Lessons in Team Leadership and Military Real Estate from Erin Ward

In the latest episode of the OT (Only Teams) Podcast, host Daren Phillipy interviews Erin Ward, a seasoned real estate leader in Norfolk, Virginia, who shares her insights on building a successful real estate team, particularly within the military niche. Erin leads HR VA Homes, a team that has achieved remarkable success, with over 166 units sold and $57 million in volume over the past year. Her approach combines innovative strategies, a focus on team accountability, and a deep understanding of the unique needs of military clients. Let’s dive into some of the key lessons Erin shared that can help real estate professionals elevate their own businesses.

Erin Ward’s Background and Team Structure

Erin’s journey into real estate began unexpectedly, but she quickly made a mark by becoming Rookie of the Year in her first year as a licensed agent. She soon founded her own team, HR VA Homes, in Norfolk, which has since grown to include several agents, transaction coordinators, and even her husband.

The Hampton Roads region, home to 13 military bases across all branches, is a prime area for military families looking to buy and sell homes. Erin, a military spouse for over 20 years, has developed a deep understanding of the unique challenges military families face when relocating. This niche has become a major focus of her business, allowing her to serve a community she knows intimately.

The Power of Agent-to-Agent Referrals

A critical factor behind Erin’s success is her focus on agent-to-agent referrals, which make up 30% of her business. She has built a robust system for maintaining these relationships, including a dedicated database, regular communication, and hosting events to nurture connections.

Erin emphasizes the importance of providing value to her agent partners, whether through educational content, collaborative opportunities, or simply being a reliable resource. This strategy has helped her build a network of trusted agents who consistently send business her way.

“Agent-to-agent referrals are long-term investments,” Erin explains. “It’s not just about quick deals, but about building lasting relationships that can pay dividends for years.”

Innovative Systems and Processes for Efficiency

To ensure her team is running smoothly, Erin has implemented strong systems and processes, particularly for managing remote and virtual clients. Tools like BombBomb and Facebook allow her team to conduct virtual tours and stay in constant communication with clients, even when they’re far from Norfolk. These technological tools streamline the buying and selling process, creating a seamless experience for military clients who may be relocating from different parts of the country or even overseas.

In addition to tech tools, Erin’s team utilizes a clear framework for lead management and client communication. She underscores that continuous improvement is essential to keep up with market changes and customer expectations. Regularly tweaking systems ensures that her team can maintain high standards of service, even as the business grows.

Mega Open Houses: Creativity Meets Lead Generation

One of Erin’s most innovative strategies for attracting buyers is her “mega open houses”. These open houses go beyond the typical property showing and incorporate fun elements like ice cream trucks, music, and engaging activities to create a lively and inviting atmosphere. Not only do these events generate more foot traffic, but they also provide valuable lead generation opportunities.

Erin notes that successful events require thorough pre-event preparation, including door-knocking and other proactive efforts to ensure maximum attendance. By making the experience memorable, she creates opportunities to connect with potential clients and capture lead information.

Balancing Growth and Accountability

As Erin’s team has grown, she’s had to balance expansion with maintaining a high level of service and accountability. Clear expectations and effective communication are essential to ensure that each team member knows their role and understands how their contributions impact the overall success of the team.

Erin shares that empowering her team members to take ownership of their responsibilities has been key to scaling her business while keeping the personal touch that has made her a trusted advisor. She fosters a culture of collaboration and shared responsibility, which has helped her build a strong, cohesive team that works towards common goals.

Recruiting and Scaling for Success

One of the biggest lessons Erin has learned as her business grows is the importance of recruiting. She emphasizes that recruiting is essential to handle the increased transactions that come with success. A larger team allows for more financial growth, as well as greater opportunities for existing team members to take on new roles and responsibilities.

At the same time, Erin stresses that it’s important to protect and support existing team members. As she recruits new agents, she focuses on giving her core team the resources and opportunities they need to grow. This balance ensures both the team’s stability and its long-term success.

Leadership and Operations: The Heart of Team Success

Effective team leadership is about more than just setting goals. For Erin, it’s about creating a supportive environment where team members feel accountable and empowered. Strong operations are critical, and Erin’s team has a robust support structure, including transaction coordinators and database coordinators, to ensure that all systems run smoothly and clients receive top-tier service.

Erin also acknowledges the need for continuous improvement. She constantly evaluates her leadership style and adapts to meet the needs of her team, ensuring they are equipped to handle challenges and opportunities as they arise.

Conclusion: Key Takeaways for Real Estate Professionals

Erin Ward’s success story demonstrates the power of strategic thinking, innovative systems, and a deep understanding of the military niche. Her insights into team leadership, agent-to-agent referrals, and client engagement offer invaluable lessons for any real estate professional looking to scale their business.

