t. We track how many they they how many we give away, but it’s more. You know, I sometimes have the lowest number of giveaways, but I get the most leads from it, right? So then, then after the event, do you have any follow ups or anything like that, that that mofrs of Sucks to be you that you missed this, or usually through our marketing guy. I’ll do it on social media. Do kind of photo events of the recap, you know, things like that. I don’t really want to for us. It’s really just about touching the database. So if we do too much on social media, I feel like it removes the the intimacy of the event. Gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense. So you, also have, geez, you said you have 19 agents on your team, yep. So what does that look like? How are they involved in working these events and working your database and your sphere of influence and stuff like that.

13:15

Some are just really good and just being out and about.

13:20

Some work the database hard, but we are not, I’ll be honest. We have lofty as our CRM. I think maybe 20% of the agents are actively involved in the CRM. We’re, you know, again, it’s really, we’re a relationship built business. But I will tell and I will tell you when the market shifts, those come listen to me, phone calls are less frequent. So because you’re not out lead generating, you’re waiting for it to come to you. Like I said, our highest year of sales was 445, units. And this year we’ll do 334,

13:52

so that’s not a good that’s not a good reduction in the number of units. We can service more families. We’re just not getting our message in front of more. So that’s been our that’s our looking forward goal is, how are we building our lead generation division? So what does that? What does that look like for you? Then what’s, what’s the plan? Knowing the experience that you’ve got no know the holes that you’ve got when it comes to the lead generation? What? What’s your next step? So we have an inside sales agent. She’s fantastic. She’s talent, but because we aren’t a in the office at 830 until 11, lead generating every day, it’s hard that we don’t have that skills to teach her. So, you know, we’ve been paying for real.com leads and Zillow leads, but we’re really been building our organic search through our website that continues to build. So we’re doing Google Pay Per Click, but the quality of those leads are much longer. You know, where a hot Zillow or realtor.com has really been good for us,

14:52

but still, our total will only do. 12% of our business comes from Isa and internet lead, so it’s not a huge.

15:00

Percentage of our business, it should be much, much bigger. So as we continue to build our SEO, those leads come into the database. They’re 16 to 18 month lead time, typically. So now that we’ve been building that we are seeing more, we’ll start seeing more of return. Gotcha perfect. Anything else that you want to share with us when it comes to your lead

15:22

gen and creating the leads? No, it’s probably our biggest weak spot right now. We should be based on our penetration of our business. We should be getting more so that’s that’s my number one goal next year is to really build that lead generation division. Do you have any advice for those who want to go deep and penetrate your their their markets that they’re focusing on, something they that, that you found to be super valuable in doing that.

15:48

I think, you know, if I look at up our 19 agents, there’s six of us that are really driving big sales. You know, I look at my I only look at four zip codes, and I look at it probably four times a day, I know every single single family and condo in those four zip codes. I know as of right now, we’ve only got 233

16:09

units available on the market. Now, 70% of those have offers. We should have over 650 to 700 properties. So inventory levels really tight, but I know my market like the back of my hand. I can walk down the street to the grocery store, run into someone and say, Hey, what’s up with that white house on the corner of what? Oh, yeah, it’s this and this and this and this. I know every single house in my four zip code area, so I think that’s how I’ve established myself as someone that knows the real estate market. Just know the freaking market, yeah. And I’m still in production. My teammate and I, you know, we’ll do, you know, 54 million of the 170 5 million. Very good, very good. Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about your listings. I think one of the things for penetrating a market, you got to do something that you know grabs people’s attention on the listing side, either on on the marketing side or or capturing those listings. What do you do unique that helps you on the listing side? I think just first and foremost, to get the listing you know, we know our value proposition, and I study my competition,

17:16

so we’re seeing more and more that you are going to the listing table, and there’s, they’re interviewing multiple agents. Used to be three, four years ago. Hey, come list me. Now you’re in competition. So we know our value proposition in comparison to our competition,

17:34

and we have a very strategic approach. It’s, it’s, it’s cookie cutter, Mr. And Mrs. Seller, because we sell more than anybody. We know what the market’s doing. We know buyer and Agent behavior. Here’s the program that’s going to work. Why don’t you plug in? So we do. And the agents, the buyers, agents in our market, know when we take a property to market, we have a fantastic pre sale inspection. We’ve the sellers have either done the repairs or we have a list of what proper of what repairs need to be done here the quotes, if it’s over a certain price point, we stage it. Our photography is excellent, and then we always go live on a Thursday. We do a Thursday night open house, and a Saturday and Sunday open house, and we review offers either Sunday night or Monday.

