The Secret to Building a Profitable Real Estate Team: Lessons from Richard Shulman

At The OT Only Teams for Real Estate, we spotlight the industry’s top performers to uncover the secrets behind their success. This week, we’re diving into the strategies of Richard Shulman, a Los Angeles powerhouse who closed 365 units and achieved $211 million in sales volume over the past year.  But ask Richard about his greatest achievement, and he’ll tell you it’s not the production numbers—it’s building a profitable, adaptable, and sustainable business.  

From prioritizing relationships to crafting a strong team culture, Richard’s approach offers a roadmap for real estate professionals seeking more than just high sales volume. Here’s what makes his strategy stand out.  

Relationships Over Transactions 

Richard’s primary lead source isn’t flashy or expensive—it’s his sphere of influence. By nurturing relationships with friends, family, and past clients, he has created a sustainable business model rooted in trust.  

He doesn’t rely on impersonal lead sources or cold calling. Instead, he focuses on consistent, meaningful interactions. Whether it’s meeting a past client for coffee or scheduling a casual lunch, Richard understands that genuine connections drive long-term success.  

This relationship-based strategy also ensures a steady pipeline of business, turning buyer deals into future listing opportunities. For agents looking to replicate this success, the takeaway is simple: invest in relationships, not just transactions.  

A Flexible and High-Performing Team

Building a team that balances structure with flexibility has been a cornerstone of Richard’s success. His team includes full-time staff handling contracts, marketing, and database management, as well as showing assistants and agents. Many of his top agents started as staff members, a testament to his belief in hiring for potential and promoting from within.  

Richard’s hiring philosophy is unique. He prefers newer agents with 6–18 months of experience, as they’re often more coachable and open to learning. Experienced agents, he’s found, sometimes bring bad habits that can hinder growth.  

When it comes to compensation, Richard pays generously, opting to find the “most” he can afford to attract top talent rather than the “least” to get by. Staff members who transition into sales roles can earn full commissions on top of their salaries, further incentivizing excellence.  

Adapting to a Changing Industry 

The pandemic changed the way real estate agents work, and Richard has embraced this new reality. With many agents favoring remote work and alternative prospecting methods, he’s adapted his management style to focus on results rather than rigid processes.  

For example, younger agents are often less interested in traditional prospecting methods like cold calling or door knocking. Instead of forcing these approaches, Richard encourages his agents to find what works best for them—as long as they’re delivering results.  

Accountability remains a priority, but Richard’s approach is pragmatic. Rather than micromanaging, he asks agents to validate their work with screenshots of phone logs or other activity metrics. This ensures accountability without stifling creativity or independence.  

Profitability Over Production

While impressive production numbers make for great headlines, Richard is quick to emphasize that profitability is the real measure of success. High volume doesn’t always translate to financial health, and Richard’s business is designed to maximize the bottom line.  

He achieves this by focusing on cost-effective lead generation, such as internet advertising for listings, and maintaining a sharp eye on expenses. This approach not only keeps his business sustainable but also enables him to invest in his team and their development.  

Richard extends this philosophy to his agents, helping them prioritize financial freedom and work-life balance. By creating systems that allow agents to achieve their professional goals while enjoying personal success, he ensures that his team thrives in every sense of the word.  

Fostering a Supportive Team Culture

A strong team culture underpins every aspect of Richard’s business. Weekly meetings—both in-office and via Zoom—ensure clear communication and alignment on goals. Beyond this, Richard provides training and mentorship opportunities, helping his agents and staff grow into their full potential.  

One of Richard’s most unique practices is encouraging staff to transition into sales roles. By creating a clear path for advancement, he not only retains top talent but also builds a team that is deeply invested in the business’s success.  

Lessons for Real Estate Professionals

Richard Shulman’s success offers invaluable insights for agents and team leaders alike:  

• Focus on Relationships: Build trust and loyalty with your sphere of influence for sustainable growth.  
• Hire for Potential: Seek out coachable talent over experience to create a high-performing team.  
• Adapt to Change: Embrace new work styles and methods while maintaining accountability.  
• Prioritize Profitability: Keep an eye on the bottom line, ensuring financial stability for you and your team.  
• Cultivate Culture: Foster a supportive environment that encourages growth, collaboration, and financial freedom.  

By focusing on these principles, real estate professionals can build not just a high-volume business, but a profitable and fulfilling one. As Richard Shulman’s journey shows, success in real estate isn’t just about numbers—it’s about creating a business that works for you and your team.  

At The OT, we’re all about sharing strategies that help agents and team leaders grow their businesses. Richard’s success is proof that with the right priorities, you can achieve not just high production—but also profitability, flexibility, and balance.

Ready to learn more? Subscribe to The OT Only Teams for Real Estate Podcast for weekly insights from top-performing agents and teams. Let’s grow together.

Transcription

00:00

Welcome to the OT only teams in real estate.

Richard SchuIman  00:15

What’s the reason to hire me? Number one is we focus the most of any realtor on internet advertising. You know, if you’re a home seller, you’ve probably found me online, or you found me on a referral. And so I make the case that you need execution and you need internet advertising. Everything else is fluff, and that way you really take apart other people’s pitches, right? If I’m telling if I’m putting in your mind that you know all this other stuff is nonsense, then when Jay comes and pitches you nonsense, you’re going to be thinking twice about him. Salespeople will work as hard as they feel like working. They will complain as much as possible. So you give them all the resources they need. And if they complain, you say, well, just tell me what you were doing today. And if they say, I made 26 calls today, I said, Great. Can you send me screenshots? I want to see your phone. I want to see the outgoing calls on your phone. And they say, well, it really was 12. Okay. Can you make 26 and then call me and tell me no results.