Some key takeaways from Erin’s experience:

Build strong agent-to-agent referral networks: Nurture relationships with other agents and provide ongoing value to maintain a steady flow of business.
Leverage technology: Use tools like Facebook, BombBomb, and other systems to stay connected with clients and improve efficiency.
Get creative with lead generation: Incorporate fun and engaging elements into open houses to stand out and attract more buyers.
Empower your team: Foster a culture of collaboration and hold team members accountable for their contributions to the team’s success.
Focus on continuous improvement: Regularly assess your systems and leadership to keep your business running smoothly and adapt to changing needs.

For real estate agents looking to grow their teams and make a bigger impact, Erin’s experiences offer a roadmap for success.

For more tips and strategies from top real estate leaders like Erin Ward, make sure to check out all the episode of The OT Podcast.

Transcription

Erin Ward 00:16

And I feel like you know, the biggest mistake I made was I said we had standards, but we only had suggestions. And a lot of the conversations we’re having right now is too is, are you all in for the team? Right? So are you showing up as your best? Not just for me, don’t worry about me, but for your fellow agent, right? So if you’re not making your calls, that impacts the team, right? Because, frankly, the team portion of what they pay in allows us to do our client events. It allows us to do mega open houses. It allows us to, you know, spend more money on Google leads. You know, it allows all those things. And so if everybody’s not all in, then we’re going to suffer. And so we have a lot of conversations around that too, right? Maybe that’s the Catholic guilt in me.

Announcer 01:15

Here’s your host. Daren Phillipy, Hey

Daren Phillipy 01:20

everybody. Welcome to this week’s ot only team for real estate agents. My name is Daren Phillipy. Still your host can’t get rid of me. And are you guys ready to fall in love? I think you are, because I’m going to introduce you guys to someone that going to love. Erin Ward. She is in North Norfolk, Virginia. She is, she runs HR, V, A homes. She is everything military. This woman is, is vulnerable, and she shares with us some of her mistakes when it comes to leadership, but more importantly, all the wins and all the things that she’s learned when it comes to leading her team and, more specifically, getting into that military business and how to work those agent to agent referrals. And I’ll tell you, this is definitely a niche that you want to poke your head into, number one and number two, if you aren’t doing agent to agent referrals, I think you may be missing out on a good amount of business. I’ve talked to many of these guests that have been on the OT and a lot of them are doing 2025, 30, 35% of their business from agent to agent referrals. And so Erin’s super awesome. She did 166 units last 12 months, and 57 million volume. She is fantastic. You guys are going to love it. Now I want you guys to pay attention here real quick, because I know you listen, you watch on YouTube and you listen on iTunes or whatever, but you’re not in the room, and I don’t know why, because if you could sit here listen to Erin talk, and then all of a sudden, after about 2535 minutes, be able to raise your hand and say, Hey, Erin, how do you do this? And how do you do that? Or, what is your million dollar idea? Which she talks about? What is that she didn’t tell us? By the way, we’ll get it out of her someday. But what, what is it that I should do, and how do I do this? Or whatever? That’s the magic of this whole ot thing, listening is one thing, but being able to act, ask pointed questions to our guests is the magic of the OT. So all you need to do is go to only four teams.com click that little button that says, join the Zoom Room on Tuesday at noon, Pacific Standard Time. That’s all you need to do. You’ll show up in the Zoom Room, and you’ll be able to listen to whoever the guest is, and then you’ll be able to ask the questions. I don’t know how, how much easier you want me to do this. It’s on a platter for you to eat. So there you go, consider an invite. And I’m done talking right now, but I will see you guys the end of the OT. Alright, guys. So, so so, so happy to have you guys all here at the OT. And even super, super excited to have Erin. Erin Ward she is from. Was it no fork? No fork? Norfolk. Norfolk, Virginia and I went and chased her down, because she’s kind of a big deal in the Millionaire Real Estate Agent playbook. She specializes one of her niches is really building a military business. And so thanks for hanging out with us. I’ve, I’ve had fun hanging out with you already.

Erin Ward 04:36

Yeah, no, I’m excited. This is awesome. I love this concept. Good, good. Well, tell us

Daren Phillipy 04:41

a little bit about your your business, your team, where you’re tell us about your life.

Erin Ward 04:45

Yeah. So I live in a region called Hampton Roads, which does include Norfolk, Virginia, Virginia Beach, which most people know, and then we go all the way up to Williamsburg, and then also dip down into excuse. North Carolina, almost to the Outer Banks. So not quite. We don’t quite get in there, because that’s a whole new ball of wax. But you know, our area is considered the largest contention of active duty military in the United States. So we have 13 military bases in every branch of service represented here, including the world’s largest Navy base, which is right down the street at Naval Station Norfolk. So, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s quite an interesting place to live. I’ve never lived anywhere like it before, and I’ve lived everywhere, because I was a military spouse for, you know, over 20 years, moving all over the place. We moved 19 times, many times at, you know, the same duty station, over and over again, and then I landed here and really, truly fell in love with the area. I’m originally from Tampa, Florida. Everybody thought I was nuts that I didn’t go back down there to beautiful, sunny Florida. In fact, we were just talking about the weather here. And so sometimes I think I’m was nuts too. Um, but you know, I think you know, this area offers so much, and with the heavy defense sector that we have here, our economy is incredibly strong, which, when we’re in real estate, is something we kind of want a little bit and so, yeah, we live here. We have a small but mighty team and a mega agent office here in Norfolk, and we’ve been doing this for the last eight years now.

