Episode 54: INTERN to AGENT: Building Teams with Athletes – The Selling Team

In Episode 54 of The OT: Only Teams in Real Estate Podcast, host Daren Phillipy sits down with Michigan-based mega team leader Brock Fletcher, founder of The Selling Team at Keller Williams. Brock opens up about his early struggles in real estate, his journey to success, and how he’s scaled one of the most effective, systemized, and heart-centered teams in the country.

This episode is a goldmine for anyone looking to build a real estate team, scale their impact, or simply understand what high-level leadership looks like in today’s real estate world. From innovative internship programs to lead-generation events, Brock shares it all.

From Rock Bottom to Rockstar: The KW Turnaround Story

Brock Fletcher entered real estate in 2004 but almost left the business six years later. “Everything was collapsing around me,” he says. He was about to quit until a friend urged him to give Keller Williams one last shot in 2010. That decision changed everything.

“Mo Anderson asked me to talk to 20 people a day. I did what she said, and that year I went from 17 to 33 transactions. That saved my career.”

Fast forward to today, Brock’s team closes over 320 transactions a year, with a peak of 355 units in 2021. But those numbers don’t tell the whole story.

The Team Structure: Leadership with Leverage

The Selling Team is a finely tuned machine. Brock refers to it as a “Ferrari,” designed for high performance and maximum leverage.

The leadership team includes:

• Brock Fletcher – Founder and full-time listing agent
• Sarah Dewees – Director of Operations (13-year veteran)
• Mike Dedman – Lead Buyer Specialist (12-year veteran)

“Sarah really runs the business. If she says something isn’t smart, we don’t do it. She’s my boss.”

The team includes full-time transaction coordinators, listing managers, a concierge/ISA, a Cyberbacker VA, and even Brock’s daughter on weekends.

On the agent side:

• 3 full-time listing agents
• 5+ full-time buyer specialists
• Several part-time agents serving as mentors or working specific niches

The entire operation is built for scalability and consistency—and it works.

The Value Proposition: Systems, Coaching, and Accountability

Brock’s team offers:

1. World-class administrative support
2. High-level coaching and mentorship
3. Qualified leads (50% team-generated)

Agents must meet a clear standard to earn team leads:

“100 contacts a week is the rule. Miss that, and you’re off lead rotation. When you hit it again, you’re back on.”

This simple accountability structure keeps agents focused and productive.

Lead Generation: Community Events over Clicks

Instead of Zillow or PPC, Brock emphasizes client appreciation events to nurture referrals. The team hosts four major events a year:

• Mother’s Day pie giveaway
• Summer putting course picnic
• Movie theater buyouts
• Super Bowl prize giveaways

“We buy power tools, gift cards, and even a 75″ TV. It’s all about making people smile and remembering our brand.”

He also uses local radio endorsements, not for instant ROI, but for long-term brand visibility.

“People sing our jingle back to me in town. It covers its cost and keeps us top-of-mind.”

The Internship Program: A Bridge to the Future

One of the most compelling parts of this episode is Brock’s groundbreaking internship program with Michigan State University athletes.

What began as an email response to a coach became a thriving pipeline of talent:

“We started with 9 interns. Some only worked 3 hours. Others showed up every day. I told my team: make it fun, make it meaningful.”

Interns now:

• Shadow agents on appointments
• Learn professional hiring processes
• Take real estate licensing courses
• Receive mentorship and leadership training

The goal?

“To help them become leaders, and hopefully work with us full-time after their playing careers.”

Some interns are already licensed, and a few have even bought homes through the team. One now plays for the Tennessee Titans and told Brock:

“You’re the greatest leader I’ve ever had.”

Mentorship That Moves People

Beyond real estate, Brock has become a mentor and father-figure to many of these young athletes. One intern even brought Brock back to church after years of spiritual distance.

“He told me Jesus wants you to be successful. It wasn’t what I was taught growing up, but he was right. That kid changed my life.”

This depth of impact is rare in business. For Brock, it’s what matters most.

Conclusion: Building a Business with Purpose

Brock Fletcher’s story isn’t just about real estate success. It’s about doing hard things well, investing in people, and using systems to support scale.

If you want to build a real estate team that lasts, listen to this episode. And if you’re an agent looking for mentorship, leadership, or inspiration, Brock’s model is one to study.

📣 Ready to Learn More?

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Transcription

Announcer  00:00

Welcome to the OT only teams in real estate.

Brock Fletcher  00:15

There’s a lot of responsibility to having you know 20 some people that I am like, if I don’t come to work every day in a meaningful way, they might, they might seriously be impacted, right? And then if you add their spouses and their kids, I have, like, over 120 people that, if I don’t show up in a meaningful way every day, that I’m putting them in jeopardy. I have assembled a Ferrari, right? Like our administrative team is, is a Ferrari, right? These are all high level administrators. None of them are licensed agents. These are not people that are shitty agents that wanted that are doing administration because they couldn’t hack it as agents? No, I went out and hired the best, right? And so I have built this Ferrari. And so when I’m explaining to my agents, I built you a Ferrari so that you could do a maximum amount of transactions if you want to drive it like, it’s a like, it’s a Chevette. That’s your problem, not my problem. But yeah, one of our interns plays, he’s the safety for the Tennessee Titans, and he had and he was one of our original interns. I’ve known him for four years now, and he texted me New Year’s Day, and we’re in communication all the time, so it wasn’t like abnormal, but he texted me, said, I just want to let you know how thankful I am for you. You’re, you’re, you’re the greatest leader I’ve had in my life. And I mean that really meant something, because he’s played at two different college universities, had a lot of coaches, and he’s played for four NFL teams, and for him to say that I’m the best leader of all that he’s ever been with, I mean, I thought that was the coolest thing ever.