01:14

Here’s your host. Daren Phillipy,

Daren Phillipy  01:21

everybody. Welcome to the OT. My name is Daren Phillipy. I am your host of the day, and thanks tons for spending the time to listen in and participate in the OT. Only team mastermind that I do every Tuesday at 1130 now, this week, I’ve got someone so cool. In fact, I didn’t realize he’s gonna be as cool as he was. He’s about as California as they come when it comes to his approach to his real estate business, and he’s super successful. His name is Richard Shulman, and he covers covers the LA area. And one of the things that I loved about it is he’s kind of like the people’s agent. He wants to make sure that he’s taking care of his agents, make sure that they they’re getting it, getting what they want, and he’s even cool with them doing it in their way, as long as they get what they want. Hey, don’t hold them against it. Don’t hold the hold it against them if you didn’t get what you want. Because, yeah, well, if you weren’t following his model, he’s okay with it, but at the same time, he’s cool with you doing what you need to do and just plug into what he’s got. So you’re gonna love this. You’re gonna love his his approach. I know I loved it anyway, I’m gonna see you guys, grab your Grab your notes, and we’re gonna go and I’ll see you at the end of this. OT, okay, all right, see you in a bit. All right, guys, thanks for coming to the OT. Super stoked to have Richard Shulman here in the Shulman team. He’s kind of a big deal. I’m the one who says it. He’s a great guy, but he does great production there in Los Angeles, California. The numbers that I have, we’re going to go with the numbers that I have, though, which pulls off off of our Keller Williams system is 365 units over the last 12 months, and 211 million in volume. So in my market, that’s kind of a big deal. And I think in most markets that’s a pretty big deal. So I’m super stoked to have you. Thanks for being here, dude. Yeah, thank you. I thought I had to, so I thought it was required, so I didn’t sounds like it was optional. My understanding is they were going to raise your cap by double if you didn’t hang out. I got that email also. So tell us a little bit about your business and and also little bit of your story.

Richard SchuIman  03:36

Yeah, I mean, I’ll give a quick overview. First, I want to we always talk about production Piazza, we kind of like categorize people. And, you know, it always annoyed me. And I, you know, I really wish we talked about profit more. And so kwri, I was, I think, one of the people leading the charge on that, for for family union speaking engagements, which is in your hometown again, thankfully, this year, this is a short drive for me. Is now required they review your profit and loss before they put you on stage. Although they did have a panel of people who lost a lot of money, that was fine. But I think that, you know, I think we should focus. I think when you’re doing your own business is you’re, let’s say you’re a big shot, like Jay, right? It doesn’t matter how much you sell, it matters how much you take home, how much you invest. And then the key metric is how quickly you can choose to get out of the business, right? So I like to get out like, little, sort of like disclaimer at the beginning, because I, I want people to chase the right things. I’ve seen friends Chase production. I know people with really big production numbers who made no money, right? I know people who lost money doing 100 million in sales, right? Um, I don’t want you guys. I would rather you guys do 10 million in sales and make 170 5k then 100 million and lose money. It’s really easy to do so Anywho. And the last part’s important too. We’re doing bold in my region now. And you know, bold is about life by design, right? Where? How do you get to, where you can choose to sell real estate? So for me, it’s always starting with the end in mind, what? What’s the goal? So anyway, sorry to put a sample on all the all those big numbers.

Daren Phillipy  05:21

That is exactly what these guys want to hear. Because it’s, it’s right, we at this point, at the level that you guys are doing. Yeah, I’ve won awards of being recognized. Now, what is really the purpose that I’m trying to do? That’s right, you’ve got the you’ve got the award. I’ve got a bunch of them back here, number

Richard SchuIman  05:37

number three in the whole company, 2014 you come home and you tell your wife, and she’s like, what does that mean? I don’t care. How much did you take do you take the kids to school? That’s all about.

Daren Phillipy  05:48

Go make sure that you packed lunches for tomorrow. Yeah, exactly. Well, tell us about your org chart, because it sounds like, if you’re doing life by design, having the right people in your world is really important. So what does that look

Richard SchuIman  06:00

like? Yeah. So I’ve been at KW. August. Will be 17 years I came to kW. They were a no name brand in LA, the team leader there, really won me over. He said, cap. And it’s so funny. Now, when I do recruiting and people, you know, they hear cap and they’re just not, I’m just like, what else do you need besides such? Like, there’s really nothing else you need, in my opinion. I mean, there’s a lot more that Canada View offers, I’m sure, Daren you offer, we have this training, right? I’m sure you have better people on for the training as well. But I walked into an office, it just happened to be my near, my nearest to my new apartment, and Rob Eigner said, cap. And I said, great, because I was paying like 35% off every deal at Prudential before that. So anyways, 17 years at KW 2009 I went to mega camp. Let me back up a little bit. Sorry. I was really kind of an elitist about price point. And so I thought, you know, these people in Texas, they’ve got all these charts on the wall like we’re selling at the time, our price point in 2008 was your price point now. And you know, we were selling, I probably like a 700k average price point then. And I’m like, why am I gonna take advice from people selling, like, $80,000 home? I knew people then that were selling $80,000 homes, right? I still know someone with $110,000 minimum price point, right? And it just, I just ignored it all. And then I got a ticket to family reunion one year as an Anaheim, I think that was 2008 or so, 2009 and I went to family union. I went to mega camp. And that’s when everything started falling into place. I heard about showing assistance. I hired my first buyer’s agent in August of 2009 so that’s 15 years ago. And ever since then, I’ve been building a team and, you know, trying to get better and better at at perfecting the model. My version of the model looks different than yours, you know, that’s, that’s, you know, I think if you have something that works and you can validate it with profit, that’s fine. But I did. I did have a conversation with Gary one time where my agents do buying and selling. And he asked me about that, and I said, Well, you know, we do buyers and sellers. It’s works really well. And he just said, You’re wrong. You know, it is Gary way. Okay, well, I’m not going to argue with you. He said, But are you happy? And I said, I’m very happy. Are you making money? Yes. Okay, do it. So I think you should stay as close to the model as possible. It looks like Daren, you have a bunch of red books over your shoulder. Is that right? That’s right and right now, what’s that? Probably more important the shift books. Probably more important right now than the red books. But I have, you know, Red Book One thing, invest M, r, e, i. So anyways, I’ve been building a team since then. For me, the team was really started because I wanted to travel and I didn’t want to lose business while I traveled. And then once I started doing it, because I’ll tell you a quick story. I was in I feel like I was in Asia on my honeymoon, and I had this woman call me to do like, a $250,000 condo, so we’re talking about $6,000 GCI. It’s not a lot, right? And I had a buyer’s agent, then Peter, and I thought I could just do this myself. I’ll just, like, slow roll her, and I’ll just have to meet I’ll be back in five or six days. I’ll just tell her, I’ll store her property Tuesday, and that’ll be fine. I don’t have to split with my buyer’s agent. And by the time I got back on Tuesday and I followed up while I was out of town, she had already bought something with someone else, and I was like, Well, I I tried to make six. I could have had three if I split it. So I always try to build the team so I could go on vacation, so I could be, you know, happy. I’ve seen too many agents. I’ve seen agents make two mistakes. Sorry if I’m rambling a little bit. I had a lot of coffee this morning, just