Daren Phillipy 06:18

I love it. It will be picked a great place. If we’re going to focus on military, sounds like jackpot we’ve in just in Vegas. We got one.

Erin Ward 06:26

Yep, yep,

Daren Phillipy 06:27

absolutely no navy. Give us. Give us a little What does your org chart look like with your team? You said Small but mighty. What does that look

Erin Ward 06:36

like? Yeah, well, and I say small but mighty, but we’re actually growing quite a bit. So we’re heavy on the leverage side, on the operation side, but our agent count is definitely growing. So we started the team about seven years ago, about my right after my first year in the business, I came out that first year. I actually did not intend to sell real estate. When I got licensed, I actually got licensed to be a referral agent. So I was broke at the time, and my girlfriend, I kept sending my military spouse affiliated agents business as because I knew people moving all over, and one of my girlfriends said, get your license so we can give you a referral fee. And I thought, well, that’s brilliant. I don’t have to sell anything. You can pay me money. I love this. And then that quickly lasted about 2.5 seconds because my neighbor said, Oh, you got a license. I want to go see this house down here. We sold that house. So that’s how that worked. And then that first year, I was Rookie of the Year, I sold. I worked part time. I was the I was in a Chief Operating role for a major military nonprofit organization. And so I traveled two weeks out of the month. And then when I was here, I sold real estate. So we closed about 18 transactions that first year and then, but 16 or 14 of those were in the month of December, so which is one of the worst months to sell real estate, because you get about half a month, as you guys all know. So you gotta get it down really fast. And we had a pipeline of about 32 more buyers coming in. So my team leader looked at me and said, time to start a team. You’ve got the pipeline and you have the experience. So we did. We launched the team early in that second year, I had a young agent who had been on his own, he’d been solo for a year, had sold one house, who joined me, and he’s still with me today. My next agent came on. He’s still with me today, seven years later as well, and we’ve added two more agents since then. But in addition to that, my husband now works for us, with us, and see he

Daren Phillipy 08:29

with you.

Erin Ward 08:30

He does say for me, but he he’s funny now, because he now calls himself the chief everything officer, because, frankly, that’s what he does, right? So he’s licensed in a little bit of everything, it seems like. So he helps me with all the financial stuff on our team, but he also runs some of our ancillary businesses. We own a couple of other ancillary businesses. And then he does, you know, if we need a sign put in, he’ll do that. He’s also licensed. So if we need a door open, he’ll do that. We have two in house transaction coordinators. We have an in house social media coordinator, and then we also have a in house part time, like videographer, photographer that helps us out a little bit. And we also, for those of you that might I don’t know if you guys are familiar with the skill bridge program. So this is a DOD internship program, and so we do have a whole group of skill Bridgers that work within our team in different capacities, some of them on the operation side and some in the inside sales agent role. That’s

Daren Phillipy 09:29

fantastic. Dan just started crying because he’s the guy that brought he worked very hard for at least a year on bringing skill bridge into our market. Yeah,

Erin Ward 09:39

they don’t make it easy. They really don’t make it easy, for sure, for sure, but once you get it, it’s worth it.

Daren Phillipy 09:45

Well. Before we get into the leads portion of it, when you have a something posted on your wall that says, per my last email, what does that mean? Well,

Erin Ward 09:54

I don’t know if I want to read the rest of it, but the next part just says. Is, can you read? Basically says a word I’m not going to say, and then the rest of it says, can you read? Okay,

Daren Phillipy 10:06

so, so it’s one of the efficient emails that you send out from time to time. Yeah. I

Erin Ward 10:10

mean, I know none of us have ever used that phrase in real estate at all, right, ever.

Daren Phillipy 10:16

I couldn’t not look so, no, I like it. I like it. So, Ann, tell us a little bit about where you get your leads. How do you how do you feed your team? Yeah,

Erin Ward 10:24

so as I mentioned a little bit, you know, most of our leads are sphere oriented. So, you know, naturally my background, having moved all over the place, I built this giant community within the military community, and really stuck with it. But naturally I network quite a bit. And so naturally, I’m, I’m I’m consistently, you know, connecting with other people, meeting other people. So sphere has always been a number one lead source for us. But number two is also what I mentioned earlier, and that’s agent to agent referrals. And so 30% of our business we do about 150 transactions a year, and 30% of our business comes from agent to agent referrals. So which, which now is great, because eight years later we are turning those over. We’re getting a lot of referral business out of those. So number three is past clients at that point. So we work our database very, very hard we have we carry two databases. We carry our, you know, our regular client facing database, and then we do carry an agent database where we work agent, Agent referrals pretty well.