18:19

I am proud to say that our MLS, because of me, created delayed status, because we would put it in MLS and say no showings for a week. And they had a fit about that, and I said,

18:31

so I love delayed status. I hate when agents don’t use it, because for us, up to three weeks, we’re coming soon, pre marketing, getting everything rocking and rolling so that when we open the doors on Thursday, it’s Katie bar the door.

18:46

So and everybody in our market now is kind of knocking it off. So we continue to just try to keep, keep pushing that the pre sale inspection was something that came out of COVID. We never advised doing a pre sale inspection prior, but now 98% of the time, if we have a pre sale inspection and we get an offer in the first week, we get it without a buyer inspection contingency. Very good. Love it. Let’s talk a little bit about leverage. You got a lot of a lot of people in your team, and you told me a little story, and I’d love to get into it a little bit deeper.

19:24

You had an admin and an admin or a staff team, and you decided things need to change, and you kind of did a little bit of clean house and

19:34

fix it up. Tell me a little bit about what happened. What was that thought process and what was your solution? Yeah, had a head of operations and three transaction coordinators. One was doing listing coordinating, the other two were contract to close. My head of operations was with my teammate and I from the very beginning, when we came to kW and kind of grew, she was systems and had some policies and procedures in place.

20:00

But as we continue to grow, she couldn’t stay in her lane. She still wanted to sell. She still wanted to go on listing a point, and it was just wasn’t working. We needed someone fully committed to the to the office, and then of our two or three transaction coordinators, two of the three had bad attitudes, and you know, an agent would walk out of the office and they talk smack, and so unfortunately, I let that negativity and culture kind of fester a little bit too long. Finally had enough and let three of the four people go in one day.

20:37

And was probably the best thing I ever did. So what I changed from was having one listing coordinator and two transaction coordinators. We now have list agent partners. So we take our agents and divide them up, and you get an agent partner, so that agent partner, transaction coordinator, they’re licensed, so they can help them with licensed tasks in the office, but they’re not going on inspections. They’re not running out to meet contractors, anything like that. They’re in the office Monday through Friday, but they help them with their transactions. Help them with their listings. They’re in front of the client. Once you get accepted offer, once we take a listing, we really want our agent partners to love on our clients, so that through the transaction, if they need something. A lot of times, our clients will reach out to the agent partner and be like, hey, when’s that photography scheduled? Or hey, when’s this or that?

21:28

It does two things. Number one, lets the agents focus on what they should be doing, which is getting more listings and buyers. But number two, it creates a bond with our agents that we don’t have much turnover in our top producing agents. My number one agent on the team will do $20 million this year, and as happy as can be because she’s got an agent partner that’s in her email who can take care of stuff behind her back, that was the best change that we made. It didn’t add more staffing. It just shifted it so that agents got very married to their partner,

22:07

oop, I can’t hear you.

