Work Smarter NOT Harder – Fox Real Estate Group

In the fast-paced world of real estate, building a successful team that consistently delivers results is no easy feat. However, Mark Fox, founder of the Fox Real Estate Group in Portland, Oregon, has cracked the code. Over the past 12 months, Mark’s team has closed an impressive 323 units with $173 million in volume, operating across two states—Oregon and Washington.

In a recent episode of the OT (Only Teams) podcast, host Daren Phillipy sat down with Mark to unpack the strategies and mindsets that have propelled his team to new heights. From cultivating a vibrant team culture to implementing structured systems for agent development and lead generation, Mark shared a wealth of insights that any real estate leader can apply to their own business.

Prioritize Agent Development Over Rigid Standards

One of the key takeaways from the conversation was Mark’s emphasis on coaching agents to improve their skills rather than simply expecting them to perform at the same level. As Daren pointed out, it can be tempting as a leader to impose a rigid set of standards and expectations on your team, but Mark has found more success in taking a more personalized approach.

“Stop trying to make every agent be you and do it how you do it, and have the same expectations and standards and results, because they’re just not,” Mark explained. “When we can recognize that and step back and say, ‘Am I doing everything possible to help them be their best?’ whether that be 12 units a year or 50 units a year, it doesn’t matter. Let’s make sure we’re doing everything we can to help them be their best.”

This mindset shift has paid dividends for Mark’s team, as they’ve seen improved productivity and retention by allowing agents more flexibility and autonomy.

Implement Structured Onboarding and Lead Generation

Another key area of focus for Mark’s team is their approach to onboarding new agents and managing lead generation. New agents start with open houses, their sphere of influence, and internet leads, gradually progressing to more complex lead sources like Zillow as they gain experience and prove their skills.

“We basically wait until agents are well qualified to handle that opportunity because it’s more expensive and it’s a warmed-up lead. We put together what we call their Z team, and it’s these three agents who can be all over it, making sure they don’t screw up the algorithms for us so we can have success and build with it.”

This structured approach ensures that agents are prepared and qualified to handle higher-level leads, ultimately driving better results for the team.

Foster a Vibrant Team Culture

Cultivating a strong team culture has been a top priority for Mark and his team. They’ve intentionally created a “work hard, have fun” environment, complete with team events, a ping pong table, and celebrations for milestones.

Maintaining this culture across multiple locations has been a key challenge, but Mark and his brother (who runs the Vancouver office) work closely to ensure consistency.

“Culture is really huge for us,” Mark shared. “I mean, we are a work hard, have fun office. That was a huge transition for us in learning that bringing on the right people—agents who are willing to put in the work—dramatically changed our atmosphere.”

By prioritizing culture and creating opportunities for team bonding, Mark has been able to foster a sense of camaraderie and shared purpose that has undoubtedly contributed to his team’s success.

Leverage Accountability and Contests

Accountability is another critical component of Mark’s team-building approach. While he’s moved away from overly rigid metrics, the team still maintains a laser focus on appointment setting as a key driver of success.

“Appointments set should always be the number one thing. You can’t go through a week without setting appointments and expect to have success.”

To keep agents accountable, the team uses a variety of sales contests and visual tracking systems. These range from holiday-themed contests to March Madness-inspired challenges, all designed to motivate agents and celebrate their achievements.

“We almost always have some type of sales incentive going on. If we have the right people on our team, they’re going to be motivated by these challenges and see real results from them.”

Expansion and Market Strategy

Mark has successfully expanded into multiple markets, including Vancouver, Washington, as well as exploring opportunities in Tacoma, Phoenix, Sacramento, and Bend. His strategy is to partner with agents in new markets rather than forcing expansion.

“The key to expansion is making sure we have strong leadership in those markets. If we try to force growth without the right foundation, it won’t be sustainable.”

He acknowledges that supporting multiple markets comes with challenges, such as navigating different MLS systems and ensuring consistency in team culture. However, having a strong support team in place allows his expansion efforts to succeed.

Recruiting and Retaining Top Talent

Recruiting the right agents is crucial for Mark’s team. They look for professional, self-driven, and motivated agents who have clear goals and a strong work ethic.

“We have a structured recruiting process, including initial meetings, interviews with the director of sales, and meetings with current agents. New agents are required to attend scripting practice, mastermind sessions, and open houses for their first six months.”

By maintaining high standards in the hiring process and offering structured training, Mark ensures that new team members are set up for success from the start.

Final Thoughts

Mark Fox’s approach to building a high-performing real estate team is a masterclass in leadership, coaching, and adaptability. His focus on personalized agent development, structured lead generation, and cultivating a strong team culture has helped him scale his business successfully across multiple markets.

For real estate leaders looking to take their teams to the next level, Mark’s insights offer a roadmap to success. Whether it’s refining your recruitment process, improving coaching strategies, or fostering a fun yet accountable culture, the key lies in creating an environment where agents can thrive.

For more insights from top real estate teams, be sure to follow The OT (Only Teams) podcast and join our mastermind sessions to stay ahead of the game!

Transcription

Announcer  00:00

Welcome to the OT only teams in real estate.

Speaker 1  00:13

What happens a lot with leaders and with agents? With agents, they just start doing things because they say, this is what you’re supposed to do. And often, often it’s they’re doing it. We say this. I mean, it’s so basic, but if something’s not working for an agent, it comes down to three things. They need to know what to do, like that’s on us. They need to know how to do it, that’s on us, and then they need to do it. And so where’s the breakdown if someone’s not having success? I mean, you can run this against any agents on any of your agents on any of these teams. It’s one of those three things, and often it comes down to doing it. But if somebody is literally doing it, putting in the work, we’ve got to step back and stop saying, like, it’s going to work, or they’ll catch on, because it probably becomes a skill issue. And so if we want to increase per agent productivity, it isn’t always just do more of it, like maybe we need to coach better to the skill as a sales leader. Stop trying to make every agent be you and do it how you do it, and have the same expectations and standards and results, because they just they’re not. And when we can recognize that and step back and say, Am I doing this? Am I doing everything possible to help them be their best? Whether that be it’s 12 units a year, it’s 50 units here, doesn’t, you know, doesn’t, doesn’t matter. Like let’s make sure we’re doing everything we can help them be their best. And that obviously, is in in not general, over view themes and focuses. That’s in coaching.