Daren Phillipy 11:25

Are they in the same database or a different system? No, we keep them

Erin Ward 11:30

in the same database, but we do have a separation in there so that they’re clearly separated. Because, you know, I don’t unless you sign up for them and you want them, you know, you guys don’t want my information on home sales here in the Norfolk, Virginia, or the open house I’m having next week. So we do try to keep it really separately, and then that way, the newsletters I send out every two weeks to my agent partners are fun. They’re engaging. A lot of times. We’re doing interviews with agents that are doing some cool stuff. We’re talking about the events we go to, but it’s, you know, it’s a big lead source for us. And with the amount of agents that Keller Williams has, it’s no wonder that we have that opportunity for agent to agent referrals. It’s huge. Let’s

Daren Phillipy 12:09

talk a little bit about that, because I’ve never talked to anybody about it, even though I hear a lot of agent agent referrals. 35% of your business is agent to agent referrals. Well, 30 Yeah, well, I like to round it up the nearest 535, 30. Can it be a challenge with your profitability knowing that you’re paying 25 30% Yeah,

Erin Ward 12:35

the cost of sale is high on that, right, right? That’s not, that’s not a low cost of sale. But I have no costs associated prior to or around that, right? So my when I, you know, my theory is always this, you know, I came in there in this, like most of us, right? Heavy, heavy buyer, agent. I was always told, you know, you got to list the last you got to go get the listings. You got to go get the listings. My thought process also is very similar to the agent to agent side. Well, once I get them in my world, eventually they’ll become a seller, or they’ll get me the referral business or something like that. So we, we really have a low rate of losing those people after we’ve closed them, and not keeping them in our world. So, you know, we pay the referral fee on the first, you know, buy or sell or whatever, but then they’re in our world, and we, we’re not worried about it after that. And we are, you know, we, we run pretty lean otherwise. So it works out

Daren Phillipy 13:28

you’re willing to pay, pay that cost of sell at the very beginning, and then go from

Erin Ward 13:31

there. Yeah. I mean, I think, frankly, unless you’re, you’re sweat equity is, is great. If you’re getting out there and you’re pounding the payment and door knocking and things like that, you’re gonna you’re paying something, you’re paying hours, or you’re paying a financial fee. What I don’t like to do, frankly, is, I don’t like to pay upfront for leads, right, right? I like to pay at the closing, yeah? And then that’s what agent Yeah, and that’s why agent to agent referrals afford me. But not only that, I also get to connect with some people who, now, I mean, frankly, are some of my best friends in the whole world. So Gary says, at some point, you know, in five years from now, you’re going to have to get on a plane and go see your friends. And honestly, that’s what I do about once a month now. So,

Daren Phillipy 14:09

so how do you, how do you, how do you keep all of these people on top of mind and and how do you work your agent to agent database?

Erin Ward 14:18

Yeah, so I’m constantly talking with them. So I mean, obviously social media makes everything a lot easier, and that’s a free source right there, so you have to communicate with them. And that’s not just liking their posts. I’m actually, you know, involved in their posts. I genuinely care about the things that they’re sharing in their life. We’re talking on, you know, text messages. We’re hopping on calls. I have a couple of masterminds that we do every week. Some of those are some of those are some of the highest level conversations I’ve ever had. And I’ve worked some pretty interesting jobs in the past. And so, you know, I’m constantly saying in front of them, but also, too, I attend a lot of our events, right? So kW events, other real estate conferences, things like that, and at those events too. Um. Um, we do additional, you know, masterminds, we do additional. We do a program called refer for a cause where, when we were in Vegas in February, we raised $24,000 for an organization called Vegas stronger while we were there, um, and so we like to come into an area and leave it better than when we came because, you know, as real estate agents, sometimes you go out and you see them in the hotel lobbies, and it seems a little wild, and so we came up with these things, but it’s another way to network with everybody. So, but also, too, you have to do a really good job when somebody gives you a referral. So that’s important. Love it.

Daren Phillipy 15:34

Let’s I know that I called you because we wanted to talk about page 61, of the Millionaire Real Estate Agent playbook right behind you share, I’m going to share the screen with you, and if you can talk us through going big, serving military buyers, and just teach us, yeah,