22:11

There’s a thing called mute that I should push what I need to talk again. Um, so love. Love that, and I first of all, couple questions. Number one, you said you let that fester longer than you should have, and then one day you clean the house. Was it an event that made you clean the house, or was it an emotional thing? Or did you have it planned to clean the house? And did you have a plan behind it? I had someone in line to take over the the head of operations position. My intention, I was letting that person go the other two transaction coordinators. I had already told this new potential hire that, hey, you’re going to have some baggage that you’re going to get. Well, as I delivered the message of the head of the teams leaving, the other two piped up, and I thought, You know what? That’s just, let’s just go and clean house. Told them what the expectation was, moving forward, go home and think about it, change your attitude and come back the next day. And both said, I’m out. So got lucky. It was my teammate. You know, just kind of at some point, if you don’t love what you’re doing or who you’re working with, change one of the two things, and I didn’t want to change selling real estate, so I had to change who I was working with. So how do you, how do you get the transition like, because that’s a different it’s a little bit different model. How do you, how do you get buy in from your team so they can see that value and and, Hey, it’s okay to let them in your emails and all that kind of stuff. What? How do you do that? We don’t. And actually the top agent lets her agent partner get in her email. But that’s not really the job requirement for for the agent partner. But as you get bigger, you just, you know, they’re they’re indispensable. My agent partner is, is, you know, my lifeline. It was very easy to convince the agents, because it’s like you get one person to talk to. And really what it came down to is, a lot of times our clients, if they were a seller who was then turning around and buying, it was like, Who? Who the hell is this? Who am I talking to? What’s going on? Now we have it that our agents have on their business card, their agent partner’s name on it, so the agent is going on a listing appointment looking like a boss, like I’ve got a team behind me, my agent partner, it’s in our listing presentation, who their agent partner is. So we really sell. Because let’s be honest, everybody, when they need something, wants an answer, so I tell all my clients, it’s my pleasure to pick up my phone, and if I don’t answer, don’t hesitate to reach out to my agent partner and she will help coordinate whatever you need. Okay, so it was, it was easy for the agents. They love, they love, sounds awesome. And I’m going to come, you know, like an idiot, and I’m going to ask you a couple questions. So

24:55

is Agent partner just sound good? Did you change the name or what is different?

25:00

About what it was as in, you assign them someone who has a license, and that person’s going to be their TC, and they’re also going to do a whole bunch of other stuff that you should not do before Correct. You know, instead of having a listing coordinator and a transaction coordinator, you got one, they’ll help with their database. They’ll help with marketing. Quite frankly, it’s if they need something. And a lot of times too, the agent partner is saying, hey, you know what? Bob, the agent’s having a problem. He’s got some things going on. You may want to reach out to him so that there are eyes and ears

25:34

that can come back to us. But yeah, it’s instead of having multiple people, if you need something done, marketing wise, go to your agent partner. And your agent partner will go to the marketing guy and get your just listed card done, or whatever you need done. So it’s really if you want you got one person to go to. So cool. How many? How what’s the capacity of an agent partner? How many agents do they have? Yeah, we have three. Right now. We are in communications with another team that’s going to join us. So we’ll go from where’s my numbers here. So we’ll do 334 transactions. Our team, the team that’s coming on, is going to bring another 195 so we’re going to do 529 transactions next year. And the three agent partners are like, Yep, we’re ready. Because what we have is they’re all low base pay, so they’re all salaried, but then they get a per transaction bonus. And we have tiers of agent partner, so we have a newer agent partner that’s getting paid X Senior Agent partner, and then Bev, who’s head of kind of all of the agent partners. So when I say, Hey guys, we’re going to bring on 200 more transactions. Do you have the bandwidth? First and foremost, they’re thinking, well, think about the additional money I can make. And then we are going to add some international support. We have one virtual assistant full time. We’re going to add a second full time virtual assistant.

26:57

And these age the agent partners are ready to rock. So talk about leverage that they you know, they’re just as excited as a salesperson is to get more business. Jay, I haven’t heard anybody describe a VA better than a international support, isn’t that? I just heard that two weeks ago from someone. I’m like, I’m going to use that. No, you’re supposed to say I coined it myself, because I’m a genius. I’m not that smart.

27:25

Okay. Super awesome. Love, love this. I’m just going to ask it for the crew, because all of a sudden, I know they asked it. You just said that you are bringing a team that does nearly 200 transactions to your team. Yep. How does someone as a team Rainmaker,

27:44

go out and find somebody else that and have them join as the team. I’m I want to hear all about that now. I was watching. He was with kW, left and went to compass. We were chatting, because his business is, I watch what’s going on out in the market. I’m like, Dude, you’re killing it. Congratulations on continuing to grow year after year in a market that’s down. And just kind of started that dialog well after his three year with compass was up, he’s like, Hey, I think I’m coming back.