Announcer  01:42

Here’s your host, Daren Phillipy, Hey

Daren Phillipy  01:45

everybody. Welcome this week’s ot only team for real estate agents. My name is Daren Phillipy. I’m your host, and we did it again. Like always. You come up every week and you’re gonna find something that’s fantastic with a great agent that does tons of business. And this week, we’ve got Mark Fox from Fox real estate group based out of Portland, Oregon. What’s awesome about him is he just knows what he’s doing. That’s all there is to it. He has created a team with systems and leadership to be able to help them get what they want. He also has an expansion team on the other side of the river of Portland in Vancouver, and he’s going to talk a little bit about how to be able to have culture and how to be able to build a a team in another market. So definitely check out about that. The other thing is, he’s also got some great, great systems. When it comes to what do I say he’s got systems to make it so people already know when they join, join the team, what things to do, and it makes it so it’s easy for them to it kind of removes their thinking, hey, just do this play. Just do this task, and it’ll get you what you want. I talk to he’s he actually shares a couple of them. One of them is a social media play, and the other one is also a rundown of all the different marketing things that you could do, or or lead gen things that you could do on the team. So he’s very much into creating systems to make his team function at a high level. And because he’s got systems, makes it easy for him to be able to function. That’s pretty much it so super excited to have him here. Now I want you guys in the room. You guys could ask, could have asked Mark tons of questions, but you didn’t, because you weren’t in the room. So I’m dying for you guys to be, to be in the room. All you need to do is go to only four teams com, click that button that says, join the room, and at noon, Pacific, Standard Time, jump in the room, and you’re able to be a part of the mastermind. Now the other thing is this, I need you to follow me. I need you to share. I want people to know that the OT exists. So go and do that. I can’t wait to hear what you guys have to say at the end of the OT, and it’s pretty much it. Let’s see what Mark has got to say. Alright, guys, welcome this week’s OT. Guys, I’m super, super happy to have mark here. I chase this guy down. It’s kind of a big deal. He’s going to shake his head. I’m sure another great leader up in the northwest. I was talking to him, and I said, who’s who’s really engaging runs a big business up in the northwest. He’s like, you gotta talk to to mark Fox. And so I chased him down, chased him down, and he said, Yep, and I’ve been super excited to have you So Mark, thanks for hanging out with the crew.

04:41

Absolutely look forward to it. So

Daren Phillipy  04:44

you just a little background, guys, he he, over the last 12 months, he’s closed 323 units, and 173 million volume, and he works out of two areas. Now, don’t let him kid you, because it’s really one area, but it’s two states, it’s port. Portland, Oregon, and right across on the other side of the river is Vancouver, Washington. But how far up north do you go and how far south do you go? Mark,

Speaker 1  05:10

great question. I mean, south into Salem, Oregon, down i Five corridor, and then north into long view, ish, you know, not, not quite into the Seattle market, I should say, Yeah, awesome.

Daren Phillipy  05:22

Now tell us a little bit about how you got in the business, a little bit about your team, a little bit about what’s going down.

Speaker 1  05:28

Yeah, my story, in case it relates to anybody, I spent 12 years in the restaurant industry. Out of college, ended up owning every restaurant guy wants to own it. Thought this is going to be great. My kids were little. I was working 1617, hours a day. Didn’t see a great quality of life with that. So we just my wife and I decided to close one of them, sold one of them, and jumped into real estate, which I was always passionate about. Basically applied the same amount of hours. This is with Keller Williams. I’ve been with Keller Williams all 19 years, and applied the same work ethic towards that. Felt very blessed to sold 43 transactions that first year I was swimming, trying to figure things out. People saying, You need to hire help, and I needed to learn it first. And so, yeah, all 19 years been with Keller Williams in the Portland area, as far as the first, gosh, 12 years of that, just in Portland, not Vancouver, yet. I’ll explain that through the expansion model, kind of how that came about. But yeah, just continue to build a team using the KW model known over the stage and book. Built a team where we sit today. Flash forward, we have 12 agents in the Portland market that is now our hub. And I say hub because we treat Vancouver as an expansion market. So we have 12 agents. We have a director of sales, Director of Operations, two other full time admin support in office. We have four part time kind of as needed, listing coordinators out in the field, and one VA and so that kind of makes up our team that that support teams a bit heavy if it was just Portland, but that support team also through the expansion model supports Vancouver and how Vancouver came into play, kind of through Gary’s reasoning and Kristen Cole and all those COVID teaches, a need became evident in that area. My brother joined us about seven years ago. He came into real estate. He was in Vancouver. We started referring and doing a lot of things up there. And so he just plugged into all of our systems, teams, models, support, coaching, all that stuff. And that’s, that’s what expansion is, if, if somebody hasn’t heard about it’s basically just a expanded version of a team in a different market, leveraging all the same support tools, systems, you know, with splits in place. And so we’ve operated for the last seven years in that way, when I brought on a Director of Operations, I’m sorry, Director of Sales in the Portland market, about seven years ago, that’s when I stepped out of production. And so that was a big step. At the time, I was probably managing, I don’t know, 7080 listings a year, turned those over, stepped back, got out of production, and really more focused on the team than doing the work myself. So that’s awesome. Brief overview.

Daren Phillipy  08:02

I love that. And just little side note something, I’m from Spokane, and so I love the Pacific Northwest. And for those of you guys who don’t know the magic of the Vancouver Portland connection, you can live in Vancouver, not have state tax, and you could buy things in in Oregon and not have any sales tax. And so that’s kind of like work in the system, and there’s a lot of people. It’s a beautiful area, and we are going to talk a little bit on the leverage portion of work in your expansion. Yeah,

Speaker 1  08:33

Vancouver is unique just because it’s the same metro area, yet it’s a different state, and it’s still it’s still, it’s a different state, but it’s the same MLS so that, oh, it is, makes it very efficient for our team and support team. Yeah, I didn’t That’s news to me. I didn’t know it’s odd. Yeah, super,

Daren Phillipy  08:50

super cool. But you gotta have licenses in both states, correct? Very cool. Alright. So tell us a little bit about if you are rocking in two states. And even beyond, how do you feed your business? How do you do your leads and and take care of all the agents? There? Great question

Speaker 1  09:08

we’ve always been, I mean, kind of predominantly prospecting based outbound. I mean, whether it be for sale by owners, expired circle prospecting, like a lot of open houses, our newer agents, when they join our team, a lot of open house focus. When a new agent joins our team. It’s basically open houses, it’s sphere, and then internet leads, and that’s really where they start, until they’re scripted and qualified enough to be maybe hand off warmer leads. As we ventured into other sources, whether it be home, like, you know, ideal agent, Zillow, just any, any of these other sources that are out there. Whether you’re paying for leads, you’re paying referral fees. We basically wait until agents are well qualified to handle that, that opportunity, because it’s more expensive and it’s a warmed up bleed, and we put together kind of elite teams with that. So we didn’t just, you know, jump into Zillow and say, Okay, everybody can have access to these leads. We put together what we call their Z team, and it’s these three agents. Programs that can be all over it, make sure they don’t, man, you know, screw up the algorithms for us so we can have success and build with it. And so we’ve kind of done that in these different lead sources that’s kind of created teams and people that can focus on that type of lead, handle it well, manage the results closely, versus scatter everything across the board to everybody. Yeah, that’s, I mean, that’s in general.