Announcer  02:15

Here’s your host, Daren Phillipy, Hey

Daren Phillipy  02:17

everybody. Welcome to this week’s ot only team for real estate agents. My name is Daren Phillipy. Still gotcha, I’m your host, and here we are another week and another awesome guest. You guys are going to love. Brock Fletcher from the selling team, Lansing, Michigan. We haven’t talked about any of this before, but Lance does a whole bunch of really great things, and we’re going to spend a lot of time talking about some of the great things, but my favorite thing that he talks about is his internship program. We’ve we’ve heard about internships in the past. Maybe you’ve been in a corporate gig before. How do you run an internship program in the real estate industry? Brock is a perfect example. He has mastered it. He’s brought some amazing people into his life to help him get more business done. It opens up doors for more opportunity, more databases, more ways to be able to pick up more business. And it’s freaking super cool. Paying it forward, doing good things for the kids. You’re going to love it. I can’t wait for you guys to listen to what Brock has to say. Now, before we get into it, I need you guys to do one thing. I need you to make sure you’re in the room every Tuesday at noon Pacific, Standard Time. I need you to join the room. Go to only for teams.com, click on that. Join the room at noon Pacific, you’re in the room, you’re hanging out with Brock, you’re hanging out with me, you’re hanging out with a room full of people, and you can ask questions specifically about things that we’re talking about. Now you could have spent some time talking to Brock about his internship program. It is amazing, but you weren’t there, so you missed out. Don’t worry, though, you can listen to it now and then. You can redeem yourself next week by joining the room. Okay, the other thing I need you to do is make sure you guys follow me on Facebook, make sure you follow me on Instagram, make sure you follow me on YouTube. You spell my name, Daren Phillipy, you’ll find it on YouTube, Instagram. I actually my Instagram is DL Phillipy, but you’ll, you’ll find me. I’m like, the only Daren Phillippi around. Follow me, share all of the stuff that you hear and you see. It only helps me out. And it’s not about me, but it’s actually helping other agents that are really needing help. Okay, that’s pretty much it. I’m done talking. Let’s get to Brock. He’s awesome, and I’ll see you guys at the end of the OT. All right, guys, that is it. It is now time for the OT. Guys, I’m super stoked to hang out with Brock Fletcher, you guys are going to be kind of shocked on how rock kind of fell into my life. You know, we did. The only team live event here in last week, and I was reaching out to a whole bunch of top teams from across the country, and Brock introduced me to someone who lived in Vegas. She’s a college athlete. Her boyfriend is a college athlete, and we just kind of connected. Brock said, Dude, I can’t make it to the live but, but let’s go and rock the OT on Zoom. He’s in Lansing, Michigan, 328 sides and 76 million in volume the last 12 months. Those are the numbers that came from command Brock for thanks for being the man.

Speaker 1  05:37

Oh, you’re welcome. Thank thank you for letting me be a part of this today.

Daren Phillipy  05:40

You kidding me, dude, we’re blessed to have you in our world, man. So before we really get into it, tell us a little bit about about you and your team and and your kind of your history.

Speaker 1  05:52

Sure, I’m in my 21st year of real estate. My first six years were not successful. I was part of a boutique brokerage that I then came to own, and that was in 2004 that I got licensed. And so my everything was collapsing around me, and I was going to get out of the business, but a friend of mine convinced me to come to Keller Williams in 2010 and a last ditch effort to save my career. Which it it did. It didn’t immediately. But I came to Keller Williams with the thought process that if it didn’t work out, then I would be leaving the business relatively shortly. Daren and I didn’t talk about any of this before, but even though my I was not successful, I’d done 17 transactions the year before. I made about $40,000 our average sales price was about 90,000 at that time here in Lansing, Michigan, but I still qualified for the ALC, which is pretty hilarious, and so mo Anderson actually taught did our ALC clinic. She flew up here, and I was a very hard worker, but just didn’t know what I didn’t know. And so I went, went to the ALC clinic. I had the lunch break. I went up tomorrow and introduced myself, and I thanked her for her time, and I really didn’t know how big of a deal it was that she was there, but I was very grateful. And she said, Honey, how was your real estate career? And I said, I normally would lie and say it’s it’s good, or it’s fine, or whatever, but I said, Honestly, it’s not very good, and I really don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to stay in the business. And she said, I need you to make me a promise. I need you to make me a promise that you’re going to go to the office tomorrow and you’re going to talk with at least 20 people and ask them to do business with you before you’re going to quit. And then I need you to do that every day, every business day, forever. And I said, Well, I have a part time job because I’m so unsuccessful. And she said, Well, let’s start with the days that you’re not at the part time job, and as soon as you have the ability to quit the part time job, then let’s do that. And she said, I promise you, one year from now, you’ll be in a different place financially. And you know what? I didn’t I didn’t overthink what she said to do. I was definitely between a rock and a hard place, so the time for being skeptical had long since passed. I just did what she said to do. I didn’t have any crazy cool scripts or anything. I just went to the office and started calling, and I did 33 transactions in the 12 months after that, and made $95,000 and for the first time in my real estate career, and that was year seven, I felt that I could stay in the business. So that was Yeah. So what a story, dude, you know. And then fast forward, you know, slow progression, year to year, from 2011 you know that year being that first year here at KW and then you know, through 2025 and basically, the last five years, we have averaged about 320 transactions a year. Our high water mark was 355 in 2021, 2020 one, 2023 we dipped all the way to to 250 and that sucked. And then last year we had a we outpaced the market by about 37 36% and and ended up at, you know, 320 some transit units or whatever. So

Daren Phillipy  09:41

what an awesome story, man. I love that, because I think a lot of times other teams get it, but those who aren’t big teams, they think all you do is just walk on water and all you do is win. And we’re going to talk a little bit more about being an athlete later. Later on, we forget what the pain happens behind the scenes, of how many times we need to lose publicly and lose in our business, and lose mentally and focus and all of that kind of stuff. So I think that is such a cool story to be able to say, Hey, dude, you’re gonna get your teeth kicked in, and if you continue doing what you’re supposed to be doing consistently, like Mo said, you know, you change your life. Which, which you did. So, so cool. Thank you for sharing that. Give us an idea of your org chart. What does that org chart look like?