Erin Ward 15:55

yeah. I mean, I think for me, the biggest thing was making sure that I had strong systems right? Especially since a majority of my clients are not here locally. So a majority of my clients are virtual. They’re out of the air, out of area, buyers and sellers. And so we had to have really, really good systems in place. And so I think that’s where, when, you know, March of 2020, rolled around, and obviously a lot of us were just home from Dallas and family reunion. And you know, we were in really good shape, because working with people that we couldn’t be belly to belly with was no big deal to us. We had already put everything in place for that, and frankly, we had done that even with our non military buyers and sellers, right? So we had put together some really high level tools to say, how do we get them through this process? A lot of it was tech related. We found a lot of different, a lot of different. We went through trial and error on a lot of different things. We bought a program that we were supposed to upload videos too, and it stunk. It was very slow. And then we got really smart and said, Well, wait a minute, Facebook is free. Why aren’t we just putting it there? Because I don’t know if you guys realize, like, you can’t FaceTime somebody through a house. They can’t watch it ever again, right? Like, that’s the most inefficient way to do that. I mean, I don’t know about you, but if somebody, if I, take a video tour of the house I’m buying, I’m watching it 100 times, right? And they do, frankly, and I couldn’t get the relationship building as much as possible in that vein. So we ended up leaning on Facebook. It was a free platform. We created Facebook groups for each of our clients, which also allowed us to market and brand those Facebook groups so that they bought into the hrva Homes brand. They see it everywhere. They know nothing else. They’re not from this area, even if they are from this area, and you guys have a very transient population as well, so all they know is hrva homes, and they see the brand, and they believe in the brand. But not only that, they’re connecting through me, with me and who I am as a human right, because people work with people, they like, know and trust, and then they’re doing that through these videos that we have posted and they can save, but they’re inviting their families into the private Facebook group. But it’s also an efficient way to do it, right? Because then I’m on my own time schedule, right? And I’m going, Okay, I’ll be I’m going to go film the house at 2pm on Thursday. We’ll go live in the Facebook group. You guys just pay attention to that, right? And then we get that posted up in there. They love it. If they’re available, they can interact with us, because it is a live video, but then I don’t have to go back to the office and upload it. It’s already posted, so it saves us a lot of time. So that was one way we really started working with military buyers and sellers. But the other way was having strong systems, you know, from, you know, lead to close, right the minute they came into our world. How are we going to consistently show up in front of them? And again, you know, keep that brand strong, so that they’re always, you know, thinking, HR, VA, homes anytime somebody wants to buy or sell real estate. And so we really sat down and said, What does it look like? And we call it if this, then that, which is a great system to think about. You know, if, if Daren calls me with the lead coming out of Las Vegas, then what happens right when Daren texts me an introduction, exactly what happens next? And so we write it out. In fact, I have my trusty whiteboard here. I get made fun of. We have whiteboards all over our office. I probably have 15 whiteboards in our office. If I buy another one, I’m probably going to get divorced. But I’m literally always thinking, if this, then that for our systems, and strong systems, I think are one of the reasons why we do so much sphere, past client and agent to agent, referral business. Can I

Daren Phillipy 19:39

ask you a quick question? Yeah, what is the best if this? Then that idea that came like, oh my gosh, this is an amazing system of if this and that. Yeah.

Erin Ward 19:51

I mean, I think initially, just we, you know, we use bom, bom for a long time, and I loved it a lot. And, and from an efficiency standpoint. To be able to sit in my car, create a bomb, bomb, put it on my phone and text that bomb, bomb out so I could see when they open it, right? So, you know, Daren you hand me a referral, I’ve got a bomb, bomb already ready to go. That seems personalized, but it’s not, and I’m sitting in my car, so you don’t think it’s staged, right? It seems very generic. It seems natural those kind of things, but when I could send that bomb bomb out, and I knew that that client or potential lead had opened that bomb bomb, well then I’m going to reply right away again, and hey, I’ll get right back with you. I’m walking into an appointment. I’ll call you in 35 minutes. That could be time right to get back to them, but that was probably our favorite first thing that, aha of saying, why don’t we create this video? That seems like I just did it. And by the way, you have to have two, right? Because if they’re local and it’s a sunny day, you need that one, but if it’s raining, you need that one too, because they know right away. And I used to be in radio, so I learned about, you know, the tricks of radio. And half the time those guys aren’t live. So you know, you gotta, you gotta be ready for it. Can’t tell the wrong weather when it’s, you know, when you’re on the radio. But that was probably the the efficiency level that that really saved us, and having already had that as a standard, when we went into this, you know, 2.15% interest rate market, we already had systems in place that allowed us to be highly efficient, which allowed us to skyrocket our growth really quickly and still provide outstanding service, which I think is probably one of the most important things you can do if you want to stay in business, for

21:30

sure, sure. Is

Daren Phillipy 21:30

there anything else you want to cover or talk about in the system?

Erin Ward 21:35

Yeah. I mean, I think you know, when you talk about systems, I think it’s okay to know that they’re living right. They’re they’re always, ever changing. In fact, our on Wednesday, we’re sitting down to go through our systems all over again with the upcoming changes that we’re all going to experience next month. We want to be that sure that we’re ready. We also want to make sure that, you know, I think buyers are going to have more choice than ever, or be choosier than ever. And so we want to make sure that we have the systems to wow. And so I would encourage everybody, you know, with their teams, within their business, to sit down and how great are your systems. Because one of the things I talk about with my team right now is, man, it would take one, you know, one delay for somebody to go find a new buyer agent right when they you know, when they have to put more skin in the game as a buyer, potentially, right? And they get to be choosier. And so the one thing I would say right now is making sure you have really strong systems, but strong systems that include a lot of touches right, a lot of connection and a lot of hand holding right, like breaking down every single you know step of the process, making sure you have videos and making sure you’re connecting really well, I think is going to be the most important thing in the upcoming change. With the upcoming changes,

Daren Phillipy 22:52

yeah, definitely, especially in your in your niche of being a military you you have to have you better be on top of your game there. Yeah.