28:13

And full transparency, I just turned 50. My sales partner just is about to turn 60, and we’re both like,

28:21

we both can be done at this point from a financial standpoint. So how do you build your exit strategy? I still want to be involved, I still want to sell real estate, and I still want to coach the agents on my team, but I don’t want to necessarily be looking at monthly P and L statements and dealing with HR stuff and sweating where the next leads coming from the guy who’s bringing his team on is a perfect, I call it the third leg of our bar stool. He’s the systems and process guy. He doesn’t like to be out in the field, selling as much. So between the three of us, we now look at, hey, look at how we can can combine our teams, our skill sets reduce some overhead, because there’s not and when I told him that we don’t need to add transaction support, we can let his go, it was a win.

29:12

Pretty awesome, dude. Yeah, I know these guys got some questions on that. We’ll move on. That is so cool, though. I think one of the times, one of the things you know Gary talks about, think big and and I run into a lot of even, even big brain makers that they’re like, I struggle getting talent, because a lot of times the talent doesn’t see the value of their team because of ego, or whatever that is. And for you to be able to to have a big enough

29:39

thought process, saying, hey, you know what? I have so much value on my team that I can get another team, not just a Top Producing agent, but a top team, to come and join, and they’re going to make it win, win, win. That’s, that’s so commendable to you. So cool. No, we’re, we’re excited, lots of details to work through, but we’re, we’re excited. Um.

30:00

What have you learned over the last

30:02

we learned over the last 12 months in leading your team.

30:06

Last 12 months, I think we’ve come to learn that we can’t teach hustle. I am no longer the motivator. I’ll be the coach and the leader, but I am not a motivator. You can’t teach hustle, and that’s what you know, we created a sales contest, and the the normal achievers are loving it and rocking it, the other ones that aren’t driven by that aren’t so you kind of, what I’ve learned over the last 12 months is pour into the people who are pouring into themselves. I used to offer bold scholarships, and you know what? Everybody got a scholarship, didn’t take it, or didn’t, you know, fully embrace bold so I think the last 12 months can’t teach motivation. The other thing we did recently hire a young guy. He’s 20 years old. Came from a small independence team, our inside sales agent in here killing it together because he’s got the hustle. He wants to get on the phones and work these leads, and now we’ve never interviewed talent like that. We’ve always been, tell me about your sphere. Tell me about you know

31:11

who you are, and we’re hiring a lot of people like myself and my teammate. Well, we need to now hire these, these hunters, these killers that are out looking for the business. So that’s kind of what I’ve learned over the last 12 months. Still, I still value the agents on my team that don’t have hustle. I’ve got an agent that’s so effortlessly, puts ten million a year on the books and doesn’t want to do more than that, and is no drama and perfect. But we aren’t going to continue to grow if those are the only agents we have on the team. Hey, love that. So then the question is this, and this is Jay. Write this down. Jay Hendrix, write this down.

31:51

Where do you go to find the hustle?

31:55

I don’t know.

31:58

Well, the team, the team that is merging with us is that younger team that hustle. So when they started talking about how they interview and how they train and what their 3060, 90 training is, I get it. Nobody on his. If I look at his, I think 11 agents. None of them overlap in terms of a style of our current agent. So we’re now bringing this in. And now when I I’m sitting here going, those seasoned agents are going to be like, Who are these young punks who are selling more units than me? Well, yeah, they’re in dialing on the phone and call them fizz Bo expired. You want to do that? Have a seat. They don’t. So we’re going to and then what we’ll do is take those top agents, the top 20% agents, they’ll get one on one coaching with my partner, and then the other new agents are going to be through the the other salesperson that’s going to teach them how to, you know, hunt and kill. So good. I love it. Well, well, I so I had this conversation, one of my favorites that we’ve talked to. His name is Matt miyale. Um Kyle was on there, Jay was on there. And he goes, Man, I wish I could. I could run my real estate team like my wrestling team when I was on the wrestling team as a coach. And I asked him, Where does he go and find his hustle? That where do you find the talent? And he basically said, I go out and find athletes. Find people who who are athletes, who have already understood that you got to do the grind when nobody else is paying attention. And I thought that was a really smart, smart way of thinking. And so I was, it’s that golden question, man, where do I find that talent, dude,

33:37

and creating the time in your day to do it? So

33:41

they do do some, you know, indeed. They put stuff online with indeed, and things like that, you know. And I asked, Do you hire only seasoned agents? Do you? And he’s like, No, if someone shows up in his talent, we tell him, here’s how you get your license, and if they get it quickly, let’s go love it. So, yeah, it’s a different mindset than what we’ve been been thinking share with us in a like, a mistake that you’ve made, that you’re like, Man, I’m so smart now for going through that. Number