Speaker 1  10:34

Yeah, I’ll start with my leadership team. So I’m, I’m on our leadership team, along with my Director of Operations, Sarah Dewees, she she runs our she really runs the team, and then she’s responsible for all of our administrative team members. They all report to her. Sarah has been with me for 13 years, and so we’ve been together a long time. And then Mike Dedman is my lead buyer specialist. He manages our buyer agent department, and me, Sarah and Mike meet weekly as a leadership group. I I consider them to be owners in the company with me, although that’s not according to the IRS. That isn’t true, but I do they’ve earned the right to be. I mean, they built the team with me. Mike’s been with me for 12 years. So, so, so we’re the leadership team, and then where you can ask a question. Jody,

Speaker 2  11:36

sorry, could you just repeat who you’ve gotten key places?

Speaker 1  11:39

Yeah. So my director of ops, Sarah, she she runs our our administrative department, and really and really runs all of the systems on the team. I’m not a detail person, so yeah, me either heart work a lot harder, then that’s always the answer. And that does, that doesn’t work from a scalability standpoint. And then Mike Dedman is our lead buyer’s agent. He, he manages all of our, all of our buyer’s agents. Okay, the three of us together, we, we chart the course for the company and and troubleshoot problems as they as they come up. So in terms of, like, the numbers in the makeup, I’ll start with our administrative team, because that’s really the value proposition of the team. So Sarah is our Director of Operations. She’s full time. Lindsay wassom is our is one of our transaction coordinators. She’s full time. Morgan Hart is an as our other full time TC transaction coordinator. Katie Nicholson is our full time listing specialist, and then Carly Smith is part time. She she actually processes are closed files. Once they’ve closed, make sure that all the appropriate information has been updated into the database. She’s only working about eight hours a week. She was previously a full time TC. She’s She had a a child about three or four years ago. She’s been part time since. She’ll eventually come back full time, though, and then Jake EMS is our essentially like a concierge manager slash isa slash. He does all of our sign installation, and he is full time and he’s he’s salary plus, plus plus getting paid on a per sign installation basis. And then we have a full time virtual assistant, who’s was our last hire, Gerald, and he’s with, he’s cyber. He’s a cyber backer. VA, he does most of our social media posting and advertising, of our listings, etc. So that that rounds out our administrative team.

Daren Phillipy  13:43

Ola, a little side note, by the way, I don’t mean to get distracted. I did put the the team, Meet the Team link in the chat. Jake, I think just takes the signs and he just slams him down. He, I’m not sure if you guys noticed that he’s, he’s a

Speaker 1  13:58

big dude. There’s a couple of people on there that are, like, Mark, who is one of our clients, who is retired. He’s his picture is still there. He was like a part time Isa, I will hire past clients or anybody, right? If I mean anybody that comes and wants a job, I’ll put them in a job. Basically, I did forget my daughter works part time for the team as well. On the weekends, she she will set up showings on our lists. So she’s so good part time. Love it. So that’s the A Team. Sarah runs that whole department. I don’t have anything to do with it other than providing mentorship and like positive affirmations, that I’m a rah rah person.

Daren Phillipy  14:42

Well, you know what I love, Brock is you. You clarified at the very beginning, which I thought was kind of silly, I’m part of the leadership, which means one thing to us, you have done a great job of delegation and and empowering those. Who you’ve hired to be able to do their thing. So you need to make sure, as far as letting us know, I am part of the leadership, but the machine is pretty set up pretty well.

Speaker 1  15:11

It’s definitely beyond me, you know? And if Sarah says it’s going to happen, then it’ll it’ll happen. I mean, she really does. She is my boss, really, right? I mean, I, ultimately, I write the checks, and I’m financially responsible, but, but she, she if it’s if, if she’s really against something, we’re not going to be doing it right. She’s, she’s got a lot of wisdom when it comes to, you know, not doing things in a stupid way. So, so, so. And then, in terms of our agent breakdown, I am still a full time listing agent on our team, and we have two other full time listing specialists who are who are really good, Morgan Meredith, she’ll typically do about 8075, 80 transactions a year. And then Stacy Robinson, who’s also full time listing specialist, typically, 5050, 6070, she built a house last year, so she had a little bit of a Down down year. Did about 50 units. I would expect she’ll be back up to 80 this year. And so the the three of us combined, you know, we should end up, I’ll probably close about 75 units. Morgan will do about 80. Stay soon. So like out of our listing side will be, you know, probably close to 200 closings out of our listing side. And then our buyer agent makeup, Mike Denman is our lead buyer specialist. Dylan swan is a full time buyer specialist, Max Billinghurst is a full time buyer specialist, Zach call writer, full time buyer specialist, Mark clemesh, full time buyer specialist. And then we have three part time buyer specialists that are basically retired from other successful careers that basically function as additional mentors. We have one of our past clients who’s an agent on our team, who own three two men in a truck franchises. He brings a lot of business acumen and a lot of leadership skills. I’ve got a former former appraiser with 45 years of experience. We did a golden hand off with him. So we work as database, and he provides, again, mentorship and guidance to our team. And then we have one of our we do advertise on radio. I can tell you the negatives and positives of that, but yeah, he’s also a part time agent on our team, and he also, like, endorses us. Basically, he’s like a local celebrity, so he endorses for us, but he’s also a part time agent on our team. And then we have, and I won’t probably do this again, but I have, I do have a part time agent on our team that I didn’t realize was going to be part time when I hired him. He wants, he’s going to be a full time minister. And at times he’s good and quite engaged but, but I don’t know, we’re going to have a serious talk about whether it’s, it’s smart to continue it this way. Um, Jesus, yup, yup. Yup. And literally, right. Minister, come to Jesus, thank you. That’s Yup. All of it for me today. And and then last but not least, I own a property management company with with two brothers and Isaac Motley, who we own the property management cup. He’s a part time agent on our team. When I say part time, he’s spending about 10, but he’ll close about 15 transactions, just with in no time, right? Just working the leads that come from our property management company. But his primary responsibility is to, is to, um, grow that company and manage the day to day operations of our property management so all combined, like about 2020, 2122 total teammates on any on any given day. And it does, it does fluctuate, although not like on a daily basis, but it does fluctuate quite often. And I forgot Alicia better. She’s also a great full time agent. Sorry, awesome.