Daren Phillipy  09:47

you just jump. Preach. All right.

Richard SchuIman  09:52

I saw agents make two mistakes my whole life. Number one is they burn out, right? Right? So Daren, I don’t know about you, and I’m not, I’m not looking to point fingers at people, but I’ve been doing this 20 years. It’s a long time to be in commission only sales business. How many agents in your office are here? 20 years? Ample. Yeah, I was in my West Side office, my first kW office. I was like a top five or 10 Senior Agent by tenure in the office within a couple years, right? And that’s not, some of them went to other offices, but a lot of them are you you guys know, you know, they’re out of the business, right? So number one is they burn out and they lose that. You know, there’s a woman in my office who was doing 30, 40 million a year as a solo agent. That’s some really good math, by the way, if you guys can multiply by two and a half percent, no staff. Just just her, and I told her, You gotta hire staff. And then it went, you know, 3030, 4010, you know, well, you know, that’s the burnout, and you can never recover from that. So number one, number two, I mistake I saw, was they didn’t invest their money. So if you invest your money, it gives you the ability to choose to work versus have to work. That was a very long answer to the team thing. Anyways,

Daren Phillipy  11:04

I love it, and, you know, I’m going to take all of that because I think I want to dig into it, not now, but I want to talk a little bit later about you’ve mentioned investing, and investments in and putting your money in a place where it works for you. Yeah, talk about that in a little bit. Where do you get your leads to feed the team that you have? Oh,

Richard SchuIman  11:24

well, I mean, there’s only, there’s only one place, and these are, it sounds like we have more experienced agents on the call. Is that right? Yep, okay. I mean, so, I mean, I would say if there’s newer agents, you want to maybe develop a couple of silos of leads. But for for experienced agents, the number one place, for only place you need to worry about leads is from your sphere of influence. And for me, spheres is or really, we can go with the KW. It’s Mets and having Mets, it’s really your Mets. It’s your your traditional sphere, friends, family, your spouse’s friends and family. You know that type of thing, your kids, friends and family, um, and then you add on your past clients. So like Jay, you did. You’re doing 300 home sales a year. You said something like that, actually doing 300 homes, not pretend numbers. Okay, it looks like you maybe done real estate for a couple years.

Daren Phillipy  12:16

What do you say? Trying

Richard SchuIman  12:18

to be polite. You might have a couple 1000 past clients, right? Jay,

Jay Hendrix  12:23

hey, we’ve got nine, little over 9000

Richard SchuIman  12:26

I mean, there’s nothing else, if I’m sure you know, Jay, but if I’m Jay, even if you had 200 sales, Jay, there’s nothing else you need to do but live in that data. But 9000 is actually a different problem, because it’s questions, how do you actually stay in front of those people? But some of my agents, my agents, my successful juniors, have 200 people, and I’m like, your only job is to go meet all 200 people this year face to face. Go have coffee with everyone in your database of 200 that will take you the whole year. That’s all. That’s your lead generation for the whole year, right? Jay, I don’t know. I don’t know how to keep in front of 9000 people. That’s a that’s a different problem, but you should probably go have coffee with as many people as you possibly can. You’re probably having, like, coffee at the office, inviting 50 people, but

Daren Phillipy  13:07

he gives away pies, and they do other things like that. Yeah.

Richard SchuIman  13:11

Okay, that’s not my wheelhouse. So I you can get, like, Laura, Jan, come on the call and talk.

Daren Phillipy  13:15

So Richard, what’s your wheelhouse then, dude, if you’ve got your database and that’s your wheelhouse of going, what do you do to stay on top of mind of those guys?