34:11

one was, you know, not protecting the culture, you know, and letting letting a negative situation go too long. You know, I’m fiercely loyal, and that person I felt like, will help help me get started, but then held on too long, people reach a natural performance plateau. Let’s be honest. If I look at myself and my my partner, we’ve hit our plateau. We can’t break through to the next level, so we gotta bring on talent, which means bringing someone in from a partner, leadership team standpoint, so that that part, and then, quite frankly, as part of this exercise, emerging teams,

34:49

I’ve been digging into the to the expenses, and it’s amazing how you can let things creep when,

34:56

when things are good. So

34:59

I.

35:00

I for any of you, I was down at Gary Keller when he brought in Mike Michalowicz, who did profit first.

35:06

I live and breathe by Profit First, because I hate I hate looking at the P, L, I hate the numbers. I hate all of that haven’t balanced my checkbook in probably 20 years. But by viewing Profit First, I get to see every single bucket. Now that I’ve been doing Profit First long enough I know I look at my Chase account total, and then I have my six accounts underneath, and when that number dips below a certain number total, it’s like, Okay, what’s being depleted? So for me, Profit First helped me from that constant worry of where the money was coming from. Yeah, no doubt about it. We read that as an ALC a few years ago, and I was really proud of Ozzy. Ozzy, he this is during COVID When we read it. And he said, After that year of reading profit, first he implemented the the concepts, and he says he ran one of his most profitable years he’s ever had. So it’s told you’re exactly right. I love it. It’s not I can tell when something’s out of line,

36:09

nothing that, personally, I don’t

36:11

spend on. But I can tell when we’re getting a little bit of creep in the expense line. It’s like, oh, it’s a little tight this month. A little tight like, what’s so it’s it. For those of you that don’t enjoy the the nitty gritty of digging into their monthly P and L, that’s a special form of hell that I have no desire to be

36:29

in. Well, I’m going to, I’m about ready to open up the room for any questions a couple more. Go ahead and raise your digital hands for those who have questions.

36:39

The big debate, what’s the best cheese,

36:43

anything from Wisconsin? That’s very generic Wisconsin answer. So tell me, Mr. Cheese man, where is the best cheese? What is the best cheese and what’s the best way to eat? Well, my mother lives up in Kohler, Wisconsin, which is cheese, plumbing fixture and cheese capital. And that’s where Sargento is from. So I gotta say Sargento, it’s the biggest cheese manufacturer, I think, in the state. How do you like your cheese

37:12

on everything?

37:14

No, as someone who’s trying to be vegan for a while, that was the hardest I could give up meat. No problem giving up dairy and cheese. It

37:25

was hard. So why are you in Wisconsin trying to go vegan? Cuz I have a house in South Florida. I gotta, gotta be a swimsuit ready? No, it’s, you know, when people of a certain age when the doctor starts telling you, Hey, your cholesterol is starting to creep, or your blood pressure starting to creep. I’ve did I was a Netflix

37:49

documentary.

37:51

Was about

37:53

vegan athletes.

37:55

Was it game changers? Yes, yes. My sister, college athlete, phenomenal, still phenomenal. I told her what I was doing. She’s like, You’re a fool. You need protein for muscle. I’m like, Just go listen to it. And she she loved it. Yeah, there’s a difference. Reason why I look the way I do and Laura looks the way she does, is because I like to deep fry my cheese and and cook my brats,

38:22

listen, there’s more reasons than just that. We’ll leave it there.

38:29

I love it, all right, good enough. Well, I guess that’s kind of an answer. Thank you, Jay for that. Jay Hendricks, you are back from being bold. Welcome back. Can’t wait. We’ve had, we have, we’ve had great questions, but having your questions your way is always great to have. So go do your thing. Actually, you answered most this really, was, was really, was really good. You answer really most of my questions. However, the real thing is that I’m concerned. It sounds like you’ve got a very good value proposition for people. When they look at teams and they go, team versus Team. Oh, wait a minute, they’re doing something different over here. So, so what is so? What would you describe is when somebody’s talking to you? What is your value proposition when you, when you’re when you’re talking to potential recruits for agents for our team, one of the things is that my teammate and I are fully vested in coaching our agents, so when the phone rings,

39:32

we pick up or they text, hey, I got a problem. Both Janine and I pride ourselves on quickly responding to that agent if they’re giving us 40% of their earned Commission, we got to make sure that we pick up that phone and answer it.