Daren Phillipy  19:16

Yeah, you’re right. Um, so good. So so good. How do you feed those guys on your team, on the listing side and the buyer side? How do you make sure that they get the leads that they need to be able to make the money that they need so you can get what?

Speaker 1  19:34

Yeah, great question, and it’s a growth process, right? So I’ll first say I never intended to have a team that wasn’t the goal initially. And I think, I think real estate, I think growing a real estate team comes down to this, this thing. So I wanted to achieve my maximum. So personally, I could only do about. 30 transactions with my capacity, and then I had to have help. So that’s when I hired Sarah. Now I’m omitting all the bad hires, right? I’m only saying the good one. So I’ve hired and fired a lot of people, including my that’s not rock you shot me a text that said, I hire perfectly, and I never miss Yeah, I have fired my my stepbrother, my stepmom? I mean, I’ve done it all, so, I mean my stepmom, when I fired her, she’s like, You have no idea how upstairs your dad’s going to be. And I said, I said, my dad probably doesn’t know how lazy you are, right? So Don’t, don’t give me your Catherine. Um, you’re lazy, right? That’s the problem here. I’m not the problem. You’re the problem. And my dad was fine with that. He actually knew she was lazy. Turns out so, and they’re still married, so. But anyways, every time I had more business than I could handle, I was faced with with a question, right? And so whenever you get there, you can do a couple things. My goal was to achieve my maximum but not compromise on the client experience. I wanted to provide a five star experience. So when I got to a point that I can hand that I had more than I could handle. I had, really a couple. I had, like, three choices. So I could not take the extra business, right, which that wasn’t an option. I could take the business provide but provide a lesser quality service, which was not an option for me, or I could make another hire, right? And so every time I got to the dilemma, I made, made another hire that that’s that’s all it was. So the intention was not to grow a team. It is kind of a red flag when people come to me and say, especially if they’re brand new, and they’re like, I want to build what you built. My initial question is, how do you know you want to do that, right? I don’t. I mean, I don’t. I don’t even know if I always want it right? And I say that jokingly, but like, there’s a lot of responsibility to having, you know, 20 some people that I am like, if I don’t come to work every day in a meaningful way, they, they might, they might seriously be impacted, right? And then if you add their spouses and their kids, I have like, over 120 people that if I don’t show up in a meaningful way every day, that I’m putting them in jeopardy. And that’s a big deal, right? So, so in terms of what my perception is about our value proposition, and yes, part of it is lead based, but it’s not the main thing. So I have assembled, and I this is not me being arrogant in any way, shape or form. My my my director of operations has closed over 4000 real estate transactions. She knows more about real estate than anybody I know on the planet, right? She knows everything right, any you know, fixing title, dealing with trust, whatever, right? So, like I have assembled a Ferrari, right? Like our administrative team is, is a Ferrari, right? These are all high level administrators. None of them are licensed agents. These are not people that are shitty agents that wanted that are doing administration because they couldn’t hack it as agents. No, I went out and hired the best, right? And so I have built this Ferrari. And so when I’m explaining to my agents, I built you a Ferrari so that you could do a maximum amount of transactions. If you want to drive it like, it’s a like, it’s a Chevette. That’s your problem, not my problem, right? If in fit in a 50 hour work week on my team, if you’re a listing agent, you do, you can do 90 deals a year, right? You have that capability. If you’re a full time buyer specialist on our team, you can do for sure, 40 to 50 transactions, right, without, without any additional leverage. And the team is paying, you know, we pay for the full time salaries of all those people. So that’s the first value proposition. The second part of the value proposition is the coaching and mentoring that that myself and the leadership team provide day in and day out. Right? The third part of value proposition, you know it is leads. Um, approximately half of the leads we close as a team are team generated leads, and about half our agent generated, and they do have to adhere to minimum standards to be able to participate in team lead. So minimum standards, 100 contacts a week, if you don’t make your 100 contacts. Six that week, then you don’t get to participate in team leads the next week.

Daren Phillipy  25:06

Love it. So, so you, you require a standard you got to make your contacts. If you make the con contacts, we’re going to hook you up with team leads. And you said half those half the deals are going to be closing from from the team Yep. And where are you getting those leads from?

Speaker 1  25:21

Um so most so 75% of our businesses repeat referral sphere of influence. I jokingly say that we were based our business is based on client appreciation events. So we we run about four, four a year. Last year our events were a Mother’s Day pie giveaway. Sometimes they we have a couple that are like Mainstays, and then we have, we have some that are like might change from year to year. So last year we did the Mother’s Day pie giveaway. We did our big summertime event, which is always the same, is we run out. There’s this really popular golf course in our area that has an all natural grass putting course. It’s an 18 hole putting course, and we rent that out for the day. We provide lunch for everybody who comes. And then I have, like, prize wheels, so in different games that, because if you if everybody shows the same time, it gets too bogged down on the course. So we have, I, like, I go to Menards and buy like, cordless drills and cordless weed whippers and like, I just buy a bunch of, I’ll buy like, two, three grand worth of like prizes all the way down to, like, fuel cards and things, and then we have a prize wheel. We’ll have some like, prizes that are, like, $1 or two a piece. But everybody spins the prize wheel. We give away prizes. Everybody plays pop, they have lunch. We typically have the radio station that we work with come out and do a live broadcast. They typically give away some concert tickets, stuff like that. That’s one we always have. And then we’ll this year we did a Super Bowl prize pack giveaway. It really got messed up, because the lions were supposed to be in the Super Bowl, so all these things I had planned around it got sorry about messed up. It is what it is. But, I mean, I kind of went all in. I mean, I had recorded tons of videos about it. I mean, I just, I went, it still worked fine. Everything we bought for the that was specific to the Detroit Lions were going to give away in a giveaway next August, right before the season. We’ll give away tickets to a game. But, well, there’s next year that’s right, there’s next year we’ll give we’ll give away that next year. But we, we gave away a 75 inch television, a $200 gift card to a local grocery store, $100 gift card to a local specialty meat market, and then a ninja foodie air fryer. One of the administrators picked it out. Said it was awesome. It was like 11 or $1,200 prize pack, and that was just simply an online registration type thing that we promoted. And then we also did a movie. We rented out a movie theater for one of our events this year. So we do four events a year, so that way we can have a lot of lead generation efforts and activities to promote that. When we’re making our calls, I always want to be inviting them to do something fun, and then transition the conversation into what’s going on in their lives to find out if something’s happening that’s going to cause a transaction that’s right. So good,

