Are You Getting Paid To Stay?

Anthony: Are you getting paid to stay? Are you getting paid to join? Maybe you’re being lured by a big company and offered money to join. That’s an interesting concept. Sounds cool when you first hear it, but I want you to think about it. Would Starbucks pay you to go buy coffee from them every day? Can you imagine going into Starbucks, and they say, “Hey, I’m a new manager here at Starbucks. I’m going to pay you $2 for every day you come in and buy a coffee.” You’d say, “What? That’s odd. Why are they doing that?”

Starbucks doesn’t need to do that because Starbucks coffee is so good; their beverages, their snacks are so good that you would never dream of them paying you to go in because they have so much value. You see, companies that pay people to stay and pay people to join, they lack value. Yes, I’ll say it out loud. I know my competitors who are going to see this, and that’s okay, because this page is about being real with realtors, and that’s what I’m known for and that’s why we’ve created such a following, because when the realtors come here, they get the real deal.

If a company needs to pay you to stay or pay you to join, they want something in return. They’re doing that because they realize they don’t have much else to lure you, and a lot of agents fall for it, and then they end up in these contracts, two-year or three-year contracts. Some of the contracts actually say that if they leave even on the 23rd month with one week left, they have to pay back the whole thing.

Some of them aren’t even prorated, and agents get stuck, and what does that create? That is creating an abundance of lists. These aren’t the actual lists, but we have lists of agents, and we know when their contracts are expiring, because they’re waiting. They can’t wait till those contracts expire, so they can get out, and they say, “I’m not getting stuck here.” We’ve even seen agents write checks back to companies and join. Now, this is obviously not an advertisement for my brokerage, which I won’t even mention the name. I never do that here on Crush It In Real Estate, but I wanted to have an honest conversation with everybody about this because too many agents are falling for it.

My question to you is when that 10,000 or 20,000 or 30,000 or 100,000 goes into your bank account, what does it do to help you grow your business? Maybe it provides you some advertising money, so you could argue, “Anthony, he gave me advertising money.” Okay, that’s fair. That’s something, but once that’s gone, what else does it do? See, at our company, we take part in none of it. We don’t pay people bonuses to join. We never pay people bonuses to stay, and I never will. We never take part in term contracts. We got rid of those about a year ago.

I used to take part in it. I learned from others. I learned that other people did that. When you open a new office, you lock down a certain group of agents. We got rid of it. We did away with it. Why? Because I want people to join our company and stay at our company at their own will. I want us to earn them being with us on our own merits, our own value. If they’re here because of some contract, I would feel terrible about that. I wouldn’t like it.

That’s why we don’t have it, and that’s why brokerages shouldn’t do that, but they do it because agents fall for it. Really I think both sides are to blame. When I say “to blame,” maybe that sounds harsh, but I’m trying to be straight with you all. If you’re a realtor, what you should be seeking is a company that has good products, good services, tools, technology, and I’m not going to sit and say, “Tech is everything.” No, no, we’re in the real estate business. That’s a people relationship business. Relationships matter but the tech helps.

What kind of tech do they have to complement your business to speed things up to help you keep up with things? What kind of social media assistant do they have? I don’t know, but my point is, if they have nothing, then they’ll offer money. Imagine if they use that money that they use to pay people to stay and pay people to join.

If they actually invested that money into things to make agents’ lives easier, help agents businesses grow; 75% of the agents out there really, really want to grow their businesses, and about 25% just want a life. At our company, we put tremendous focus into how to help get agents more help so they can spend more time with their families, so they can go away on vacation and not be tethered to their laptop and phone the entire vacation. Those are the kinds of things that we’ve put in place.

Again, I don’t want to advertise for our company, but the point I’m getting at is price is only an issue in the absence of value. I always tell the story, when Steve Jobs came out and introduced the iPad on stage 15, 13, 14 years ago, obviously appeared genius, and he came out in his black outfit, and he showed the iPad. I remember, at that time, it was $700 or $800. It had so much value. If he said $2,000, it would have sold like that, because that’s what people really want, and that’s what they want long-term.

These Band-Aids that these other companies are using. Yes, I call them Band-Aids, to pay people to stay and pay people to join, they won’t last. Value wins, value will win every time in the end. There’s no question about that. In the end, agents, people, consumers, we’re all attracted to value. We’re all attracted to what will help us grow, what will help us be better as people, what will help us get to spend more time with our families, et cetera. Not quick bonuses that puts some money in your pocket and fall apart.

If you’re one of those people that’s taken those bonuses, don’t feel bad. I’m not trying to shame you. That’s okay. I know a lot of great people that have, but you ought to think about it before you get stuck in another one, because when you do that, again, in life, you have to give to get. They’re giving you a bonus, they deserve having you in a contract, right? I mean, they don’t want you to take the check and run, I get that, but know that you’re going to be stuck in that, and once you’re stuck in that, what are you really going to get after that?

I had an agent tell me recently, and this is kind of what prompted me to do this video that I meant to do last week, it was like once the check cleared in my bank account, they didn’t care about me as much. Now, that might be a one-off case, but that’s interesting to me, because once the check clears and the contract signed, you’re stuck as a realtor, you’re stuck. As I said, at our company, we don’t and won’t pay bonuses to join, bonuses to stay, and we don’t take part in term contracts, why? Because we have true value, and in the end, value wins every time. That’s all my friends. Thank you.