Daren Phillipy  10:23

So what is your highest like? Where do you get your most leads? Definitely,

Speaker 1  10:27

sphere and pass client. Yeah. I mean, I think we’re 40 some percent sphere and pass client, which we could probably it should be even better and higher. I think there’s so much opportunity in all of our database that we just don’t do a good enough job with but it’s definitely our largest

Daren Phillipy  10:42

mark. You’re still a good person. Don’t worry about it. We all have room for improvement. I know. I know. All I do is talk database all day, and my database is a mess. Yep, I’m curious about this. You said something that we’ve never spoken about on on the OT before, so you let the new people who join your team cut their teeth on open houses and a couple of the other lead systems, internet leads, and then you sound like you graduate them into some of these other sphere of influences, my guess, the Z team. What does that progress or process look like to graduate from one to another? Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah,

Speaker 1  11:22

you know, honestly, I mean, so we we have, once a month, we call it an agent, Agent wellness check in meeting that we have with our leadership team. And so that consists of myself, our director of sales in Portland, and our Director of Operations, right? They both see things differently, hear things differently, right? We have agents that go in and talk to the admin about stuff that maybe we need to know about here, about so we sit down and literally, we just go through every agent, how are they doing, like, how are they doing? What’s their challenges? What’s their struggles? How can we help them better? Who’s struggling? Who, who needs, who needs a deal, who needs a lead, a break, who’s ready to move into maybe one of these different lead sources? And so we kind of just evaluate each and it’s very it’s very quick, but it really helped us not have things sneak up on us. We’ve done this for this year, you know, stuff sneaking up on us like you guys may have had before too, when all of a sudden, agent just says, Hey, I’m out of here. And you’re like, wait a second, you know, although we should have known and we maybe we did know some signs, we just didn’t. We weren’t, we weren’t proactive with it, and so we put that in place to really just stay in tune to the agents through the OP side and the sales side, and making sure we know everything going on to be of help the best we can.

Daren Phillipy  12:32

So as a new agent, what are the lead sources that are available to me when I’m on your team? Yep, well

Speaker 1  12:39

obviously there’s fear and open house opportunities are there, and we make it super easy for them. And new agents are probably doing at least two a weekend, maybe two to three a weekend. Internet leads. You know we were brevity is our CRM, so we use brevity so there’s Pay Per Click stuff there. Fellow is something we have moved into. I’m sure some of you have heard about fellow. It’s great. We’re actually that’s one of our focuses right now, to make sure we go deep on that and know it well. Lot of agents teams are having huge success with it. Ryan Young, who founded it, has done a really good job with it. And so that’s that’s a resource that any agent has the opportunity to and it’s basically their sphere of their database and warms up things based on home valuations and interest and algorithms on propensity to sell. So that’s an that’s an easier conversation. It’s the hard conversations ultimately Daren to answer your question, like the hard conversations that they may get shut down early because they’re not experienced enough to handle that’s kind of what we keep them away from until they are qualified. So

Daren Phillipy  13:38

where do those hard conversations come from? What kind of leads are there is that the expired is bows, or, definitely,

Speaker 1  13:44

those would be the two most challenging, I think we all know that, yeah, yeah. Or more costly leads, honestly, just from a team business perspective, if we’re paying for leads, or, you know, there’s a lot on the line, then we need to make sure the returns there, and so we’re going to put agents that are qualified to handle those and convert at a higher level, you know, in front of those leads.

Daren Phillipy  14:03

So do they have to do something to graduate from that? Or is this all right, dude, you’ve converted enough. I can tell your skills are there is, is it just kind of a temperature gage?

Speaker 1  14:13

Yeah, it’s more of a temperature gage. It’s not that rigid or structured. It’s probably through these agent wellness meetings we have when we’re talking about agents, saying, Hey, where are they at? What do they need? Are they qualified? You know, a lot of this too. I mean, we always sit there and go, How are agents going to be more successful? And we, you know, we’ve been talking a lot about as a team, like, really got to analyze herself. And this is us as leaders too. Is like, what are we doing? This working? And have I really maximized that? You know, there’s so many shiny objects in this business as leaders or as agents that we just want to, like, like, touch on something and then move on to something else. And so really making sure our agents are going deep and getting everything out of the the lead pillars that they are, that they’re really qualified for and are best at right now, we actually have a sheet. I didn’t mean to read up. I’ll pull up here. It’s. Of this. It’s just called prospecting, prospecting options, like the prospecting priorities, we call it. And it has, I can even send this to you if you want, but just has in order what we feel can give somebody the best chance to have success. And it’s like, like, why would you jump, you know, why would you jump into, you know, number six of circle prospecting, if you haven’t, you haven’t, you know, handled your internet leads and your database and things like that. So it kind of just prioritizes it for the agents when they’re thinking, What should I do and how should I do it? When should I do

Daren Phillipy  15:28

it? That is so great. If you wouldn’t mind sending that to me or go ahead and posting that after I have this video posted on on Facebook and the Facebook group and and so we can have it. I’d love to see that that’s that’s fantastic, absolutely. Now I’ve been, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this, um, talk a lot, a lot about red light, green light when it comes to our lead gen. And sometimes we don’t look at our books as much as we probably should. And, um, I found for myself, I’m going down this path, and I’m just doing the task because I know I’m supposed to do the task, and then I find out that six months ago, or a year ago, I should have taken a step back, evaluating and went down a different direction. How often do you experience that and give me some advice on that? Gosh,

Speaker 1  16:17

that’s such a broad question. I know. Sorry, dude. I think I mean as a lead so we meet as a leadership team. That’s, that’s my brother running the sales side of Vancouver, Matt here, running the sales side of Portland, in our on our ops leader. We meet once a month, and we literally block out two hours. And it usually doesn’t take that long, but, but that would be the point in time when we’re kind of reassessing things. So I, I think we don’t let it go too far, although that happens all the time. I think that happens a lot. What happens a lot with leaders and with agents. With agents, they just start doing things because they say, this is what you’re supposed to do. And often, often it’s they’re doing it. We say this. I mean, it’s so basic, but if something’s not working for an agent, it comes out of three things they need to know what to do, like, that’s on us. They need to know how to do it, that’s on us, and then they need to do it. And so where’s the breakdown if someone’s not having success? I mean, you could run this against any of your agents on any of these teams. It’s one of those three things, and often it comes down to the doing it. But if somebody is literally doing it, putting in the work, we’ve got to step back and stop saying, like, it’s going to work or they’ll catch on, because it probably becomes a skill issue. And so if we want to increase per agent productivity, it isn’t always just do more of it, like, maybe we need to coach better to the skill to improve that. So a roundabout answer to your question, maybe,

Daren Phillipy  17:37

well, I think, I think what you just told me was you have a regular meeting to evaluate that, and then also you’re listening to your agents and their meetings, and you’re coaching them up on and working on either their skills or helping them move to a different lead source.