Daren Phillipy  28:37

so good. I would like to touch on this, because we haven’t really gone into this ever. You do radio, and I know that you said there’s pros and cons. My whole family’s in the radio business. I’m a Communications major, minor in business. Tell me, how do you use radio, and what do you expect from it? Sure.

Speaker 1  28:58

Good. Great question. So we work with two local country music stations. Those are the most popular in our area, and I’m friends with the morning show hosts for both of the stations. And we create stories about our client experience that they then do they’ll do like live reads on the air and tell a story, and our hosts are also either their teammates or their clients of the team. So they they tell a story about how we’ve helped other people, and then we also use them to promote our events as well. And we get, I will, I will say this, it’s um, it doesn’t generate it does cover its own cost, but it but if somebody came to me and said, Brock, I want to do something that I can double my money on, that wouldn’t be it. I’m not here to sell you something, right? It works. It covers its costs. I If I go anywhere in town. People will sing, sing my jingle back to me. So I know it. A lot of people are aware of it and and I can live with that. It covers itself. But I wouldn’t go start doing radio, because you think it’s going to be like an epic game changer, right? It just, it just, is something that we now, we used to do television and some different things. We were working with Barbara Corcoran and that that we never, we didn’t make any money on that. I like Barbara Corcoran. She’s really nice. TV doesn’t, at least the way we’re using it, didn’t, never generated a profit. So we only did TV for about six months.

Daren Phillipy  30:40

Great, great. Anything else that you want to share with us on with us on the list, on the lead side of things?

Speaker 1  30:45

Yeah, I don’t buy I don’t do Zillow. That’s always a question. I think it’s stupid. Don’t do it. Screw those guys. Yup, it’s I, when Gary talks about, you know, giving money to your competitors, I I take that very seriously. So now, in terms of what I what I will do, any person that calls me and says I will, I will sell you a lead for a 25% referral fee. Yup, sign me up for it. That’s fine. That’s just a normal referral fee. If they got a referral, I can work with and they just want to get, like a normal type referral fee. That’s cool. So there are several lead aggregators that that send me referrals. And I’m fine with that. I don’t have a problem. And just like if Joe Joseph or do you go by Joe or Joseph, we call him Joey. Joey, if Joey’s got, if Jody, if Joey’s got a referral, he probably is going to ask for a 25% referral fee. I’m gonna be happy to pay that. So we have lots of lead aggregators that we will accept referrals at a 25% referral fee for.

Daren Phillipy  31:48

By the way, that was my favorite part of the last three and a half seconds was calling Joe aluchi, Joey and watching, he’s a big deal. He’s a big deal in these parts, and so calling him Joey was was fun. All right, I love it back to we’re supposed to what we’re supposed to be doing. What is something that you guys do on the listing side that separates you from everybody else, and how do you leverage those listings?

Speaker 1  32:18

That’s a great question. I I would, I would say our presentation really is, is on? Really on point. I assume everybody does a one step listing appointment. Nowadays, when I came into the business, everybody was on a two step, which, as soon as I took bold for the first time and started setting appointments with for sale by owners, I realized I didn’t have enough time to meet with everybody twice. I needed to get it down to a one step so all of our all of our listing agents, have been really well trained on a good listing presentation, and they are agents closed really well for the business at the appointment. I think our percentage is like 80, 88% of all the listing appointments we take sign, maybe not immediately, but like they’re, they’re, they’re going to sign with us, versus somebody

Daren Phillipy  33:18

else. I mean, that’s a big number from the amount of listings that you take, you’re doing something, right? Because, you know, usually, if your numbers that high, you’re not taking enough listing so that’s, that’s, that’s great. That’s

Speaker 1  33:29

fantastic. We don’t lose a lot. We win. We win most of the listing appointments, probably

Daren Phillipy  33:34

because they can sing or jingle. It

Speaker 1  33:37

might be, yeah, yeah. I love it. Let’s,

Daren Phillipy  33:40

I want to spend the rest of the time talking about your internship program. So when we go into I want to talk a little bit about your leverage and and this is how we met, and I think what you’re doing is so smart, and we’ve never spoken about it on on an OT before. And so if you can kind of give us a little background of how you fell into doing internships and how you approach it, and what does that do for you that that would be amazing, sure,

Speaker 1  34:09

like most great things that was born, born out of an accident. So I, I mean, I’m, I’m from this area and and my dad raised me to be a Michigan State Spartan fan and fanatic, if you will. And as soon as I started making good money where, where I had disposed one come, I started to attend this fantasy football camp at the university. I started doing that about 12 years ago, and about four years ago, the direct director of player personnel sent out an email to all the the campers, which most of these campers are either alumni or or wealthy donors or whatever. So he sent out an email saying that they’re looking for internship opportunities for the for the football team in particular. Or and Did anybody have something to offer? And so I responded to the email. I said, the guy’s name is Daren. I said, Daren, I don’t know if this is what you’re looking for, but I own a real estate company, and I would love, I would love to have an intern or two. That would be great. And so he he emailed me back, and he said, Can we meet at my office to discuss further? And I said, Yep, no problem. So I went over to the university we met, and he said, you know, Brock, the challenge I have is that our players have a ridiculously packed schedule. So for me to get internship opportunities for student athletes when they don’t have a lot of time, is very difficult, right? And we’ve had some real, some real negative experiences on both the employer side and and the player side and and I said, well, well, help me understand what’s important. And so he said, well, the really I want, the kids to know how to go through a professional hiring experience. I said, sweet, I can do that. And he said, I need flexibility, and I need actual guidance, right? I I don’t want, I can’t have the interns just going to an office and sitting by themselves in a corner with no personal interaction, which is happening, right? A a CEO, head of a major company, says, yup, we can do it, but then they’re gonna have no, no interaction with the student athlete once they’re in the door. He said that that doesn’t really work. I said, well. I said, Well, I think I’m good with that, because they’re gonna, they’ll be with me every day, or be with one of my teammates regardless, so we would be in close communication. He said, Okay, well, I think this will probably work. Um, let me, let me get in touch with all the players. There’s roughly 120 players on a division one football team. Let me, let me reach out, and we’ll have you come in and present to all the student athletes that that are interested. So we made arrangements for the meeting the week after, and there was like 45 kids that showed up for this meeting, and I immediately, like, went into pure panic mode