Erin Ward 23:03

I mean, we focus a lot on education, like it mentions there, and so a lot, a lot of what we do when we build out our systems, and our systems include, what are the different touches look like? What are the different communication pieces look like? So you know, if, if you come into my system today, and I call you as a lead, and we’re setting what we call a buyer strategy session. We don’t take call it a buyer consultation, because that’s clinical, and nobody wants to go to a buyer consultation, right? That’s what you do with your doctors and your attorneys. Like that’s gross. Nobody wants that, right? It doesn’t sound engaging, but when I schedule that buyer strategy session with you, you’re getting an immediate email from me. It’s going to have a video in it. You’re going to know what to expect next, what we’re going to talk about, and then even before that, you’re going to get a follow up and a follow up and follow up. I mean, they don’t know what to expect. We have to tell them what to expect, and the more we can communicate that, the more loyal they’re going to be to you. They’re never going anywhere at that point. Well, that’s

Daren Phillipy 23:57

crazy that you actually said the buyer strategy session. I was listening to mrea podcast, and Jen Davis just said that this morning,

Erin Ward 24:06

running at 430 Yeah, your idea, Austin. Oh, I’m happy for it. No way

Daren Phillipy 24:15

to brag. I love it. Well, let’s talk a little bit about your listings. What do you do a unique that helps you either capture more listings or leverage your listings.

Erin Ward 24:25

Well, I would love to take credit for this, but I’m not going to this because this individual is going to be sharing this knowledge in a couple of weeks in Austin. But we do basically mega open houses now around our listings, and we’re doing this to open houses, I think are going to be the number one lead generator that you should add to your business. Without a doubt, we are seeing more people attend open houses on represented than we ever saw before. And we can’t just show up and put, you know, the open sign house signs out. You can’t put five or six Open House signs out. And expect people to walk in. So now we’re doing these mega open houses, and they include ice cream trucks at every one of them. They’re fairly inexpensive to do. We’ve negotiated a really great deal with the local ice cream truck company, and so we get the ice cream truck out there. We put our big pop up tent out front. We are out front of the house. We are not inside, sitting in on the couch playing Angry Birds or whatever popular game there is now, right? We are out front greeting people when they come in. We have the music going bubble machine. We have a bubble machine. My friend that told me about this, my friend Troy chase in Texas, Houston, Texas, told me about this. He didn’t have a bubble machine. Now he has a bubble machine. But yeah, so we put the bubble machine out there, you know, and then they’re engaged. We always have more than one agent on hand, right? So somebody’s out front, you know, the other agents, you know, taking the client through, or the potential buyer through, walking them through the house. And then they come out and they get their ice cream. It’s amazing. And what’s awesome, you know, to go back to the systems is right then and there. At the end, we’re shooting a video on our phone that we can text right back out to these folks, and they can get that video and say, hey, it’s Erin we met today. I know you already know, because you see the ice cream truck behind me again. If there are other houses that you want to see or anything I can do to help you, please give me a call. Hesitate to reach out, but they’ve had to give me their contact information in order to get the free ice cream. Nobody says no, that is so nobody says no.

Daren Phillipy 26:25

I wouldn’t say no. And if I know Dan, he wouldn’t say no either. Yeah,

Erin Ward 26:29

it’s, it’s, it’s been phenomenal. So like for us and our sellers like it. So we’re, we’re kind of, we’re expanding on that a little bit now with some neighborhood cocktail hours and even a Sunday brunch theme. So that has been really, really good. And I think you know for us, when we go into a listing appointment and we tell them we are going above and beyond in this manner, and then we can show them pictures from previous open houses. We can show them the days of market and what we’re getting through that. We also have to door knock beforehand, because I’m not going out to an open house without having and doing that and spending money on an ice cream truck if we’re not door knocking beforehand. We added another 100 Open House signs to our you know, setup. We have the feather flags, but you’ve, you’ve got to do all the work beforehand and after. Don’t even bother doing it, right? So

Daren Phillipy 27:17

smart, so smart. Let’s talk a little bit about leverage. You’ve got lots of talent, you’ve got admin, and you’ve got a bunch of crazy agents on your team. How do you lead those members of your team? Yeah,