Speaker 1  17:55

When sometimes, I mean, we got to ask ourselves, too, this is leaders to your to your point, Daren, I mean, if we’re continuing to do something that’s not working, like, Stop, like, stop doing it like, literally. And although it’s a prospecting channel, and we think, Oh, they’re doing great, they’re making their calls, they’re doing whatever, if it’s not working for them, and we’ve trained the skill, we’ve tried, they just need to stop doing it like, stop wasting their time. And let’s, let’s figure out where they can be more effective, what their gift is. Maybe that

Daren Phillipy  18:19

that’s funny, that one of the craziest questions, if you’ve gone through the Career Visioning process, I think it’s step two or step three, where they ask, how long can you fail without giving up, or something to that type of effect? And that, I don’t know the answer, because it’s sometimes these people say, I never give up and like, you said, Stop. Or some people are like, Hey, man, I evaluated after a couple of weeks, and if it’s not working, I go somewhere else. So that’s anyway. That’s just me in my head right now, let’s, let’s talk a little about listing, actually, before that, is there anything else that you want to share with us when it comes to your your leads and where you get your leads, or lead systems, or anything like that. No, I don’t

Speaker 1  19:03

think so. I mean, there’s no, there’s no silver bullet. You know, we’ve always been lead with revenue. We’re not the ones that, you know, we’re not the we’re not the team that’s going to sit there and say we’re spending $30,000 a month of Zillow. And you know, these which teams do, and maybe some of you guys are, and it does work. You got to hold really accountable and be very focused on it. But no, no, there’s no silver bullet for us. It’s fairly scattered with sphere past clients, you know, being our largest source. Okay, tell

Daren Phillipy  19:28

us a little bit about your listings. You’re obviously got brand in two different we’ll call it markets, even though it’s one MLS Sure. What are some? What are some of the things that you do to leverage your listings or help your listing stand out other than all the

Speaker 1  19:42

others. Great question, something we’ve literally started doing fairly recently, I’ll say, in the last like four months now, maybe is really focusing on, how do we get everything out of every listing? I think sometimes we just, let’s sell that house. And we all know that, hey, we should get a couple buyers that, you know, a couple deals out of every listing we have. Up, but video is what we’ve turned to, right? And I’m maybe old school, and so thinking like, that’s, you know, that’s younger generation, that’s whatever, but videography and honestly, just focusing. And then we choose the properties. It’s not for every property, right? But, but we choose. And with anything we market and advertise, we can choose what we market and advertise, and what we market and advertises what we’ll attract more of, right? No different than if you want to sell luxury, go host luxury open house, the same type of thing. And so, you know, we’re picking and choosing what we’re doing videography for. We’ve got a video videographer, not in house right now that we’re dialing in on how we want that to look. And it’s a bit different than the traditional, slow kind of put you to sleep video through a house. We’re kind of spicing that up and make sure it’s coming in short format, long format, that we can use in social media other ways. And so, you know that’s that the next level with that will be targeted posts and little bit more strategy behind it. But that’s a huge one for us, and how we can better leverage our existing listings to get more

Daren Phillipy  20:59

Gotcha. So is there? Is it like there a process that you use when it comes to your your videoing, when it hits a certain type of house or or, yeah? How do you

Speaker 1  21:09

decide, yeah? Our director of sales is the filter for that. To put it simple enough, he asked that two days before a listing appointment, if someone has one, if they can to, if they think it’s a qualifier, to let him know if it’s approved. Yes, then they can obviously sell that as part of the listing, you know, but we’re not going to do that in our market for a, you know, a $425,000 fixer, right? So every agent wants it, right? I mean, if, if you guys run in teams, as you are, like, you know, everybody would love to spend every dollar and take advantage of everything, right, when it’s not, maybe their dollar so that, that’s the filter we have on it, fairly simple. But yeah, it’s the it’s, I think we say over 750 grand. But, you know, here’s the deal. It’s hard to do that, because you can have a $700,000 house looks like pottery barn that backs the green space. It’d be perfect. And you can have a, you know, million dollar house that it doesn’t deserve it too. So it’s hard to just put $1 amount on it. Yes,

Daren Phillipy  22:00

no doubt, no doubt. Welcome to Pacific Northwest. Also, let’s talk a little bit about your leadership and on the leverage side of things you’ve talked about, you’ve got two locations. Tell us a bit about how you expanded, more specifics on the expansion, because I think you kind of did it the most organic way, which is how expansion is supposed to be built out. Mm, hmm. Tell us a bit about that process. What were the steps you took to go and expand into another market? Yeah.

Speaker 1  22:29

So full disclosure, we’ve been in numerous markets. My brother and I, after we saw this, worked in Vancouver, we actually rolled out in some other markets. We’ve been in Tacoma, Washington, we’ve been in Phoenix, we’ve been in Sacramento, we’ve been in Bend, Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, some other markets. But we didn’t really do it for the right reasons. It was more forced. And so how expansion with my brother came up his office. He was up there, and I had literally given him all my materials, just saying, Go do it right. Same last name, call whatever you want, use the materials. And he got really busy quick, and said, Okay, there’s a lot of work behind this and and so why don’t we leverage the systems and the tools and leadership and support teams so the organic approach is better. Answer your question would be, when you start referring business enough to a certain area just outside the area you cover, then connecting with an agent that you can then provide consistent leads to and obviously pour in all your tools and systems and support staff and coaching. The one thing that really stood out for us, if you’re looking to expand, and stood out for expansion partners, is we reference it as as we’re partnering with them versus them partnering with us. I think they feel like when they’re partnering with us, they’re giving up all the control and the ownership and the entrepreneurship, independent contractor stuff we, most of us, like, and so we say we’re really partnering with them, like they’re the boots on the ground being able to plug into proven, successful systems.

Daren Phillipy  23:56

So you okay? If you’re okay with that, I’d love to dig into you. You expanding into multiple markets, Phoenix, Salem all those other places. Yeah, you said it was the wrong reason. You said that you got pushed into it. What were the steps to make that mistake? And then, how did you resolve that by getting out of those markets. Tell I’m really curious about that. I

Speaker 1  24:21

mean, I mean getting in them. We actually were teaching. We actually flew and taught at market centers and taught a class we put together, and so market students would bring us in, and my brother and I, we teach a class, and we meet some people, we talk about different ways to do a business. It’d be, you can do it on your own. You can do it with a team in your market center, or you can partner with a team outside of your market center and and have all that leverage and support and do it yourself and build your own business in your own market. So that’s how we got into them. The wrong way. Would be example of a buddy of mine who moved to Phoenix and, you know, wanted to get his real estate license like, that’s for the wrong reasons, right? So that was short lived, but I think what is really hard about it, so we’ve. Attractive back, and we’re just now focused on Portland maker. But there’s so much opportunity in our own markets. You guys, I’d say that, like, it’s a lot of work. If you haven’t done it, it’s a lot of work, and you got to have a really, really good support team to dial it in. You’re just dealing with different MLS and different stuff. And so there’s so much opportunity on our own markets. I just say, ask yourself this, have you really tapped out the market you’re Have you really, are you just skimming across the top, like water skiing, or have you really, like, scuba dive deep in in your own market, because it’s a lot easier, a lot more profitable to be able to do that, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Daren Phillipy  25:35

That was the point of expansion is you’ve kind of maxed out your market share in your market. So it leads you to go outside. But if, if you’re just water skiing on that, skimming on along, along the top of it, definitely dig in there. Um, tell me what one last thing about the expansion portion, you said it’s really hard. What’s really hard? There’s just a