37:11

because I was like, shit. I think I can only handle like two of you.

Speaker 1  37:19

So we talked like I presented to the group. I didn’t make any promises about how many I would hire, but I said, I said, I said, I’ll be honest. It’s brand new, and I I promised Daren I would take you through a professional hiring so I said, all I gave everybody my cell phone number. I said, text me if you want to interview, and I will take through, take you through a professional hiring experience. And I can’t promise that you’ll be hired, but I can promise the experience, right, you’ll get you’ll at least have that. So thank God only about 10 or 11 texted me, and we interviewed all of them, and two or three kind of self selected themselves out, because we went through, like again, we did a, like, a GET TO KNOW you interview, then we did, I’m sorry I didn’t talk about this, but we KP, AM? We disc them right? We do the validation interview. So it’s like a three, four hour process. And so a couple kids self selected out just, you know, they just didn’t return calls or whatever. It’s fine. We end up hiring nine, nine student athletes, which I which was still more than I, than I thought I could handle. But then I found out something. When you hire nine, only two or three are going to really participate at a high level. That’s real. And some of them are going to maybe only work about three hours all summer, and some are going to show up every day. And so I really didn’t know what the format would be. My director of Ops is like, what are we even doing with this? I said, I don’t know. I just want to have fun with it. And I so I called a meeting with my team, my real estate team. And I said, we got nine interns starting, and I don’t know what they’re going to do. And so I just, I here’s the thing. I don’t want it to get to get turned off, right? This is our our inroads to the university. These kids need to have fun, right? It’s got to be fun. So I said, I don’t care what you do. Take them on appointments, make sure it’s fun. We’ll figure it out from there. And I just told my director of ops. I said, you just gotta let me run with it. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll figure it out. If you just let me go. I said, I I need to be able to operate judgment free while I’m figuring it out. So, so really, the first summer, it was a glory, glorified shadowing program. But I’ll tell you what, you take a student athlete on a listing appointment you’re going to get assigned because the coolness factor is off the charts, even if they’re not a fan of Michigan State, right? Right? When you, when you show up with a student athlete, two things, they think you’re cool. Yeah, because they’re a young, cool athlete, and you’re a dorky, old guy and you’re cool just because of that, right?

Daren Phillipy  40:09

So Jay’s got a chance. Okay, go. Jay’s

Speaker 1  40:11

got a great chance, right? And then the other thing is that people think, wow, if the university would trust you with student athletes, then they must think that you’re responsible, and they must think that you’re good at business. And so you get street cred. So you get coolness points, and you get street cred, right? And so the cool thing about that summer and that so we basically had the kids from June 1 through the end of July, we’re paying them, not paying them. What I do pay I don’t, I don’t believe in having people work for free. They all made a minimum wage. And I told, I said, if you, if you, I, I said, you’re making minimum wage, but if you generate something of real value, then I’ll pay you more. And I said, as long as you’re comfortable, that will define what that is at the moment, then we’ll be cool. And I said, I’ll never take advantage of you, I promise. And because I have credibility, they were fine with that. Ironically, all the kids said they would work for free. And I said, No, I’m against that, right? I don’t I don’t believe anybody should be giving their time for free. It’s un American. So what I said it’s un American to give away time for free. So that probably also has helped me with street cred, right? Just saying, hey, it’s not, it’s not a lot of money, but it’s something, right? And you gotta understand, some of our student athletes are making 10 grand a month with name, image and likeness, money.

Daren Phillipy  41:40

What does that look like right now? So that that’s the story of how you got it up. What’s working now with your inter internship program, and how do you leverage that?

Speaker 1  41:49

Yep, so we have, like, 22 interns now, and most of them are off for the school year. But I would expect, because now we’re in hiring now, for this year, I would expect we’ll be closer to 30 student athletes this summer. In of them, about 10 will show up at a high level. Now, in terms of what we do now, all of them get enrolled in the case score. I have them all taking the real estate course. I’m trying to get them licensed, and I’m very open and honest. My goal is to get you to come work for me full time once you’re College, playing careers. That’s that’s the goal. And I have two or three interns from the original class that are licensed. They’re not practicing. They’re spread out all across the US, but they’re I, I will probably end up owning businesses with a large proportion of our interns, right? Because I that I’m a mentor to them. They trust me. Um, I’m helping. I mean, I’ve had my financial advisor meet with them. I mean, I’m doing a I’m doing a lot of things to help teach them how to be leaders, and I’m showing up in a very consistent way. And many, many student athletes have come from a situation where they had no they had a lack of guidance, right, especially football. And so I might be the first, you know, positive male role model outside from a coach, right? And and and so when I’m real with them, and they see that I’m authentic, then it enhances relationship. So one of my interns, I, I mean, I’ve, I’m, I was raised in the church. I had a lot of trauma with the church. I just, I was raised pretty much just being constantly scared I was going to go to hell. I don’t mind sharing that. So I had sworn off church at the age of 16, mainly because I some of you are my age. I love the show family ties as a child, right? I don’t know if you got any of you want. Michael J Fox, Alex P Keaton, I wanted to be rich, right? I wanted at 13, I was obsessed with becoming financially rich, and my mom was like, you’re going to go to hell, right? If you’re rich, you’re going to go to hell, because you cannot get into heaven if you’re wealthy. You know, I was like, fuck it, pardon my language, screw it. I’ll go to hell, then I’ll go to hell. So I left the church at 16 and was convinced I would never go back. And my intern, one of my interns, got me back to church because I shared, I shared that, and he said, Brock, that’s not true. That’s not true. Jesus wants you to be successful. That’s not, that’s not real. Your mom was wrong. That’s not, that’s not the way it is. Right, as long as you have salvation, you can be, you can be rich and have salvation. That’s not, that’s not true. So i So he invited me to church, and I went to church. Um. Um, and, and then my wife was super pissed at me, because she’s like, um, I’ve been trying to get you to go to church for like, two years, and all of a sudden, your 18 year old intern invites you to church, um, and you’ll go for him, but you won’t go for me. And I said, You’re right, you’re right. I You’re the most important person in my life, and I should have gone with you and but I, you know, when a young person invites you to do something, you feel, you feel like you don’t want to be a naysayer in their life, right? You want to build up wins for them so that they don’t you. It’s the same reason whenever a kid comes to my front door with selling candy or whatever I’m going to buy it, I’m not going to tell a kid no at my door if they’re selling something, right? So, so anyways, I credit my intern with getting me back to church. So it’s been very powerful