Richard SchuIman  13:22

I grew up in LA. I went to elementary high school here. I went to college in the Bay Area. A lot of people from the moved back to LA were from LA, went there. So I have an enormous sphere of influence in LA, and all I’ve done for 20 years is routinely go meet people for coffee and lunch, develop relationships and, you know, like, like, kind of, like, I don’t say viciously protect, but like, if, if I’m working with Keith, Keith, my friend, Keith and I didn’t even, weren’t even, we weren’t even friends in high school, right? Keith’s way too cool for me to friend. Was high school. I knew Keith from high school, and he said, Facebook message, hey, Richard, I need a realtor. I say, Great, let’s work. I’ve got to do an amazing job for Keith, because he’s going to talk to Charles, and if Keith has an amazing experience, Charles and I weren’t friends either. We just sort of knew each other, right? If I do a great job with Keith, he’s going to tell Charles. But if I do a bad job with Keith, then Charles not going to hire me, because, surprise, a lot of realtors out there, right? You guys, you know, how many, how many realtors in your four offices? Daren,

Daren Phillipy  14:27

we got about 600 I mean, that’s, that’s

Richard SchuIman  14:31

probably all the realtors you really need for all of Las Vegas. And there’s, you know, there’s other offices out there too, right, right? We have the same problem we have, you know, I have 2000 agents in kW, just in West LA, that’s way too many for all brands to have, much less just one brand. So I have to just, all I’ve done is it, you know, pre COVID, I you would find me. You could just wait at the Century City Mall food court on a on a lunch time on a weekday, and you would have. A 75% chance of seeing me there, because I just that’s where people that’s convenient for people. You go there, meet lunch, coffee, you know, keep that relationship going. That’s, that’s it. People try to complicate it. It’s not sorry. That’s why I said we only need 45 minutes, not a whole hour. But if, if you’re listening, and you’re you don’t know what to do, or you need to refocus. Just like, you know, I on Friday, I started my database. I just started record one, and just, I just started inviting people. I got a lunch today. Right after this, I got, I got a jam out of here, and get to lunch meeting with, you know, back from high school.

Daren Phillipy  15:34

Okay, well, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to leave the leads questions to the crew. Okay, go to the listing side. What do you do you do on the listing side that helps you grow your business and and be a great team down there? Well,

Richard SchuIman  15:48

number one is, you have to have a good listing presentation. And that’s a whole, you know, that’s a whole different thing to talk about. But, you know, I’ve been on hundreds of listening presentations. You just kind of refine what you say until you get it right. So there’s not, there’s not a lot of secret sauce there. It’s like, what’s, what’s, what’s the reason to hire you? Right? And, you know, the clients don’t know how to ask that question, so of course, you have to tell them. So I always tell people, there’s two reasons to hire a realtor, right? You’re going to meet four or five realtors, Daren, they’re all going to tell you, they’re going to get you the best price. What’s the reason to hire me? To hire me? Number one is we focus the most of any realtor on internet advertising. Hey, Daren, how did you meet me? How did you find me? Daren, had I

Daren Phillipy  16:30

I looked for the best looking guy in LA County and saw your picture on on a flyer, on a billboard, and none

Richard SchuIman  16:36

of the Million Dollar Listing guys would call you back. So here we are, um, but you know, you found me online, and that’s how you know, if you’re a home seller, you’ve probably found me online, or you found me on a referral. And so I make the case that you need execution and you need an Internet advertising. Everything else is fluff, and that way you really take apart other people’s pitches, right? If I’m telling if I’m putting in your mind that you know all this other stuff is nonsense. Then when Jay comes and pitches you nonsense, you’re going to be thinking twice about him.

Daren Phillipy  17:04

Look at that guy’s pitch nonsense.

Richard SchuIman  17:07

Yeah. So starts there, and then you have to execute, right? So we execute on listings. And you you know right now the key for listing is just having the hard conversation about price adjustment when you need to people are really hesitant to go to a client and pitch them on reduction. And in all likelihood, our markets at least slightly declining, if not declining, it’s certainly no better than flat. And if you’re not selling and you want to wait, you know, letting someone wait an extra month or two is really critically bad for the outcome of their house. So it’s no different than buyers. It’s like, can I deliver a great experience for you? Can I experience for you? Can I set expectations and execute on those? If I, if I don’t, you’re going to tell the next guy. It’s, it was a bad experience, right? Right,

Daren Phillipy  17:50

right? Well, it sounds that’s, I mean, it sounds like that’s how you got your leads, too. And you said, I gotta take great care of these people and to to make sure that you’re providing great service, and that will continue your production in the future.

Richard SchuIman  18:04

Yeah, and we, all of our listing leads primarily come from our buyers, right? I think I don’t know if that was a question you asked, but like, my new agents, like, I want to do listing like, Okay, go do buyers like Richard Shulman did probably 300 buyer deals before I started consistently getting listings. And I remember maybe 2014 Jay is nodding furiously, by the way, so I must be correct there. I think it was 2014 my part, my partner Peter, and I, my original buyer’s agent, we realized that we were because we were just killing it on buyers. We would do 50, 6070, buyers a year together. Those years do a lot of REO stuff, and one day we looked up and we’re like, we have like, nine listings, and they’re all past buyers from like, four years ago. And we’re like, Okay, this is our business just changed. I remember that moment like, this is the change. And just be like, how do I get listings? Oh, I don’t know. You know, you go sell 300 buyers in their homes and then stay in front of them. Perfect.

