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Anthony: Hiring, hiring, hiring, hiring. If you’re going to do it, you have to do it. You can’t take half measures. See, I did a video, maybe two and a half months ago down in Florida with my good friend, Willie Miranda. We talked about the value of hiring employees and how that’s the way to get things done consistently. That’s the way to put a system in place and have it stick, a system, a process, et cetera. Now, when you want to grow an organization, regardless of what business it is, you have to have dedicated employees that focus specifically on various tasks, various items that have responsibilities, et cetera.
One of the mistakes that I see several broker-owners and team leaders make is they try to cheap out. They try to have half an employee, someone who’s an employee, but also an agent. It doesn’t work that way. See, in our organization, if you’re an employee you’re done selling, it’s over. There’s no selling. You have a deal, you’re referred to an agent, it becomes an employee referral. Sometimes people don’t love that, and sometimes I don’t want to be an employee because of it, but oh well, there’s a line there. You’re an employee, you’re a staff member, you’re dedicated to the company. You’re carrying out specific orders. You have specific responsibilities, you get a steady check, you get health insurance, 401k, all these other things, right?
When you’re a realtor, you have more freedoms. You’re an independent contractor. Well, if you’re running the organization, you can’t have people have it both way, it doesn’t work. The interests can collide. The behavior out of someone who’s on both sides, they can start to feel like they’re being pulled each way. Here’s the problem. Everybody wants to be the owner and wants to be the leader until it’s time to start doing things owners do. Until it’s time to start having responsibilities that owners have. Until it’s time to start dealing with the months that you have losses or the weeks that you have losses. When you’re new building a company, you’re going to have losses, okay?
I don’t care who you are. You might hear this, “Oh, he’s wrong. My margin, okay, okay.” When you build it into a company that really turns into something big, along the way, there are bumps in the road. When you try to take half measures and cheap out on things, it doesn’t fly. It doesn’t. You have to just do it. You have to make it stick. I’d say that’s one of the biggest things that is different with the way I run my organization, compared to what I see out of competitors. I see competitors that are competing broker-owners. They’re broker-owners, plus they’re selling. Hey, I did that. I did that from 2009 to 2011, right. You have to do it at some point to get yourself off the ground. If you want to build a true brokerage, long-term, you can’t be selling and then also have agents selling and expect to recruit big agents when you’re the one selling.
Well, the same holds true for staff. You can’t have staff members that are selling, but they’re also answering the phones. Those interests collide. You’re putting someone in a position that there could be temptation to do things they probably shouldn’t do, and that’s a problem. Like I said, everybody wants to be an owner until it’s time to start doing owner stuff. Until it’s time to take the responsibility, go to the bank, borrow money, take risks, front money, lose money month after month on various new initiatives. Then, end up in a position where, hopefully, you make it up down the line. It’s the way it goes.
I found out recently that we’re the fastest-growing independent brokerage in the country. That’s significant in the whole leading RE network, and 200 and something percent over a five-year period, which I’m not that thrilled about. I appreciate the accolades. I appreciate the recognition, but I actually think we should be doing better. It goes to show how difficult it is. Now, could we have done that if we didn’t front money, hire employees, put various initiatives in place? No, it would have been impossible.
I understand that when you put new initiatives in place, there is a curve. There is a period of time that you lose money until you hopefully make it back. We’ve had initiatives that we’ve worked on month after month, and it just didn’t work out to the extent it should have. The point I’m getting at is if you are a broker-owner, if you are a team leader, and you want to consistently grow your organization, and you want to put things in place, and have them stick, and have them have a structure and be a certain way, and have it be consistent- because consistency matters- then you got to do it. You got to bite the bullet, you got to hire people, you got to front money, you got to lose some money for a while. It’s the way it goes.
It’s a whole other topic, but I can touch on it for a minute. I’ve talked about over the years how banks are annually uptight. They measure companies by annual tax return, and you can’t always turn things around in a year. You can’t always get to a profit margin in a year. When I talk about this, I’m talking about waves that we’ve gone through over the years, more so years back when our scale was smaller. There’s times you lose money. The reason I’m mentioning losing money with staff is a lot of times you’ve got to hire staff and front money, and along the way, it can be frustrating. That’s what’s necessary. That’s what you have to do to make things stick.
If you are in a position where you need an assistant or you are growing a team or an organization- my motion light went out- team and organization or whatever it is, you have to understand that you have to hire people. If you lose money for a few months to get it off the ground, who cares, you’ll make it up later, don’t stress. That’s all, my friends. Good luck and happy home selling.