Daren Phillipy  45:58

to me. Oh, good. I love that. That was an awesome story. Awesome story. Share one last bit. And because I want to leave, I want to leave 10 minutes for that, for the people who are in the room now is the time. While he’s going to answer this last part, raise your digital hands. You’re going to look down at the bottom. Push that button. You guys have been in zoom long enough push the magical zoom button and ask question right after this, tell us a little bit about you. Said you’ve got some influence. You’ve had a couple of these interns. You’ve really impacted them so much that even some you said, reach out to you and give you kudos for the mentorship and coaching that you’ve ever had. Tell us a little bit about

Speaker 1  46:37

that, sure. Well, two things, two of our interns have now bought houses with us, which is pretty cool. That’s That’s new. 18 years old, barely 18 years of age, bought his first home, which was pretty sweet, but yeah, one of our interns, he plays, he’s a safety for the Tennessee Titans, and he had, and he was one of our original interns. I’ve known him for four years now, and he texted me New Year’s Day, and we’re in communication all the time, so it wasn’t like abnormal, but he texted me said, I just want to let you know how thankful I am for you. You’re, you’re, you’re the greatest leader I’ve had in my life. And I mean that really meant something, because he’s played at two different college universities, had a lot of coaches, and he’s played for four NFL teams, and for him to say that I’m the best leader of all that he’s ever been with, I mean, I thought that was the coolest thing ever.

Daren Phillipy  47:37

So cool, so cool. Yeah, I love, I love this internship program. I think it’s amazing way for you to be able to you said it’s a great way for you to be able to connect with their families and be able to create business that way and also pay it forward and stuff like that. Anything else you want to share on the internship, before I open it up to the room,

Speaker 1  47:59

I sent you the video Daren, which is an instructional on how to get into a university athletic program. Feel free to share that with everybody, anybody. Period, it’s you’re welcome to share it, but that that’s a tactical video of how to do it, who you need to contact within a university, at least by their because I interviewed the people from Michigan State to have them express in their own words how somebody could make inroads with a college, university.

Daren Phillipy  48:25

How long is the video? I’m just kind of curious. 36 minutes. Okay, so I’m going to take that link, I’ll put it in the chat in the Facebook group. You’re so awesome. I love it. Becky, go. It’s your turn.

Speaker 3  48:41

I loved it all. Thank you so much for your time and pouring into us. I live in Colorado Springs, so we do not have any d1 schools here, but I love the idea we do have the Air Force Academy, and my dad used to sponsor cadets, and so I’m going to look into that. But I have a question, how many salaried positions Did you say you have?

Speaker 1  49:07

We have four, five full time salary positions on the team. Okay, yeah.

Speaker 3  49:13

And you said when they don’t make 100 not the full time, not the salary people, but your lead agents, when they’re calling leads, um, you said, if they don’t make 100 contacts in a week, next week, they don’t get contacts, when do they get back to getting contacts? How do they get back to that?

Speaker 1  49:33

Soon as they’re back to 100 contacts, then they are back on lead rotation. So just, it’s just a one week penalty.

Speaker 3  49:39

Okay? And you mentioned Sarah, if she says it ain’t happening, it ain’t happening. Has it always been that way between you two, or did you struggle with the control part of it?

Speaker 1  49:51

I’ll be honest, I never struggled with the control because I always had a I was, I’m so I’m not detailed at all. So, like. When she and I’ll be honest, when I hired her, I didn’t actually know what she was going to do. So it was a pretty, pretty unique situation. She had been fired from the top real estate team in our city, and another agent called me and said, You have to hire this person. It was the year I had closed 30 transactions. So I called her, and she came in for an interview, and it went great. And I went home and I told my wife, I said, want to hire this lady? And my wife said, No, you don’t have any money. You you can’t hire and so I called Sarah back, and I said, Can we meet a Can we meet again? And I said, I’m so sorry. I mean, I probably should have told her on the phone that was probably rude me to make her come into the office. But I was like, I don’t have enough money to hire you. And she said, Well, let’s do this. Let me work for free for 90 days, and I will prove my worth before, before you have to start paying me. So then I popped out in the hallway, called my wife. My wife said, nope, nope, still saying no. And I said, I you know, I cannot say no. She’s offering to work 90 days for free. That would be really rude. So I said, I’m going to say yes, and we’ll just see how it goes. She goes well, I’m just telling you right now we’re not hiring her in 90 days. But it went really good. She so first day of work, I’m sorry, first day of work. I said, Sarah, I’m not sure what you’re supposed to do. And she said, Don’t worry about it. I got you. I You just sit down and start doing your calls and such. And then anytime I see you doing something that I should be doing, I will just tell you to stop,

51:43

and that’s what it was. So hire somebody that knows what you should and shouldn’t be doing.

