00:00You know, I think defining what becomes a success is really, there's no blanket statement
00:12for that.
00:14It's kind of like, I did a video on why I stopped, you know, for about a year there
00:21I was coaching agents across the country and I stopped doing it and the reason I stopped
00:26doing it is because there's no way that I could have a group call with 200 people and
00:32give them the value that they deserve because everyone on that call is different.
00:38They're at different phases of their career.
00:40I can't, I can't teach a $10 million producer how to become a $50 million producer while
00:45at the same time telling a $200 million team leader how to become a billion dollar team
00:49leader because they're just at completely different phases of their career.
00:53We can talk accountability, we can talk about motivation, drive, there's certain generalities
01:02that you can speak to, but you can't get tactical.
01:06It's just impossible.
01:07And so I didn't feel like I was bringing the value and so I just said I'm not going to
01:09do it anymore.
01:10Plus I wanted to focus on building our company, but the reality was, is I felt like I was
01:14failing people because I couldn't one-on-one meet with them to really go over their goals
01:18and expectations and what they really need to do in order to move the needle.
01:22It was a lot of general statements and I didn't think that was fair.
01:26And I think when you define success for a team or a brokerage, it's unfair to make a
01:30general statement on what that really represents because everybody's goals are different.
01:36When I tell my agents, you may have a month where you don't sell four homes a month and
01:40you think you're a failure because you only sold one home, but during that month, if you
01:44spent that downtime where you weren't so busy in production, but you were really working
01:49on building your business in terms of putting together certain components of your marketing
01:55plan, when you're going to deploy your newsletter every month, every quarter, getting better
02:00internally with your structure on your outbound calls from prospecting to past clients.
02:04If we're building and you're seeing that your business is getting better, then that's a
02:09successful month.
02:10A successful month isn't always based around, did I sell X amount of homes?
02:14The successful month is, did I complete tasks?
02:19Did I get better operationally as an entrepreneur, as a business owner?
02:25Am I doing things every single month that is making me better so I can be more efficient
02:30operationally?
02:32So I can sell more homes in the future without having spending as much time to do so.
02:36That's a successful month.
02:38And so you don't always look at, when you talk about teams or broker owners, I'll bet
02:44you 95% of them didn't hit what they thought their goal was this year from a transaction
02:49or volume count.
02:51That doesn't mean, I know we didn't.
02:53We wanted to do five and a half billion in sales this year.
02:55I'm not going to hit that.
02:58But I don't look at our year as a failure.
03:00I look at our year as, we did a lot of really good things internally and we put a lot of
03:05good processes in place.
03:07We defined and identified better departments and what that represents.
03:12We got more efficient.
03:16We got better with technology, with our partnerships.
03:19We provided more value to our agents, but we didn't hit our goal when it comes to transaction
03:24and volume count.
03:25But I don't consider this year a failure.
03:27I consider this year a success.
03:29I think that we did very good relative to what the market brought us.
03:36And everything's so fluid when you talk about goals and expectations because things can
03:39change quickly in our business.
03:41When interest rates go up 200 basis points within a year, it's probably going to be harder
03:46to sell houses.
03:48So there's outside influences and external factors that contribute to goal setting that
03:53you just simply can't control.
03:54That doesn't mean you get down on yourself.
03:56The adverse would be true if all of a sudden rates dropped 200 basis points like in COVID
04:01and you have a gangbuster year, but you didn't do anything internally or operationally to
04:07be better.
04:08I think that's a fail.
04:10You just rode the wave.
04:13It's like any realtor or loan officer that crushed it.
04:16I hear this all the time.
04:17Well, in 2001, I did this or in 2020, I did this.
04:22That's like people that have the, oh, woe is me story when they talk about, well, 2009,
04:30I lost everything and it broke me and this and that.
04:33It's the same story, just the opposite.
04:35The failure side of you didn't fail.
04:37The market failed versus you weren't so great.
04:41The market was so great.
04:43So these external factors play such a big role in what you would consider success.
04:49Where I look at success as measuring, did we get better with what we can control and
04:55we can control operational things.
04:58We can control efficiencies.
05:00We can control scalability.
05:03The external market we can't control.
05:05Those are factors that are going to lead to revenue or a decrease in revenue, but you
05:11can only control what you can control.
05:13So I wouldn't look at measuring success on a purely numbers basis of transactional or
05:17volume count.
05:18I would look at measuring success on how did we perform overall when it came to enhancing
05:23our business.
Comments