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Anthony: Have you been on a team for a while as an agent, maybe receiving leads, and now, you’re realizing, “I don’t think I want to be on this team anymore”? Or, are you a team leader and you’re losing agents and you’re frustrated and you feel like, “I helped make their career. I gave them leads. I built them up and now look, now they’re leaving me.” My friends, this is normal. This is natural. This happens. The mistake is a lot of team leaders don’t understand that it happens and they don’t understand that this is the natural progression of a realtor.
Back when I had a team years ago, and that’s basically how I did at this, started as a single agent, moved onto have a small team, big team, and then converted to a brokerage. One of the reasons I converted to a brokerage is I knew that keeping agents on my team wasn’t something that could be done long-term. It isn’t sustainable. Why? Because no agent wants to be on someone else’s team, building someone else’s brand name, bringing in listings, having the listings be listed with someone else long-term. They don’t want that. They want to be able to list their own properties. They want to be able to build a name brand of their own.
I have news for your team leaders. They should feel that way. That’s natural. Look at yourself. You might’ve started on a team. I started on a team. Technically, it was brief, but I did. The person I worked with, I give him credit. It’s my ex-business partner. He realized pretty darn quick I wasn’t someone that was going to stay working for someone else very long. He came to me and said, “Let’s create a partnership.” That was really, I think, smart of him. I think that that was big of him to do that, because he realized that I never would have lasted if we stayed in that arrangement.
What many of you need to do, team leaders, is stop getting mad about it. Don’t get down about it. Perhaps work something out with your broker-owner, where people can be on your team for a period of time. Then, they could move off the team and be as an agent at the brokerage. Maybe you could make something off that for a period of time, who knows? My point is stop having a forever mindset. If you don’t help humans grow and climb the ladder in their career, they will leave. That’s natural.
For those of you that are team agents out there on people’s teams, it’s not bad if you work for someone for two, or three, or four, or five years, and after a while you say, “You know what? I want to do my own thing. I want to build my own brand name.” Nothing wrong with that whatsoever. It’s totally fine. It’s totally normal. The right thing to do, and the best thing to do, talk to your team leader about your concerns, express that you want to get more in the game, more things in your name, et cetera. If they’re not up for that, that doesn’t make the team leader a bad person. Team leader doesn’t make the team member a bad person if they feel that way.
Both sides have to view this differently, because when you don’t, your career can stay stuck. As a team leader, let’s be honest. If you want to help people grow their businesses, the ultimate way to grow is to help others achieve what they want to. The more you help other people achieve what they want, the more you solve their problems, the more of them you have. If you try to hold somebody under your thumb or keep them with you long-term forever, it’s not going to happen. I shouldn’t say it’s not gonna happen. It’s unlikely.
Now, there are some people out there who are okay with being on a team long-term, but it’s a small percentage. For them, good for them. Maybe they like the comfort of getting the leads. Maybe they like the comfort of having someone there to help them more. Hopefully, team leaders are there to help people, and are providing training, and are providing direction. That’s what you should be doing as a leader, not just focusing on your sales. Hopefully, I helped shed light on both sides, both angles, and I hope that was helpful to you. Thanks, guys. Good luck. Happy home selling.