Speaker 3  51:49

Yeah, our Rainmaker. I’m an expansion director, but our Rainmaker very detail oriented, but he’s also an op and a million other things, and he really doesn’t have he needs a new person. And just curious about that, he’s, he’s, he wants to still hold on to some stuff, so we’re working on him.

Speaker 1  52:08

Yeah? So the thing is, for me, is I didn’t want to hang on to it because I knew I wasn’t good at it, yeah, but that is a struggle for all those people that want to be in the details. I don’t want any detail. Yeah,

Daren Phillipy  52:20

thank you. You’re welcome. Good question. Becky, Jody, it is your turn. Oh, you gotta unmute. That’s

Speaker 2  52:30

it’s always the tricky part. There we go. We found it so I’m in a position where I’m not sure how the capacity of how many transactions we should be closing before we get a second transaction coordinator. Last year, we did 142 transactions. I don’t have a separate listing. My transaction coordinator, admin does it all. I think we’ve pushed her almost to the brink, and I know we need to divide it. I don’t know if to divide it up listings and then buy side transactions or just get a second person. I just don’t know what’s next.

Speaker 1  53:10

So how many agents are on your team? Nine, nine. Okay, and you have just one, one admin currently, yeah, okay, okay, if you have the right person in your admin position that she can be a director of ops, I would, I would help her make a hire, but then leave it up to her to create the job description for the new administrator, because she she know he or she knows what is, where they’re getting caught up on things, yeah, so I, so I again, whenever we made an administrative hire, I I never had anything to do with with what their job description was. So now, had I hired the wrong director of ops, that could have been a big problem. So, but assuming you, I mean, with the amount of units you’re closing and you’ve got one person, that’s a lot for one person, and I assume she’s quite good at what she does and and so probably just need to put some ads out, right? Just post some ads, and let her do the interviewing and go over what the appropriate pay scale would be. And then give, give your administrator the opportunity to, I mean, be involved in the interviewing, but let them do guide the interview, because the questions you’re going to ask aren’t going to be appropriate, right? Unless you’re just super detailed. But like for me to to interview an administrator, I’m worthless, right?

Speaker 2  54:49

Because I don’t do it and I don’t know what they’re supposed to do. Yeah, I’m not detailed,

Speaker 1  54:54

so just sit in on it, but let your let your main administrator. Do the do the interview, and then hire the person. They tell you to hire, Okay, thanks, but then, but then make them responsible for it. So if they make a bad hire, then they gotta fire them. And that’s happened too on our team. Like I said, My stepmom, right? She was, she was a bad hire. She fooled us.

55:22

All right, thank you.

Daren Phillipy  55:23

Love it, great. Great question, guys. I love it. Rock. You are the man. We learned a ton, just so you know, while you’re talking to me, I’m making eye contact with you, but I’m looking at everybody else, and there’s a whole lot of amens and laughing and agreeing and all that stuff. And so you dropped some serious knowledge. I did say that you’re going to be spitting truth today. So thank you for doing that.

Speaker 1  55:47

My pleasure. Yeah, happy to help. So love. I mean, my sister used to live in Las Vegas as well. She was actually an agent in one of the market centers for a while, then she went crazy and went to work for some other company. Now she’s not in the business. That’s all on her, but whatever.

Daren Phillipy  56:04

Well, we probably have the majority of of the people in the room today that are away from Vegas. They’re all they’re all over the place. So that’s super awesome, super cool. So we’ve got people that are dying sending referrals to Lansing, Michigan, and so tell us what’s the best way to send referrals to Yeah,

Speaker 1  56:24

I would. I would just do them, get get them right to my phone via via text message. That way I can immediately jump into action. Um, so my my cell number is, is, 517-303-3262, if you want to text me your contact information, I’ll save you on my phone, but yeah, if you get a lead, come right to me, and I’ll make sure that we immediately leap into action and get them taken care of, provide a five star experience and then make you look like unbelievably awesome for having referred us. Right. Everybody wants their people to be taken care of when you give a referral, we all, I will do everything in my power to make sure the experience makes you look like you’re know the smartest people in the world.

Daren Phillipy  57:09

Well, Brock, you made me look like the smartest guy in the world because you killed it today. And I’m glad we’re friends. I’m glad that we got connected with your intern, and we’re partners, man,

Speaker 1  57:24

yeah, thank you. Appreciate the opportunity. It was a lot

Daren Phillipy  57:27

of fun. You’re welcome, guys. I will see you guys next week. Be ready to tear it up, and that’s it. I’ll see you guys next week in the OT. All right, thanks guys. Hey. There you have it. Another great OT. Brock, you’re kind of a genius. So glad that we got to hang out with you, and I’m so grateful that you were able to share so many, so much information to us. The other thing too is, man, I’m glad that we’re friends now, you hooked me up with people that are better in my world. And hey, that’s it. Thanks tons, Brock. Now you guys know I don’t do this because it’s not a hobby of mine. I do this because I run one of the largest real estate companies, Keller Williams, the marketplace here in Las Vegas. Now I can help anyone in the anywhere in the country. I specialize in helping agents that are not with Keller Williams, and I spend most my time coaching and helping those agents build teams and grow their teams. So if you’re here in Vegas, or you’re somewhere across the country and you’re listening to what I have to say. You’re like, Man, that guy maybe could help me. Contact me. My number is 702-706-4949. I want to be the guy to help you out. I want to help you get what you want. It’s that simple. So contact me. Love to have you join the room all the other stuff that I’ve said. Now, I have done this ot for a long time, and actually, I had a podcast years ago, and I’d always ended with now go out and do some good. I think I need to change this up a little. From this point forward, we’re not going to end with go out and do some good. I know you guys with the way we’re going to lead every single time is this, you don’t have to figure it out alone. There’s a proven way to build a profitable and I’ll show you how next week. Thanks

Announcer  59:14

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 [email protected] See you next week. You