39:47

We go on, especially when they’re new, we go on listing appointments with them. We kind of teach them our listing presentation. We have a Monday team meeting where we kind of go through what’s going on on the market. So I hope.

40:00

This doesn’t sound pompous, but a lot of people join our team because they want to be in business with the two of us. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So so do you? So you only have a like a group meeting once a week. Then, yep, we do our sales meeting just for my team, 11 o’clock on Mondays. And then I do ask everybody to come to the Tuesday Market Center meeting. Other than that, again, we are so like, I’ve always feared getting into Gary Keller meetings, because I’m afraid that when I start talking like, how we’ve built our team and what we’re doing, that I’m going to be like, shoot, like, boy, haven’t you opened the mrea? I’m like, Yes, I have. It just didn’t work for us. Or I’m an

40:41

old dog that had the tricks that had the tricks that I couldn’t break. Gotcha, alrighty, alright, alright. I’ll let Laura. I’ll let Laura go next, and then I’ve got some more, but I’ll let Laura go next. Awesome question. She’s also the nicest person in our office, too. So get ready. She’s really nice. She did, she Laura. Laura is, is definitely one of the cool ones,

41:02

Jay, put your hand down and then put it back up, so we could, just in case, and then

41:07

anybody else can ask questions. And then Jay, you could wrap us up if, if nobody else has questions but Laura dying to hear what Laura has to say. This is it’s not even a good question. Oh, but never mind. I’m going to mute you. Okay, go ahead and do your thing. No, I really like the idea of doing the, you know, listing pre inspection. So I was wondering, do you just tell the sellers right up front? Hey, this is a requirement when you list with us. We did recently, this past year, added into our listing presentation as one of our pages.

41:42

I get my agents to or I get my sellers to agree to it. Sometimes, you know, when I can sense that there’s some pushback, be like, help me understand why this doesn’t feel good. And 90% of the time, it’s well, I don’t want to know all the problems. I’m like, oh yes, you do. You want to know it for one of two reasons. Number one, you want to know about it before the buyer knows, because you go into the back seat. Buyer gets in the front seat, and guess what? They’re taking for you for a ride, and that ride’s gonna cost you 1000s and 1000s of dollars,

42:11

I said, or you’re gonna get an offer without a home inspection. Contingency, you close, they paid you a ton of money. They waived every inspection. They sold their left kidney to get your house, and something went bump in the night, and they’re going to sue you. So in Wisconsin, the seller disclosure follows for seven years after the sale. So by doing this pre sale inspection, Mr. And Mrs. Seller, number one, I’m protecting your interest after the sale, because we disclose it. And number two, the likelihood of the buyer getting into the driver’s seat through this transaction greatly reduces when we know what we’re dealing with. And they do it,

42:51

I also then will sometimes use it. You know, the other part in our listing presentation, with this whole new sitz or lawsuit Wisconsin, we’ve been using buyer agency for 20 years, and we have very transparent commission in our state. Approved our Wisconsin. DOJ wrote all of our contracts. So we are we didn’t get much disruption, other than the fact that weak agents now feel like they can not offer commission and take more of it for themselves. So we put in our listing presentation, transparent commission. 6% if a buyer’s agent comes in. 5% if I bring you a buyer, 4% Mr. Mrs. Seller, if you help me and you bring me a buyer that doesn’t have an agent, the number of times I’ve had a discount from 6% down to five has gone down dramatically, because every seller wants to see, do you discount? Oh, great. I’m glad that you asked. Yeah, let’s go to this page again. I saw it from an agent that joined our team, and I was like, this is hokey as hell.