Daren Phillipy  19:02

Okay, let’s talk about your team. You never told me the number, so we’re gonna, yeah, make sure, because I want to know, how do you lead that team? So how many people do you have on your staff? So

Richard SchuIman  19:13

we have, I’ll give you, I’ll give you a quick overview. So I have a, like, a contracts lead. I have two people who basically do database and marketing, so three full time staff in office. Everyone has flexible. We’re not big enough that we need, like, really siloed out roles. Like, oh, you’re only doing this like, and everyone’s sort of cross trained, because I want people I’m very flexible policy. Like, you want to go on vacation, you want to, like, you know, work from home, whatever. Like, I everyone can kind of do everything that way. Everyone’s flexible staff and the agents are all treated the same. In that regard, I have one and a half showing assistance. I’m a big fan of the showing assistant model. I pay for the showing assistance for my agents, because, in my opinion, they will not pay for it on their own. If you go to them and say, I’m going to hit you for 10. On any deal that uses showing agent. My not to say that other people are wrong, but in this case, they’re wrong that it’s I think the agents will make the self decision to keep that 10% just like I did on that 250 K condo sale I mentioned. Showing systems are included like you. That’s part of the package on the on the team. So we have one and a half full time showing assistance, and we migrate a lot of our agents, like a really high number, half of our production probably comes from former staff. I’m sorry, current and former staff. Everyone on the team sells, except I have one staff, that person that does not want to sell at all. Everyone else sells. And I’ve had multiple years where staff people, and multiple staff people have doubled their income with sales. That is, they made their salary, and then they made an equivalent amount or more doing sales. And I’ve had a lot of my top agent started off making $15 an hour, and, you know, 22 she did 40 million in sales. So that’s a great way to train people into your model and get people who are compliant, because staff people are compliant. Sales people are terrible people. They have bad habits. They’re, you know, rejects of society, like they’re all of us. Staff people are compliant. They follow directions, and as a junior agent on a team, you need that

Daren Phillipy  21:17

well, and I want to talk. I

Richard SchuIman  21:19

think three of my top five people, or former staff people.

Daren Phillipy  21:23

How do you for First of all, you guys are asking some great questions. Hold those questions. We’re going to have a raise your digital hand so you guys can actually ask it verbally. How do you balance them if you’re allowing your staff to do their their your part that you’re paying them for, and then they go out and also make money buying houses or selling houses or whatever. How are you able to where’s that balance?

Richard SchuIman  21:49

I Everyone sets their own balance, and everyone, you know, another key moment I had in sort of hiring is, you know, Gary says, in the in the one thing, but he talks about cul de sac talent and talent. And, you know the question, I think I used to run the team like, what’s the least I can pay someone to get them to keep the job? And the question you should really be asking, and you know, you’re either ready to hear it or not, but the real answer is, what’s the most I can afford to pay someone? Right? How do you really find the top level talent? Our, our, our salaries, our our costs are our labor costs are very high. They’re way out of model. It’s the only way we can operate. We’re in a high labor cost market, but we want to hire the best people, and you can’t just pay someone a lot of money. You have to give them opportunity, right? So you can pay them a big salary. And then, you know, a lot of our agents, our staff are able to do a couple deals, couple leases, and make an extra 25% bonus, and they don’t really feel like they’re doing extra

Daren Phillipy  22:46

work. Gotcha. Well, then if you’re going to be paying, I love a super cool we, we’ve had a couple of other other ot guests, or whatever say, say that same thing. If you’re going to be paying your your team, your staff, more than traditional. How do you track them? Where do you go and find those people that are like, not just out for the money, but true talent?

Richard SchuIman  23:10

It was just that’s, you know, there’s a, there’s a class Career Visioning for that, but

Daren Phillipy  23:14

so you follow CV,

Richard SchuIman  23:16

yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s not, not an option.

Daren Phillipy  23:20

I love, I love how so sometimes most of them, most of the teams here, so, yeah, I follow it. And that, that was very much a die. What happens if you don’t give me one?

Richard SchuIman  23:33

I The only point where I don’t agree entirely with CV. Is it my experience that when you find the right talent, I think you have to have a fast track, because, if you like, you know if a if a star is on the market, I’ve had to hire people very, very quickly before. So let’s say I don’t entirely follow CB, but like, sometimes I’ve know, I know the risk I’m taking, but if there’s a super talented person out there, I’m thinking of a couple people have hired in the past. They’ll disappear before you can even get them to do the kPa. So you’ve got to truncate it. You’ve got to make some educated guesses. But for the majority of your talent that you’re hiring, it’s not going to be the case. If you’re looking for like a like a top level person for your team, those people will go quickly for your everyone else, you can follow the model, and you really should seek to follow the model as much as possible, with the caveat that sometimes you have to just move very quickly through the model, and it’s no different than working with a buyer. So it’s an expectation setting. It’s a mutual understanding the problems you have with an employee are going to come from that lack of understanding. Okay,

Daren Phillipy  24:37

well, let’s do this. I’m going to we’ve got a couple more questions, then we’re going to open up to the group. What have you learned leading your team over the last 12 months?

Richard SchuIman  24:48

Oh, man, that’s good question. I think the fundamental model of how, how I run a team, at least, is broken, and I don’t know how to fix it. I have. Is a mix of agents that are younger, that don’t like to make phone calls. And I have some agents that got spoiled by 2022 which was a, you know, a crazy year. I had new agents do. I had a like three new agents do, north of 14 million in sales in 2022 and that’s, you know, crazy. I think all those things have kind of broken what we do traditionally as team runners, and so it’s very hard to get people back to traditional like prospect for appointments, face to face. They’re very much in the like, let’s do a zoom, let’s talk by text. Let’s do this remotely. And some of our clients are also like that. So it’s, it’s hard to have, like, I don’t say command and control structure. It’s hard for me to say, hey, Daren, I can see you haven’t made enough phone calls this month. That’s why your results are there. And you’re like, Well, I’m texting all my friends, and my friends will talk on the phone. Okay, well, I will say,

Daren Phillipy  26:03

so, you know, I think that COVID, and the year after, COVID definitely affected. We had to do business differently,

Richard SchuIman  26:14

then watch back to where it was no

Daren Phillipy  26:16

well, and you said, which I think is awesome, because we got a great group here. Um, you said, I don’t know what to do. What do you think your next plan is? What are you going to do to help write that?