Speaker 1  25:56

lot of complexities, doing stuff out of my I mean, to support it from a listing support level to from an admin level, from a MLS level, from a contract perspective. And yes, you have the market center around it, which is the whole philosophy of of expansion, which is great, the coaching, the leadership that so our team, I haven’t said this yet, is huge on culture, like, like, culture is huge. And so you that’s that’s hard to transcend right borders and via the phone and via zoom calls and things like that. So culture is really huge for us. I mean, we are a, are a work hard, have fun office, to talk a little bit more about that, because I think that was a huge transition for us, in me, learning like, let’s just add agents and having turnover versus let’s bring on the right people that are agents, that are willing to put in the work, and that dramatically changed our atmosphere. And so, you know, we’re a, you know, ring a big bell when you set an appointment. We got a big nerf hoop. We have a ping pong table like, not that. We’re trying to be Google or something like that. We want to be a fun place. You know, have music in the background, and we do a lot of events outside the office with our team and significant others and things like that. So that creates a culture and a bond that, you know, helps people get through the hard times, helps people feel better about it when, like they might be contemplating something else. And, you know, it’s kind of one big family, I guess I’d say, yeah, love

Daren Phillipy  27:17

that and and so I’m curious. Then, you shared with us some of the things that you do to culture. You’ve got two locations. My guess is that right? How do you make that culture be one? How do you unify that

Speaker 1  27:34

honestly, through coaching. I mean, I’m coaching my brother on that too, so it’s a matter of sharing one thing that’s him coming to our office, and me going to his office, I’d say, and this, this is, this could be an expansion thing to just to see and give ideas and thoughts. I’d also just say, you know, from a standpoint of that culture, it’s, it’s through coaching and making sure we’re doing things consistently. So for example, you know, one thing we’ve done this year is, is our Director of Sales in Portland and my brother, basically director of sales in Vancouver, have a lot more communication on what we’re doing and what they want to do, and rolling it out together. Versus, in the past, it was rolling something out in Portland and then then, then rolling it out to Vancouver, and not being in sync with that and so that culture, there was a bit of disconnect with that culture in Vancouver, whether it be lagging behind or not. The same effect. So that that really helped us in making sure it transcends, you know, borders as well. Perfect

Daren Phillipy  28:33

with with You said earlier that you blocked two hours with your leadership. Will you tell us, what is that leadership meeting and how often you’re having that meeting? Yeah,

Speaker 1  28:45

once a month we do that. So where we’ve kind of migrated to this year and are doing a way better job. It was a big aha for me, as I got called out by my coach in the Tom Ferry organization, although it was a maps for many, many years, basically saying I was kind of water skiing, back to that analogy, right? And not we were just, you know, the shiny object and just what’s next, and let’s try this, and let’s try that. And she really called me out on that. And so what we did then is I asked, and I’m kind of a leader, where I just was trying to help everybody be good and help everybody be their best. And oh, there’s a massive difference between helper and a leader. And I think we all want to help people. We all want to see them have success. Want to help them work through their challenge or their transaction, or their repair denim or whatever it is, but stepping back and being a leader and with that, basically got our leadership team to buy in and take on what we felt was a key area that we needed to grow, right So, so literally, our director of ops at both both, both sales leaders and then myself, we all took on a project and took responsibility for that, versus me taking on the responsibility for all this and trying to have people help. And so that really changed. Um. Um, I think the buy in, the feel, the value felt by our leadership team, and it’s made us better, too. And I say all that because that’s really the flow of our meeting now, is when we meet, we’re going to hit on those check in. Where are we at? How’s it going? Here was your plan. This was a deadline, you know, are we moving forward with that? So everybody has that responsibility, and then we may talk about things like, like, Agent wellness, like we said, you know, obviously miscellaneous stuff comes up as well, team meetings, topics of conversation for the month, a general focus, I think some, you know, sometimes we gotta, we we can’t forget, like we as leaders, just project a general focus, like, I want the focus to be this for the next month or two, and that’s great. That’s that’s overarching. But then we got a coach individually each agent, because they’re all different place. So we talk as a team, like, what do we want that overall focus to be? And a lot of that comes into a sales incentive. So we almost always have some type of a sales incentive going on. I mean, if we have the right people on our teams in this job, they should be motivated by a sales contest. They should be competitive. And so we’ve definitely have seen, yeah, people have fun with it. Not only, you know, earn, earn fun, great rewards and prizes, but but also step up their business because of that competitiveness. So we always have a so we often talk in our sales meetings, I’m sorry, our leadership meetings, about the next sales contest.

Daren Phillipy  31:30

What are some of the sales contests that you’ve done?

Speaker 1  31:34

Gosh, we’ve done so many. I mean, holiday cash to march madness to football stuff to a racing theme, and a lot of these tie into what the what the prize is going to be, or what the season is that’s going on. Most of them are set around appointment setting, goals and appointments set. I mean, that’s, you know, obviously starts with conversations, but appointment set is what we need to be focused on. And so a lot of them tying around that, but we’ll give away. I mean, whether it be, you know, gifts to large gifts to the Ritz Carlton, or it’s we’ve gave away, like two electric scooters one time to get aways, short, long, you know, long weekend, vacations, cash prizes, gosh, all sorts of, all sorts of things. Awesome,

Daren Phillipy  32:20

awesome. I got one more question about your meeting at your leadership meeting that kind of set the stage for later on. Yeah, I’ve done the, let me tell you, let’s This is the vision, and let’s go at it. And I’ve also done the sounds like what you did was a big brain dump of, hey, what are we trying to accomplish? And got that buy in, what did tell me more specifically about that meeting that helped you get the buy in? Was it a brain dump? And did you? Did you have a direction that you were wanting to go? Yeah,

Speaker 1  32:56

I love that question, because it’s tough as a leader, right? We have a thought. We have an idea of this is what we need to do and to get buy in from others. We want to, we want to bring it up. We don’t want to control the conversation so much that it’s our idea, yet we want to get their buy in right through it being their idea and getting by. So I think that really comes through. Let’s just say we’re all, each of us, four of us, are going to determine, like, something to be focused on. It’s like, hey, let’s, let’s, let’s all contribute a couple things that we think are most important for the next three months or the next quarter, whatever it is, and then, and then, really, wean it down from there. I mean, we know this. I mean, everybody’s got tons of ideas. There’s a lot of great ideas. They’re not just ours as leaders, but, but if we hear eight ideas, we probably know and have a good idea of what three or four may be the most effective if the most, you know, have the best results, if we focus on those. So I think then it’s just kind of tailoring the conversation around that a bit, asking questions in a way that helps people self discover, and then with that on the same page, agree, you know, move forward.

Daren Phillipy  33:55

Yeah, it did. It takes so much patience sometimes, and it takes a lot longer, and it’s the best way I’ve found to lead is slowing down, asking a lot of questions, to help them discover. And when they discover, and they have the buy in, then it’s a now. Now you’re not pushing there. They’re going with you. 100% so smart. Yeah. What did what have you learned in what have you learned over the last 12 months with re leading your team? It was

Speaker 1  34:25

probably what we just talked about, to be honest, getting them more involved and bought in, and taking leadership and ownership of of a big segment of our business. We need to move forward those those things, just to bring those to table for ops side of things, it’s database integrity, like our database just too many things are sloppy, too many missing pieces, updating some things so that our office is database integrity. Are one of our sales people is focused on recruiting, the other ones focused on revamping our training program, and my focus is on the. Uh, lead attraction. So those are the four areas that we kind of all focused on. But that would be the biggest thing I’d say in the last year, learning is really getting them more involved than I did, and not stop feeling like I need to be the one driving, doing, leading all these things. Man. How does that feel? Feels great. I mean, they’re great. We have great leaders, and we have a great team. And so if you can truly say you have a great team, then why are we not like people get excited about that. They get bought into that. They feel the value of that, not just being a person that shows up like they are a part of something bigger. And I think everybody wants, everybody inherently wants that.