43:52

Suddenly I had listened to him and let him tell me about it. We put our team spin on it, and I love it. So the pre sale inspection and the transparent commission. And I remember hearing it back at a family reunion or mega camp. Someone talked about putting that in their listing presentation or, like, I don’t want to lead with commission, but they ask, and if they don’t ask, we don’t even address it, but it’s really helped us to avoid I don’t know if you guys are getting it, but one of my bigger competitors, she’ll take it at 4% and stage and pay for moving and just to get listings. And it was, I had to avoid it.

44:30

Yeah, thank you. No. That’s, that’s good information. And I think, like you said, I like the the term the driver seat and stuff, because I’ve been getting requests for repairs that have so many items, it’s like, size two font. It’s so tiny you can’t even read it. I’m like, This is ridiculous. So, yep. So good, good idea. Thank you. And a lot of times too, if you can get the pre sale inspection done before you sign the listing contract, I tell that buyer’s agent, yeah, we listed the house at 700,000

44:58

because of the pre sale inspection. Yeah.

45:00

We didn’t change our price. You know, I’ve got a little listing coming up that the roof is shot. We now have two quotes in hand we’re going to market. And I told her, we are going to be giving your buyer a new roof. Let’s see how high we can push the price that they can accommodate more of it. So again, we know what the problem is. Let’s, let’s put a solution in front of the buyer.

45:23

Awesome question. Laura, thanks tons. Um, anybody before Jay goes? Just before, oh yeah, right before Jay goes, I just want to say I am stealing the international support as well.

45:37

I love it. Feel free to I stole it from someone else too. Thank you. Thank you. Ozzy runs a team has two internet two that are from international support. Is that right? That is true. And I always call them vas, vas, vas. And I’m like, I just love international support so much better. Thank you. Jay, I will tell I’ll tell the gentleman who I stole it from. Great, great job. Love it. Jay, you’re back on the show. Yeah, dude. So

46:07

you were talking earlier about your events. I love that you do six. We do four. You know, we’re always trying to, you know, make them better. And we feel like we’ve really feel exactly like you. It’s really, what makes our events best is the amount of contacts we get to have with the client, not necessarily the bent. But we also do sort of enjoy our events as well, which I think is a byproduct that’s just a fun time for us to get to be together as a team, and, you know, get to hang out and be with our clients, so that’s cool as well. But which I wrote down, the ones you had, which one is your best and why?

46:45

You know, honestly, date night and poinsettia are the two, two really strong ones for us. I will tell you I did a different one recently. So I I believe I have three different sets of clients. I have buyer and seller clients. I have agents that are on my team, clients, and then I have cobrooks, who are clients, meaning I’ve got to have build relationships with all three. So I fix and renovate a house once a year that I live in. So I thought about it going to was going to put it on the market this coming spring, and I thought I’m going to invite all the top 100 agents over to my house for a cocktail party and just congratulate us all getting through the last four years of COVID craziness and the sitzer lawsuit, because on our MLS, I can’t advertise a property unless it’s listed. So I thought, Great, I’m gonna have a cocktail party.

47:32

50 some agents showed up. We had a rip roaring good time. And two days later, an agent that was there brought our buyers back through, wrote me a cash, cash, no contingent offer.

47:42

So that was a great one, and it was a spin off from a previous event. I did this house before that. I do have a reputation in my sphere of being the remodeling guy. So I finished a house kind of tricked it out, and got on a local paper, paper visit, morning talk show. You know, where they

48:02

have different people come in. It seems like a news story, but it’s you pay to be on it. And I did. I got a guy party, and I had an open house on a Saturday morning, and I put it out on TV. I’m like, What the hell am I doing? I’m inviting the general public to my house. I’m still and that was two years ago, I’m still getting phone calls from that. I had more people that I didn’t know show up than than my friends. I probably had 100 and some people through my house. So just again, trying to find my superpower for my own book of business, and throwing it out there. I always used to be so afraid of like, well, if I do something and nobody shows up, you know, got him, I look like a loser. Well, nobody’s going to know.

48:50

Yeah, so good. So, so you said I’ve got a guy party. So how did, how did you come up with the name of it? Because number one phone call I get from my friends my past clients is, hey, do you got a guy for x so I said I got a guy party, and part of it was, come see what I did.