Erin Ward 27:33

I mean, I think I’m have been going on a very long leadership journey for the last few years, and I don’t plan on stopping that. I’m constantly trying to, you know, raise my leadership lid. But a lot of it comes through as the leverage I have, some of the I mean, frankly, I’ll be honest with you, I love my agents. They’ve been with me a long time, and they’re amazingly talented. My operations staff, though, is what I need the most, right? Because without them, they can’t go do their jobs. And I am incredibly talented operations staff. So you know, when we brought in our transaction coordinators, that was, you know, my first, my first hire was Mr. A related I brought in admin in first, and then second was our transaction coordinators and and frankly, they’re the game changer within our team. And then we moved and added a database coordinator as well. And so I venture to guess that we’re one of the few teams that where agent wake. Agents come into the office in the morning, and in their email, it tells them exactly who to call every day. And that’s part of our leverage, and I think that’s one of the pieces that our agents should know, and hopefully do know that they benefit from the most, right? Like, I don’t know of a lot of folks that are doing that. So we do operate, you know, somewhat off a dt, d2 but they also get their whole, you know, cold, warm leads. They can click a button. It takes them exactly to who they should be calling that day. There’s no questions asked. Then come in, assume the position and start dialing. What does that

Daren Phillipy 29:07

look like? Because you’re exactly right. Erin, I’ve talked to a lot of big teams. I’ve never heard that. So what does that look like? Step us through that? Yeah,

Erin Ward 29:14

yeah. So, I mean, I have somebody that goes through every single day, and she creates a we’ve created a system. Actually, they have built a system. This is not a system within any CRM or anything like that, but they have built a system where they can, they go in every day and they pull, you know, who have you not talked to in the last 30 days? Right? That’s, you know, considered a hot lead, or in the last seven days, I guess, on a hot lead. And so they’ll put a link to all those people, so they’ll use filters, and then they link that. And so we have very specific people that we want to contact over and over again. So I mean, I don’t want any questions. So I mean, frankly, as a leader like you can’t come to me and tell me you didn’t know who to call. So let’s get rid of that objection. That objection is gone. Yeah, right. So it’s one of the things we learned, one of the leverage pieces we wanted to bring in. Because when I first got into the business, my husband would sit with me at night and we would read out my pipeline, and so he would go, did you call this person? This person? This person is before he was working with me. And that was kind of the piece that I wanted to bring our agents when they got into the businesses. It took us years to get there. We only got there about years ago, but it’s brilliant, you know, and they also include script links in there. Here’s what you should be talking to your clients about. Hey, don’t forget, we have this Savannah bananas game that we’re hosting 125 people for. Make sure you’re calling your past clients. Then make sure that they’re ready to enter our lottery for those tickets. So they’re getting all those reminders as well, and it’s all linked there for them again. No questions. If one of our agents came and said, I didn’t know what to call it, they know better. They would never say that, but I would, you would have to see the door at that point.

Daren Phillipy 30:55

Then how do you make sure that they they all those people, yeah,

Erin Ward 30:59

so this is something that I struggle with all the time, right? And I feel like, you know, the biggest mistake I made was I said we had standards, but we only had suggestions, right? Yeah. So, you know, the standard of make 15 contacts a day and we would, we do a morning huddle like most teams do, right? And it’s quick. It’s over in about six to eight minutes. And it’s how many people did you, or give me a win from the day before? How many people did you contact? How many appointments did you go on? How many contracts did you write? Which? What are you up to for the rest of the day? Real quick. And you know, you know, the 15 was the quote, unquote standard, and we would consistently get 810, days, you know, those days where they would only call a couple of people, and so that’s where we’ve realized that, you know, that was just a suggestion. And so now they’re reporting out every day, and we’re tracking in the system, because we also found that they weren’t tracking inside the database too. So that was very difficult. So instead, what we what we’re trying to do is show them how important the calls are, right? The contacts are super duper important, which, trust me, they see it when the cycle comes around and they’re super busy for 90 days, and then they don’t have any contracts, they’re out of work, right? So we, we’re trying to show it to them. We’re doing, you know, the return on investment activities. We’re doing a lot of activities so that it clicks in their brains, but we’re also really focused in now on holding them accountable for it, for the numbers. And so that’s where we I mean, frankly, that’s where we’re looking at growth too. You know, because you get to a certain point where we have a we have a pretty good number of leads, and in order to hold people accountable, I have to have enough people that I can say, Well, you didn’t qualify today. So which is a tough, tough thing as a leader, to to do, especially to folks that have been with you as long as mine have been. Yeah,

Daren Phillipy 32:52

that’s That’s exactly right. You got a great relationship. Hey, hey, I’ve been here since the beginning. What you’re pulling me off? What does that conversation sound like,

Erin Ward 33:00

yeah, it’s really tough. I mean, only recently have I, you know, really tried to flex my leadership muscle a little bit more. I have agents that I want to grow into leaders themselves as we grow and evolve. And so for me, a lot of that is what I coach around with my with my coaches now is to have those conversations. How do I have those conversations with people I I dearly love, will do anything, but I want more for them if they want, you know, hopefully they want more within reason. And so they’re tough conversations to have, but we’re having them as a group and and a lot of the conversations we’re having right now is too is, are you all in for the team, right? So are you showing up as your best? Not just for me, don’t worry about me, but for your fellow agent, right? So if you’re not making your calls, that impacts the team, right? Because, frankly, the the team portion of what they pay in allows us to do our client events. It allows us to do mega open houses. It allows us to, you know, spend more money on Google leads. You know, it allows all those things. And so if everybody’s not all in, then we’re going to suffer. And so we have a lot of conversations around that too, right? Maybe that’s the the Catholic guilt in me that I like to play heart strings, right? But, you know, but it is where, if you, if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna, join a team, be a team player. Love it.