Richard SchuIman  26:30

Well, the coaching is still the same in the sense of, you know, you talk to someone and you ask them what they’re doing, and are you happy with your results? And you tell me, you know, you want to follow. This is how I did it, and this is how much success I had. And you joined the team for a reason, right? But if you don’t want to do it my way, that’s fine. You tell me what way you want to do it, and I’ll hold you accountable to that. And then we can see if you get there, and if you don’t, then we can look and say, Okay, well, what do you want to do differently. Look at the end of the day, when you’re managing people, people are only going to work the volume of effort that they want to work, right? Whether you’re talking about, you know, I coach youth sports. I have four kids. You know, you have kids like, there’s nothing you can do to externally motivate a child or a sales agent, right? If Jay wakes up tomorrow and says, I want to sell 10 homes a year, then he’s going to sell 10 homes a year, right? The only thing we can change is our skill, so I have to get them to buy in on skill. So my job is really to focus on like, I’m not going to motivate you to work any harder. I’m going to try to get you the most skill possible. So when you do happen to work, the chance of accidentally selling a property increases dramatically so. But other than that, you know, people are going to do whatever they want to do, and all I can do is kind of show them the right way to do it and hope they follow along.

Daren Phillipy  27:52

Love it. Okay, so this is the deal. I’m going to ask one last question for those who have questions. I know Keith and Charles both have asked had questions, raise your digital hand, push that little button. So we’ll put you in order of who’s going to ask the question, and any of those others that have questions, just push that button. We we need to know that when we go to the LA area, which beach do I need to be going to, that’s going to be the best experience for me

Richard SchuIman  28:22

the best. What’s really in Newport Beach would be my pick, but that’s, that’s an Orange County

Daren Phillipy  28:29

to me, like, I already said something to you earlier, and you’re like, I thought the whole Southern California is all just one place, and so I guess you can’t cross boundaries or something like that. Well,

Richard SchuIman  28:41

if you’re going to have, like, an orange county agent on next week or something, they’ll tell you something different. Orange County has the best beaches. Um, LA has good surfing. If I don’t surf, but people like surfing there, but the beaches are, are fine, but Orange County has the best beaches, all right. Well,

Daren Phillipy  28:57

I should probably get to know California a little bit better, because I thought it’s the whole, I thought it’s all the same thing,

Richard SchuIman  29:02

Henderson, Nevada, Summerlin, same thing, right?

Daren Phillipy  29:05

That’s, that’s pretty much. But anyway, that’s all right, all right. Let’s, let’s go ahead and open up the questions. Charles, you did ask the question in the chat. Go ahead and just ask that question. Unmute yourself and and we’ll rock it out. Oh, you’re still muted, Charles,

29:27

there you go better.

29:29

So I’m new to Keller Williams, but I’ve been in the business for 42 years, and I had my own company, which is a teeny, tiny boutique broker, brokerage by comparison, but I’m having really good success, and I just started my team, and my question was, well, two things, I guess, building my team, should I be leaning towards full time agents versus putting a lot of time into a part timer or a brand new agent or and secondly, as far as the show. Assistance. They’re licensed agents, but you select them strictly for your own prospects. Richard, versus giving a referral out to another agent on your team. I’m just trying to see how it works and the best way to structure my team as I build it.

Richard SchuIman  30:15

Yeah. So the first part is, I know part time agents, it just it just doesn’t work. Whatever they want to say, it’s it’s never works. Um, that’s what I thought. If you hire new I don’t prefer to hire experienced agents because they have bad habits. So I get calls all the time. I’ve been in business 15 years. The reality is, they’re calling me because they have bad habits they don’t want to work. And I’ve never hired a 15 year agent and then had a success okay, so new agents are a different problem. You have no way to validate. I really, my ideal is to get an agent who’s, you know, six to 18 months in the business, sold at least a few homes. Um, maybe different in your market, but like, if you sell two homes, you can accidentally sell one house in LA, maybe two. If you sell two or three homes in LA in your first year. I’m actually really impressed with that. I’m really curious what would happen if I actually gave you a flow of leads, training, brand name, team and some structure. So that’s what I look for if you’re going to hire new or newer. You there, it’s a real time sucks. You really, you know, for me, the leverage point of getting I have two people that do coaching, plus we outside maps coaching, we probably spend, not, probably, we definitely spend over six figures a year on coaching. I’d have to, like, I get you an exact number. It’s probably around 100k you’re on coaching. So it’s like percentage points of our GCI. So, but if you do new or newer agents, if they’re coming to you with questions, which they need to be. It’s gonna, it’s gonna really absorb a lot of your effort. So you want to get like five at once and hope that one or two succeed, or get a PC productivity coach for your team that you can pay it, you know, some sort of reward to for success.

31:55

The PC is what I’ve been going with right now. First, my first three agents, I put through a PC, and she takes them through the first six transactions, and she takes 20% which is fine, great.

Richard SchuIman  32:05

That’s a deal. Yeah, that’s what I thought. That’s a great deal, you know, because any leverage point you can get is, is a win for you. Yes, um, as far as showing assistance, we hire them. It’s generally a one year. I mean, it’s, you know, at will employment. But we generally want them to do one year, they most often want to migrate into sales because they quickly realize that they’re doing the hardest part of the sale, or, like the least, you know, driving around showing properties and traffic is not a lot of fun. And so they quickly usually realize that, and they they can do simple math, or they can at least find a calculator and they understand what, what? You know, mid tier sales agents making six figures. So, and you know, it’s not that’s not a starting salary for this type of role. So they quickly, they they do sales as well. My current one, I think last year, maybe 4 million in sales. So that’s 35 40k take home, on top first. That’s a big chunk of her salary. So we pay a salary as an employee, and we encourage them to do sales on the side, and then we help them migrate into a full time sales role. So I have one right now, my former showing assistant, he still is part time showing so we have some money coming in while he’s doing sales business.