49:09

You know, everybody loves, we call it house porn. You know, people love to watch HGTV shows and surf internet and Zillow to look at houses. So hell, I’ll just open up my house and let people come through the door, talked to local businesses and had gift baskets and giveaways. And I said, I’m going to give you a list of all of my go to vendors, and those go to vendors paid to supply the food and beverage for the event. And it was a blast. Like, nice, yeah. It was fun. It was a fun one. It was kind of a little nerve wracking. Like, do I really want to open my freaking house up to a bunch of strangers. But why not,

49:45

dude, I’ll tell you. Jay Hendrix, thanks for asking that question, because I got a guy party. Freaking genius, dude really, really is win win all the way around. And then, of course, I love this day.

50:00

Eight night with the the taken bake and the cheap wine. Well, it used to be two Buck Chuck, but I think it’s now like five Buck Chuck.

50:10

So funny, so funny. I love it. Well, hey, Jay, first of all, you are not a loser. I know you said I didn’t want to look like a loser. World. You are not a loser. And there are no doubt people that were dying to send referrals to Wisconsin specifically, do Milwaukee? Oh, before that, before I get into this part, have you? Did you ever get to you’ve lived there your whole life, I have Did you ever get to see Laverne and Shirley, or, like, the fawns up there, or anything like that? Well, I mean, all the, you know, the the tower and the opening of Laverne and Shirley is Milwaukee City Hall. The bronze fans is downtown Milwaukee. If you can believe it, we’re we’re growing like crazy. Right now. People are coming to the metro Milwaukee area like like crazy. So, do you ever meet Robin Young? Uh,

50:55

so Robin young and Paul Molitor, if you follow the Brewers, Paul Molitor used to be my parents neighbor. Oh, you’re kidding me, yes, yeah, yeah. So no, I’ve Yeah, I used to collect baseball cards, you know, so got it. But no, we and help. Giannis, I was the listing agent on the house that Yanis bought. Was just about to help drew holiday buy an amazing property, and then he gets freaking traded to the Celtics. So, yeah, my old roommate was the mascot for the bucks. So he for a couple of years, he was, he was doing all the crazy, crazy stuff, but actually the the most recent retired bangle is now a real estate agent at our office. Look at that. Um, round circle. Love it. Love it. Love it. Okay, so we got lots of people dying to send referrals to Milwaukee. What’s the best way for them to send referrals to you? My email address is my name, Jay Schmidt, J, a, y, s, C, H, M, I, D, T, at, K, w.com, and if you want to see our website, it’s J, S, G, M, k, e.com,

51:56

but I think I’m sorry you spelled your last name really quick. So just in case people are listening to it, do it one more time. Yep, S, C, H, M, I, D, T, at, K, W, yep, and it’s, it’s J, S, G, M, k, e.com, Yep, perfect. Alright. J, A, plus for you. Hope you have an amazing week, guys. So excited for you guys to be here. No doubt. I’ll see you guys next week on the OT noon, Pacific Standard Time. Keep on rocking. I’ll talk to you guys later. All right. Well, there you go, another great OT and and I know you were sitting there going, man, that guy’s got a great looking head and beard.

52:39

Yes, I know Daren does and so does Jay. We both have great heads of hair and great beards, and I’m glad you guys recognize that. So anyway, I don’t do this as a hobby. I do this because I want to help teams grow their business. I don’t care where you’re at. I’m here to help. You can contact me. My number 702706494, 702-706-4949,

53:03

and you can contact Manuel. I’ll help you out if you’re in Vegas or out of Vegas or wherever. Because I’m based out of Vegas, I run one of the largest real estate companies here in Vegas. Keller wins the marketplace, and that’s what I do, is help people grow their teams and grow their business. Another thing you could also be in the Zoom Room with us and hang out with Jay if you just click that,

53:26

if you just went to only four teams.com click that little button that says, join the room and be a part of that room at noon, Pacific Standard Time, and be a part of the crew. So I challenge you, follow me, join the Facebook group and join us in the Zoom Room by going to only four teams.com

53:47

and there you go. You’re part of the family. That’s it. I’m out of here, but I have a feeling next week I’m gonna see you and tell them,

54:00

do some good.

54:01

Thanks for coming to the OT. Remember you can join us every Tuesday at 1130 Pacific, Standard Time on Zoom, gain zoom, access the OT archive and other team resources at only four teams.com.

54:16

See you next week.