Daren Phillipy  35:34

Yeah, well, I’m sure you had to exercise that, that skill too, and that, that that muscle, when you stepped completely out of out of production. Yeah, and, and, I mean, continue doing that. What do you feel like you need to learn over the next 12 months?

Speaker 1  35:50

For me, new development, actually. I mean, we’ve stumbled, in a sense, and earned the opportunity to go in some new development. But it’s newer for us, we’re just a ton of resale so we have a developer that with three different projects, like 57 units, I think, or homes, and so that’s new for us, like that’s something that that I’m getting my arms around and helping our agent who had those connections lead into that. So that’s an area for me to learn a lot more about, and maybe others, and maybe others on this call have great experience with but it’s new for us. Yeah,

Daren Phillipy  36:23

love it. Love it. One, one last question, and then we’re going to open the the room up. So you guys know the digital, digital hand raise, push that sucker. So you guys can ask the question, what is there? I’ve got two actually. What is there something that is there, something that you feel like you need to teach us or share with us, from your experience, nice thoughts, I don’t know.

Speaker 1  36:53

I mean, obviously, by great people in this room that have experienced a lot of things. I think, you know, a big thing for me and our team and growth. And this is, this is a few years back, was just really stop trying to make as a sales leader, stop trying to make every agent be you and do it how you do it, and have the same expectations and standards and results, because they just they’re not. And when we can recognize that and step back and say, Am I doing this? Am I doing everything possible to help them be their best? Whether that be it’s 12 units a year, it’s 50 units a year, does you know? Doesn’t doesn’t matter like let’s make sure we’re doing everything we can help them be their best. And that obviously, is in in, not general, over view themes and focuses. That’s in coaching. So coaching really becomes key with that. We used to have a lot of standards, I mean, and disciplined on time to show up, like, full time agents. That’s our thing. Like, we’re not going to bring on part time agents, in a sense, but we really loosened up a lot of those standards because we just felt it was not it was hurting the culture, and it’s tough. It’s tough for myself and our sales leader here, because that’s how we are. We’re like, in the office, grinding the phones. I mean, do whatever. That’s how we built our businesses. But you know what? There’s some young, sharp people coming in, and they’re killing social media, and they’re having opportunities, and they’re, you know, they’re in it at 10, and they’re leaving at three, and you’re like, wait, what’s going on? But they’re having success. And so if they can, that’s great. There’s more than one way to do this, and I think often, as leaders, we think we think the way we do it, the way we did it, is the only way. And we just we can’t force that too hard, so

Daren Phillipy  38:27

so hard, so hard, because you know that what you do and your model works, yep, and you’re growing, and it’s your team and your vision, and it’s difficult to be able to say it’s okay, man, yeah, yeah, why don’t you get the results? I’m okay with it.

Speaker 1  38:45

Yeah, think about this too. I mean, I think it’s, there’s a great time of the year to make that analysis is like, and my coach challenged me this, with this a while back. Is like, just close loops. I think we all as leaders can say I have like, 38 loops that are open, like, the things I’m working on, I’m 75 cent. Do this one. I’m 25% this one. I am 5% into this one is like, figure out, like the one or two most important things, like, set everything else aside, literally. And I did. I just, I threw away stuff, I deleted stuff, whether you talk in your desk or your calendar or whatever it is, and said, You know, it’s the whole multitasking is a myth, right? It just you can’t so that that really helped me a lot. And just getting focused on the most important things, and then close those loops and move on to the next most important thing, dial it in, get it done, and then move on to next thing. And obviously there’s not only one thing we’re doing, but but we have way too many things with open loops.

Daren Phillipy  39:37

So good, so good. I’d love to learn more about loops. What restaurant did you have when you were running your restaurant business? It was

Speaker 1  39:47

a franchise out of Phoenix area. It was called eats a pizza. It’s like a CC’s from a lot of the countries. It’s like CCS pizza kind of yeah,

Daren Phillipy  39:54

my son is still pissed that CC is closed down here, because he loves. And he, this is, he’s 15, but when we used to go to CC’s all the time, yeah, yeah, it was like he was nine, and he loved the macaroni, the macaroni pizza, yeah, I had this conversation, no lie last week, Dad, is it as good as CC’s?

40:16

Yeah, it was that, that same concept, really? Yeah. So

Daren Phillipy  40:18

favorite, place to eat in Portland, hmm, you know, honestly,

Speaker 1  40:25

by my wife and I was the first time to the there’s a new Ritz Carlton town. They have a restaurant there. And it was, it was amazing. It was, it was amazing. So it’s called the pine I would, I would have to say that right now, there’s some great ones. There’s a, gosh, there’s many great rest. I’d say that one

Daren Phillipy  40:40

gotcha love it. Christine, you are the patient. Girl. Love it. Ask away.

Speaker 2  40:46

Awesome. Hello, hello. Um, so mark, you talked about how your newer agents, they specifically focus on, and then you also said you close a lot of deals with your sphere and past clients. What is your system for touching those people,

Speaker 1  41:02

spear and past clients? So fellow, which I had mentioned as well, is something you can choose. It goes out twice a month to them, and it’s about home valuation and interest and kind of all around the seller side of things. So again, we have to have addresses for that to work, and email addresses, of course, but that’s, that’s twice a month. And so we, we were doing some other things, you know, with automated emails and, you know, informational emails. And we really went away from that, fellow is very, very good. So that’s twice a month. We do a monthly e newsletter that goes out. So that’s, that’s three pieces that go out electronically to everybody’s sphere once a month or each month. What we do as well somebody. So some of you are probably familiar with the whole system. If you call two letters in your by last name of your sphere each week, Kelly Williams has this broken down. It’s in bold. And if you do, if you follow that system, they broke it out where it’s it’s evened out, right? So you’re not calling like, F’s and G’s and there’s 28% of your sphere in there. So it’s maybe, like, it’s six or 8% of your sphere. So it’s not large list. And so if you do that each week, you will touch base with everybody in your sphere once a quarter. So our admin team literally prints that out the list and puts it on everybody’s desk. I mean, sometimes we gotta force feed, right? We say and joke. Sometimes we gotta dumb it down to the lowest common denominator and make it really easy. So we do and we’ll just and we literally put on their desk, and that’s there. And now they gotta do it, but that’s a great way to stay in touch with their sphere. We’ve also we used to be all about calling. And I think what we overlook too often is social sphere. And so a social sphere, you know, it’s, it’s kind of like we, as old school, we’ve opened up the opportunity for them feel comfortable doing this via DM. Do come be comfortable doing this via texting. You know, it doesn’t have to be. Don’t call that list. If we say, call the list, half of them won’t, because it feels weird and awkward and I know what to say. So we have another system. I can share this one as well. When I talk about social media, it’s called the Social 30 I can, I can do this as well, but like, hey, this should take about 30 minutes to just do these simple things and so, so social media, we really pushing that more than ever. Because not only is that your sphere, it’s your social sphere. When agents come on, this is something they gotta do, because those those two don’t cross enough. And, you know, we have all these people on our phone, and we have all these people we know, and yet they’re half of them aren’t even Facebook friends, per se, or Instagram friends. And so really going through everybody and making sure they’ve invited everybody to be a friend or follow also invite them to like our pages as well.