33:15

And these are, like, brand new licensed agent, typically, assistance or, Yeah,

Richard SchuIman  33:20

correct.

33:21

Thank you,

Richard SchuIman  33:22

yeah. And you can do that with you can do that with a new agent, like with a small team or a large team. I mean, it’s easier with a large team, you keep busier, right? You’re just about getting the most at bats possible. But it’s not, it’s not, I never did it this way, but it’s not incorrect to say, as a smaller, mid sized team, I’m going to have a showing assistant instead of a junior agent, right? Or, you know, do a lot of that function. You can do that too good.

Daren Phillipy  33:49

Thank you. Awesome. Great question. Keith, you had a question?

33:55

Yeah, I had two questions. One was the bonus for your staff that’s selling, like, what? What kind of referral do they get? 20% of the

Richard SchuIman  34:02

commission they make a sale, they get paid full freight, same as anyone else. Everyone’s everything’s the same. There’s no, like, I don’t have like, one of these 26 different tiers of commission. You’re either it’s either a sale or it’s a sale of a personal friend, completely outside of the real estate business. Okay, so what do they get? 4050, the agents get 40% and that, the way we came to that is that a lot of teams go 5050, and then they charge 10% for showing assistant. And then, if it’s, if it’s like, actually, like, if you go out and you meet a friend, right? That’s not, that’s a team deal, right? You met that friend while you’re working for the team. If you’re like, Oh, this is my cousin, we’ll throw you a team deal. This is my friend from elementary school. Okay, Team deal. But,

34:47

you know, great. And then second question is, I assume that you get a lot of your business from from like Keller Williams agents sending you referrals. Not enough. Is it like? I. While you’re on here today, 15%

Richard SchuIman  35:02

Oh, not that much. No, um, probably I’m gonna just guess 5%

35:09

okay, and I have a somewhere, but I don’t know I tip. There was a guy that was like in a suit at the ALC clinic at family reunion, he came to and talked about how huge of a fan he was of you and gave you his business card, and you didn’t follow up with that guy. And the reason I know it, it was me, and that’s why I’m here, because I I’ve always been like watching you on social media, and I’m such a fan. And so I’m the Summerlin. I’m up in Summerlin. So rare might be Green Valley. I was in a suit that might have been I might have been dressed too nice, man, I was in a suit for sure. No, I was just for the LC clinic. Then I changed back into my joggers for the rest. Hey, grand Polo is the right way to go for work. That’s well, that’s why Daren told me. He said, Richard will will prefer you this way. And so anyway, I actually don’t worry about it. No, I actually am a big fan, and I’m joking about the follow up game. I love watching your your business like and especially the way you treat your family. It’s awesome. Appreciate

Richard SchuIman  36:14

it. Sorry. Before

Daren Phillipy  36:16

let this guy in. Hey, who else has got a question here? I don’t see any hands raised. Jay’s been shaking his head up and down and all around agreeing with everything that you’re saying. Jay, do you have any questions?

Jay Hendrix  36:33

You know, there’s a ton of questions. I know you don’t have very much time, but so it’s a so when you were talking a while ago about, you know, you’re doing new to newer obviously, you know, the training on those are so hard, and we’re doing them inside our in on our team, you know, kind of thing. And then you get in the turn and the turn the well, just tell me, what kind of feedback are you giving and what kind of, what kind of as they’re walking down, do you have, like, a way of that you’re training them to get to your way of doing business?

Richard SchuIman  37:05

I really sort of that was kind of what I was alluding to before, about, like, what have you learned the last 12 months? And I never even asked that question before. Anyone have, like, a prepared answer. But, you know, I only have one new agent right now, and, you know, like she does it her way, and it’s not my way, and it’s working. And so what am I going to do? Am I going to fight her on that? Or am I going to just help her? I got to just help her do her way as best as possible, because I just don’t have the energy to fight her on it. And I have, I’ve said this is wrong. This is the metrics we need you to hit. And okay, like, Okay, let me just help you do it your way. And if you don’t get to the success that you want, it’s not my fault. But if you’re happy with what you get, great.

Jay Hendrix  37:55

And then she’s probably seeing the other agents doing it your way, and seeing the kind of conversions they’re getting, and maybe sometimes she’ll start moving slowly to the other way of heart.

Richard SchuIman  38:05

Yeah, one of my agents who started as a staff person, you know, this year, I brought her on to do a we have a Wednesday call, and I just like, never brought the right energy to the call. And so I’m paying her to teach the class. And the way you get really good at something is you teach it, right? And so I’m paying her to teach the class. And it’s been a real it’s in conjunction with being on the team five years now, and she’s finally, like, every week I get an email like, Oh, hey, this client. I’ve, like, emailed and texted 46 times because, you know, we can see their database. And they finally replied to me, they want to buy a house. And I’m like, Well, duh, like, I’ve been telling you to do that. That’s why I tell you to come in on Monday and email and text and call hundreds of people, because eventually one of those people want to buy or sell a home, and they won’t interview anyone else. So, and then I say, just share with the team, tell everyone what you’re seeing, and people do it the way they want to do it. Yeah.

Jay Hendrix  39:01

So So did I hear you say that you only are with your agents together one time a week? Or do you like have a daily huddle as well? Monday,

Richard SchuIman  39:11

we’re in the pre COVID, we’re in the office, always on Monday as a full team, and then a lot of people would come in the rest of the week, in and out. My team is very dispersed across the LA area, so I’ve, I don’t know how you know, I have two agents in passing. That’s an hour each way, if you’re lucky. I’ve got three in the valley, which is an hour each way, if you’re lucky. And I all, you know, my closest agent, I have a couple of walking distance. Well, the average is probably north of 30 minutes. My personal philosophy is I don’t want to be in the office, and I don’t want to waste their time coming to the office. So we come in Monday, we get our work on Monday, we have a Wednesday zoom call, and that’s it for everyone.