Daren Phillipy 34:27

What have you learned over the last 12 months?

Erin Ward 34:32

Um, that, um, I needed to recruit. That recruiting solves all

Daren Phillipy 34:37

it does, huh? Tell me about that. Yeah, we hear it a lot, but I want to hear it from your experience now, yeah,

Erin Ward 34:44

I mean, a little bit of what I talked about, right? Like I want to do more, we want to grow. And in order to grow, I need more people, because I need more transactions. And with more transactions, my agents that have been with us forever, and we’ve had great conversations about it, they’re super open to it. So I love that, because, you know, my. As a leader, as I want to, you know, protect them, and mom them and and their salaries. I mean, for team, they net, net over 150,000 a year, you know, which is, you know, great. They all own investment properties now. I mean, it’s, it’s fantastic, and I want to protect them, but I also know I’m holding them back the more that I don’t grow the team, because I can’t expand on what is available to the team financially. We can’t go we can’t build larger. And frankly, as I mentioned, I think they’re going to be amazing leaders, and I want to grow them into those positions as well. And so that was probably the biggest learning lesson was, when I thought I was protecting them, I was actually probably harming them.

Daren Phillipy 35:47

Isn’t that interesting how that works. Same thing with your kids, right?

Erin Ward 35:51

Yeah, yeah. 100%

Daren Phillipy 35:52

What mistakes have you learned most from?

Erin Ward 36:01

I think initially, when I, when I got in and I got started, you know, I think we all know a lot of teams have a lot of bad reputations, right? Like, teams aren’t exactly like, as much as everybody needs to start a team, or is being told they need, I don’t believe everybody needs to start a team, frankly. But um, I, you know, I think initially, I had listened to a lot of people that were just like, You’re the boss. It’s a dictatorship. It’s this, it’s that, it’s this, it’s that. And so I was scared to start a team, frankly, at first, because that’s just not my style. And I realized it doesn’t have to be that way. You know, frankly, there are things that I have to say, from a business standpoint and from a financial standpoint that I have to say no to, or hey, that’s just, you know, it’s gotta be this way. But I also try to sit down with our team and say, Hey, let’s talk through this. Let’s look through this. What do we think is going to be best moving forward? And really try to give them a voice within the team.

Daren Phillipy 37:02

What’s one actionable thing we could take from this conversation that you’d like to teach from us?

Erin Ward 37:07

Oh, I mean, I hope you guys all go make agent to agent referral partners. If you’re not already doing it, it’s huge, because that is a fast way to build up your database. And I think sometimes, you know, if you’re on social media, you see all these like shout outs and stuff like that. And who cares? Don’t worry about it. There’s so much business to go around, and so many agents in so many areas, I would 100% say, build those relationships up, show up to events. You know, you guys. I mean, it’s in your backyard again in February, for goodness sakes, if you’re not out there making those referral partners, but then you also have to stay in contact with them. We work for the greatest brokerage, the greatest company in the world, and we have, I don’t even know how many agents we should tell but like, you know, it’s, it’s insane to think that we’re not all putting a lot of effort into those relationships as well, because not only that, but you’re going to learn so much. I mean, a lot. As I mentioned, the mega Open House thing, that was not my idea. That was that came from an agent out of Houston, Texas, who you’ll hear from here in a couple of weeks, who he is one of the kindest, nicest souls I’ve ever met. And I’m lucky to have him as a friend now. And I think those kind of things will enrich your your your business, not just from a lead standpoint, but also from a systems, tools, different ideas and things like that, for sure.

Daren Phillipy 38:28

So good, so good. Well, I got one more question for you guys, for all you guys who have questions now, is the time you push the digital hand being raised, what’s Florida Gators record going to be this year.

Erin Ward 38:40

Oh, my God. I don’t even want to guess.

Daren Phillipy 38:44

I don’t know, being recorded,

38:47

Bob and seven,

Erin Ward 38:50

five and seven says the says the Tennessee guy. I don’t want to venture to guess, because, you know what, like, then I, then I said, I’m very superstitious, just so you know, superstitious. Sorry,

Daren Phillipy 39:04

we’ll let you off on on this. Thank

Erin Ward 39:07

you. I appreciate it, Jake,

Daren Phillipy 39:09

go,