Speaker 2  43:52

Awesome. And so I have not heard a fellow, but that’s emailing those two touches a month,

Speaker 1  43:58

yep, but yeah, in a nutshell, that’s what it is. Yeah, feel free to it’s it depends on how many people you have, people on your team, or how many contacts you have in there. It’s not crazy expensive. I mean, for large teams, it’s not cheap, but it’s really, really good. We are diving into it, you know, right now. So I’m not the expert by any means, but there’s a lot of stuff out there, and you’ll hear, you’ll hear the Tom ferries of the world, you know, talking about it. It’s great. System,

Speaker 2  44:26

awesome. And then I just have one question about accountability. So how do you keep your agents accountable for those things, for what I’m sorry so like, the emailing is that through your systems or through your admin side, but then the list that you place on their desk, how do you keep them accountable for actually going through those lists and touching those people? I

Speaker 1  44:48

love it. So that’s something where we’ve really loosened up the reins. In the past, we would have, like, turn this in, turn this in on this day and and what we found is it just was uncomfortable for people, like, whether they’re doing. It or not, it was kind of uncomfortable and felt like too much. And right? You know, we joke that everybody wants to be in this business for the freedom, the financials and the flexibility, you know, and they’re taking advantage of flexibility and the freedom before they have the financials. But if we don’t, if we don’t allow that, you know, if we, if we treat it, if we treat them too much like an employee, they’re just going to resist that anyway. So we’ve loosened up the reins on that. Like there is it. We put it on their desk, and it’s up to them. Now, in coaching, you know, if that’s part of their goal, then it’s going to come up most likely and talk about it, but there’s no specific accountability to that system to many like we’re tracking appointments, is what we’re tracking every day and roll up each week and for the month. Like that is the one metric that we’ve been focused on all this year. And I think we lost some ground some other ones, but it’s been really, a really, really good focus. Because, you know, if we we joke, if we don’t have an appointment, like, our only jobs to set an appointment, like, what else are we

Speaker 2  45:54

doing? Definitely, so it’s really up to your agents to keep themselves accountable. Then,

Speaker 1  46:00

for the most part. Yes, I mean, through 13 and a lot of other systems, we have a lot of visual stuff, like on a TV screen, where the stuff’s out there, and people can see good or bad. When we do a lot of these contests, all the results are visual on a wall, on a place where we’re tracking it. So there’s something, there’s there’s built in accountability, obviously, with

Speaker 2  46:19

that, right? Definitely, yeah, yeah, great. Well, thank you so much. Yeah,

Daren Phillipy  46:24

awesome questions. Christine, I always love it. This is I’m not ruining Ivy’s question, because I know she’ll probably ask something. I don’t know how you hold a standard when you just let them do what you just said. Because that was my I was literally kind of going off of that. So I’m so help me, because that’s great. Love it. Yeah, by the way, this is Ivy’s question, what is your standard? What’s your vision? What do you want? So how do you hold that standard when you give them the like, the reins?

Speaker 1  46:58

Um, I think what we found this was a huge test for me, because again, how I’m wired and driven and show up to work, put in the work and all that. So I think ultimately, by losing it up a bit, makes people even more comfortable, like, like, want to come to work, like, want to like, want to be around and in the office, and with that comes more productivity. I mean, we just feel that way, too. So, you know, it’s not like we’re trying to lure them in the office by not having any standards and saying, do whatever you want. I mean, that’s all built in. It’s around. It’s competitive. We’re holding each other accountable and stuff too. But that was a big one for us. I mean, in the past, I think in 2023 we tracked seven different metrics, right from conversations to appointments set to held to, you know, all these different things. It’s a lot of work. And I think people, agents, to some degree, feel like that too, like, literally, I gotta input all these things every day. Now, again, that’s not that much, believe me, it’s not that much to ask, but does it wear on them? And a point to a point where they’re like, this is silly, like, I could do this a different way. And so when we loosened up, I think we just felt people felt a little more relaxed to come in and we want people in the office like that culture is huge, and that synergy is huge. And, you know, I think stuff just happens around that synergy. So that helped us with that. Now we’re literally in the process of evaluating, do we want to do that same thing next year, or do we want to change anything? And I think that that the jury’s still out there a bit, but I know it sounds totally contrary to everything we hear about. Let’s have these 10 standards. Let’s say you got to show up at nine. You gotta, you gotta be here till five, whatever it is. But you know, we’ve, we’ve seen our numbers grow because of it and and our turnover or retention, the retention has been better.

Daren Phillipy  48:42

So then, so, okay, let’s go ahead. Sorry, Ivy, I’m you’ll you could ask your question. I just, well, yeah, you’re taking my quiz. Okay, this is, this is an ivy Daren team question. Um, so what you said? The jury’s still out. Which ones have you learned? Definitely going to start holding accountable or or watching more and others, you’re like, totally. I think we’ve got it right. I don’t need all of them. But like,

Speaker 1  49:10

yeah. I mean, appointment set is Will, should always be a number one thing there. I mean, you can’t go through a week without sending appointments very long and not not even have success. I think what we’re learning, and where I’d say we’re probably going to go is, and we’ve even had a few agents say, hey, we need to start tracking conversations again. Like, that was good. Well, that was good for them. I don’t know if that’s good for everybody. And so what we made then that that’s just where we can break it down at a more personal level, on their business and and coach with them one on one about that. Like, if Rochelle thinks, you know, tracking that accountability there would help her business, then we’ll do it. You don’t show up to every week’s coaching session with with those numbers, but not rolling that out to everybody. So I think that’s really probably where we’ll end up, is what works best for them. And sure we can hold them accountable. We don’t need to change our. System we don’t need to get it’s not going to create a ton more work. That’s just going to be in the one on one conversations, to go a little bit deeper with them, and keep, keep an overall arching, you know, emphasis on one or two things. We may add one or two more, I don’t know, but I could see it easily, just staying where it’s

Daren Phillipy  50:15

at an individual standard, not a blanket standard, correct?

Speaker 1  50:19

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, with permission to hold them accountable, right? I mean, if that’s their goal, and that’s what they want to achieve, and we ask for permission to hold them accountable, then they got to be okay with that, whether it’s comfortable or not, okay,

Daren Phillipy  50:30

Ivy, you are now free to do whatever you’d like to Okay, thank you. So that, I mean, I kind of changed my question a little bit. So what I’m hearing is there are certain standards your lacks on because you feel like, I mean, it’s just you’re what you’re seeing is more productivity, yeah, but there has to be standards, I would think, and I could be wrong. Or maybe, let me rephrase, Are there standards in order to stay on your team, and if there are, what are they?