Daren Phillipy  39:50

Great, great question. Ivy, you’ve got a question. You’ve got we’ve got three more minutes. I’m going to give you one minute because we gotta make sure we get them, send them some referral. So, Ivy, what question you got for me? You gotta unmute. That’s part. That’s part of the the process is timer. Ivy, that you gotta unmute. You have to unmute. I’m

Richard SchuIman  40:14

looking for the right emoji for Keith’s comment.

40:16

I can say something dumb again, if, if we need,

40:20

no, okay, I just need to get off mute. Okay, so is everybody done? So I could ask my question. Okay, you’ve got, you’ve got, now one minute to ask one question, counting. Okay, so we make the question, so look, I heard you say very distinctly that you care more about skills and teaching them skills versus motivation.

Richard SchuIman  40:41

Well, you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna motivate someone to work more than what they want to work. You can change their skill, but you can’t change their motivation,

40:50

right? So my question would be, and I get that totally understood. So what type I mean? Do you have like, a 3060, 90? Do I mean, I I’m just curious if you’re really into skill, then I’m taking it you have some type of something set to determine that skill Else, if they’re not going to up their skill, do you just let them go? Or

Richard SchuIman  41:12

no, I don’t want to say this, like, don’t take this out of context. I think a lot of that, I think managing sales people is a waste of time. I think that you, if you put a good product out there, you know, like, I’m confident in my product, right? I have leads, I have staff. I have a track record. I have lots of recorded training that no one watches or care, even if you’re like to ask question, I have a three minute video that explains that they won’t watch it. We do training, and then you’ll do a training, and the next week they’ll be like, Why don’t you ever train on this? And like, we literally just like we literally just said 30 minutes last week on that you had your camera off and you were probably walking your dog, all that’s a waste of time. If, if you want to sell more, you’re going to go sell more. I’m going to guess just, just knowing three things about Jay, I’m going to guess that Jay’s been most likely very successful at everything he’s ever done, because he’s probably a hard worker, or he had a major life event and decided to become a hard worker and then got into real estate, did really well. Those are really the only two ways that you get to that point, right? Um, sales, people will work as hard as they feel like working. They will complain as much as possible. So you give them all the resources they need, and if they complain, you say, well, just tell me what you’ve been doing today. And if they say, I made 26 calls today, I think, great. Can you send me screenshots? I want to see your phone. I want to see the outgoing calls on your phone. And they say, well, it’s really it was 12. Okay. Can you make 26 and then call me and tell me you don’t have results, but all the rest is a waste. They won’t do it. It’s like a lot of micromanaging they want. They won’t do it. Sorry.

42:45

Yeah, no, no, I get, I completely understand where coming from. And I only had a minute so I was here. So anyways, thank you so much.

Daren Phillipy  43:00

You are massively refreshing. It’s been fun to have you. You’re supposed to be getting out of here. I’ve got one last question, yeah, if we have a bunch of referrals to send to Los Angeles, where do we send them? How do we contact you?

Richard SchuIman  43:16

I’ll put my info in the chat and you guys can contact me. I’ll connect you with the right person on my team who does it, or if it’s out of our core area, I know all the agents in the nearby area. You know, same as I’m sure you guys know your nearby agents, like, I know all the agents in the area. So if it’s somewhere that we don’t cover, I’ll set you up with the right person. We don’t take referral, like, if we don’t cover an area, we don’t, we’re not, we’re not going to tell you we work Irvine, even though the price point is great, we’ll send you to chess in Irvine. So awesome. That’s my my email. Yeah, Keith, I’m sorry.

43:53

I’m joking, bro, you are awesome. Actually, it was, I was just kidding you. It was so fun chatting with you, and it did me a lot, just because you were super open. So no, I’m, I was just joking around. You’re, you’re, you’re awesome. Second

Richard SchuIman  44:05

Chance. I’ll be at Mega cam and film. Are you next year? So with

Daren Phillipy  44:09

the referral to mega camp, and he’ll actually take care of him big time,

Richard SchuIman  44:13

absolutely, we get paid on girls, Richard, go

Daren Phillipy  44:17

get go make some money. Go hit your lunch at the food court, and we’ll talk to you. Talk to you soon.

Richard SchuIman  44:21

All right, thanks, guys. Appreciate it. Bye, dude.

Daren Phillipy  44:25

What do you think of Richard? Huh? Run such a cool business, and I love his approach. I loved he kind of fits my style, very laid back, and, and, and, man, I think what he’s done is he’s created a model that people can follow, and he believes in it so much and takes really, really great care of his clients, and that’s why he finds the success that he does. I hope that you guys are able to pick up a couple of nuggets from that. Now you guys do know that this is not the only time I’ve done this. I do this every week, every. Every Tuesday, you can jump on and ask questions, just like Jay did and just like Charles did, just like Keith did. This was made for you to be able to ask questions to those great producers. Now the reason why I do this is because I run the Keller Williams here in Vegas, one of the largest brokerages here in town, and I specialize in working with teams that are doing a ton of business. So if you’re looking for ways to be able to grow your business, or you’re looking for ways to be able to to make adjustments, that’s what I do. Contact me. 702-706-4949 and I’d love to be able to help you out. Now I know you’re probably not here in Vegas, you’re probably somewhere else in the country, I can still help you. Just contact me at that number. And if you also want to get previous recordings, just go to for only teams.com you’ll be able to get access to all of those that I’ve recorded in the past. That’s pretty much it. Thank you guys so much. I will see you guys next week, until then, go out and do some good.

46:03

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 for teams.com. See you next week. You