Speaker 1  51:03

Yeah, there are not to, like, stay long term, right? That’ll be a judgment call. And if it’s not working for us, it’s probably not working for them either. And that’s an easy conversation, unfortunately that that happens. So here’s, here’s one thing. We do have a little more rigid standards with a new agent, and although we’re not going to say you’re out of here if you can miss one of these, but we say this. So we do four days a week, at 9am for 9am to 930 there’s some kind of scripting practice, a mastermind, a sales call taking place half an hour, respectful of the time. And when you’re a new agent for your first six months, we say, or if you until you’ve done six transactions with you need to beat all those like, that’s how you ramp up the most if you guys are not doing that stuff as a group. So powerful. Now you need the experienced agents to be there as well to share these successes and stories for them to learn from. It’s not just us as the leader sharing that. And so the analogy I use with and why it’s so powerful, right? Is we know real estate situational, right? You don’t just read a book and go, I got it. It’s situational. And so if, if we can tell a recruit or new agent to come in, if you can partake in these, when you hear Tony, who sold hundreds houses, talk about a situation, you now know how that works and how to work the client through it. You get that out to your tool belt without having to go through yourself and take so much longer. And so everything is we right? If your agents are not speaking we and they’re not when they’re new, they’re not saying, Hey, we’ve this. We we’ve sold 300 homes so far this year, Mr. Seller, we understand how that goes. We just helped someone last week work through a situation like that when it wasn’t them because they’ve done two deals. But as someone on the team that they heard explain it, it just gives confidence to them. It gives confidence to the client, they’re maybe trying to convert into an opportunity as well. So so there are standards with like, showing up for those trainings, if not, they’re going to hurt themselves. Open Houses. It’s for a month minimum. For a new agent, like, they need to be doing that, whether they want to do them all two weekends or four whatever, because that’s a huge piece of exposure, getting comfortable talking to people, meeting new potential buyers outside of their sphere. You know, when they don’t have a pipeline built up. So a few more standards there with new agents.

Daren Phillipy  53:10

I say, All right, yeah. I was just wondering. And then my other thing just kind of leads into it. I think I have about three minutes left. Feel better, Ivy, yeah. And I get it. I get where he’s coming from. Yeah, I do, because we are, what he said was real, what you said, right? Was real powerful. That, you know, when people have been in the business for a long time, we’re always in an ever changing industry. I mean, obviously Gary Keller is like exemplary to this, right? It’s constantly changing. And what may work for some people may not work for us. What worked then is we’re at a different time. So I completely that was, to me, that was really powerful reminder, but coming back then, it kind of leads me into your recruiting process. So you want to hire the right people right which kind of leads into your culture. So and knowing that I don’t have much time to ask, but I was wanted to know is, what are the key I don’t know if you do the KW process or if you do a certain process, but what are the key traits or things that you look for, that you believe are the key things in your culture, right, that you’re hiring into your culture? God, that was a horrible quote. Horrible question, but I think

Speaker 1  54:23

you got what I was saying. I got you. I mean, with recruiting, it’s, I mean, professional. I mean that sounds very basic, but our industry is way too superficial, but professional. I mean, at the end of the day, self driven, motivated, hungry, goal oriented, because we know this, like, we can only do so much, we can only teach so much, we can only push so much. Like, they’ve got to have that self motivation. Like, you know, only hire the motivated right, if they’re, if they’re money motivated, even better. Like, that’s, that’s why we’re working right. And so that’s sales in any industry. So although a lot of people say, I’m not money motivated, i. To help people. We hear this all the time, if that’s truly the case, if it’s just about helping people not making money, they’re gonna, they’re gonna probably struggle a bit, like, if that’s truly all it is. And they’re not just saying that to feel good or sound good, because you got to have a, you know, something bigger, driving you to do more. And

Daren Phillipy  55:17

what do you tool do you use to, I mean, do you guys have, like, a certain list of questions, or do you use the What process do you go through in order to find those answers? Yeah,

Speaker 1  55:26

also, we have some basic questions. We go through a couple process, process where I’ll meet, I’ll meet with them, kind of head recruiting in Portland. Next step would be our meeting with our director of sales, and then often from there, it’s meeting with an agent. One of our agents is powerful too. I think it’s, it helps them ask questions they wouldn’t ask with us because they don’t want to are uncomfortable. It gives them a taste of, you know, and this obviously, with you know, you’re picking an agent’s been with you probably two years or less, and has had great success that that’s who we want to meet with.

Daren Phillipy  55:56

Yeah, okay, well, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

55:59

Yeah, absolutely. Mark, you.

Daren Phillipy  56:01

You are awesome. Great question. Ivy, I knew we’re in the same page. I just wanted bigger to it drives are nuts. Mark, we are dying to send referrals to Portland and Vancouver. What’s the best way for them to be able to send referrals for those who are in the room and also listening.

56:20

Yeah, appreciate it. We’d love to be of help. My email address is, it’s Mark M, A, R, C,

Speaker 1  56:28

at Box real estate groups, plural.com, box real estate groups.com, you know, Instagram is, is Mark with the C underscore Fox. Facebook is Mark Fox. Me, you, you’ll find her stuff. If you look at the fox Real Estate Group, you know, Google, and hopefully you’ll find us there. Hey, love to be of help. Absolutely. Hey,

Daren Phillipy  56:53

man, you’re you’ve been awesome. I’ve really enjoyed hanging out with you, dude. Uh, and thank you for sharing your your time, your knowledge and seeing from a different perspective. So really appreciate it, man, you’re

Speaker 1  57:05

so welcome. I’ll send you a couple of those sheets we talked about. Daren, Yeah, appreciate it. Thank you.

Daren Phillipy  57:10

I love it. I’ll see you guys later, until next week, thank you. Okay, there you go. Get it. Another, another, amazing. Ot Mark, you’re fantastic. You’re so cool. I’m so grateful that you shared your time with us. We love learning from you. And hey, if you guys got referrals to send them to Portland area, send it to them. We’d love to be able to receive those referrals. You heard all of where to send those referrals. Now, you guys know I don’t do this just as a hobby. Do this because I run one of the largest real estate companies here in Vegas, Keller Williams, the marketplace, and I spend most my time coaching and helping non kW agents with their business. And if you are growing your team or building your team, or you’re needing help with your business, contact me. My number 702-706-4949, and I’m here. I help you. That’s it. Pick up the phone and I’ll help you out. You’re like Daren, but I’m not in Vegas. Don’t sweat it. I don’t expect you to be in Vegas. I help the people here in Vegas, but I also can help anybody anywhere in the country. Just contact me and I want to be your guy. That’s that’s pretty much it. I’m grateful for you guys. What an episode I’m done talking. I can’t wait to see you guys at the next OT. Until then, we’ll do some good.

Announcer  58:32

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